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Check out Bloomberg’s new west coast tech hub, complete with stingrays
Biz Carson
Bloomberg is a New York company, both in its headquarters and in its corporate culture.
Expanding its research and development and VC arm to San Francisco meant it had to relax a bit in order to court west coast developers who have come to expect certain things at startups: Couches, snacks and an open floor plan.
Bloomberg ditched the normal startup flair of ping pong tables and bean bags and opted for an entryway that’s a little bit cooler: an open-air tank complete with two sting rays who live below a data visualization.
The office is in Pac-Bell’s old headquarters, built in 1925, at 140 New Montgomery St. in SOMA. The 22nd floor where Bloomberg is located was used as the women’s cafeteria.
The office is shared between developers in the R&D lab and Bloomberg’s venture capital division, Bloomberg Beta.
There’s only 20 employees on-site now, but it has room for 100 across the two floors.
Also sharing the office are two Atlantic stingrays. The fish tank is a Bloomberg office tradition, although they are normally filled with tropical fish.
This one is named Vladimir.
This one is Beyoncé. Yes, it is fierce.
They sometimes are friends.
Or other times Beyoncé chases Vladimir.
Beyoncé normally wins because she is a diva and was in the tank first.
The stingrays live below a data visualization. This one is using “swarms”, or intense concentrations of light, to show market trade volume right before it closes.
Another Bloomberg staple: the pantry. Nooks and couches are also used by developers for meetings or just eating lunch.
The requisite startup food. Not pictured are the developer’s favorites: Uncrustables.
The quiet room at Bloomberg is known as “The Void.” It’s one floor up and has extra sound proofing to keep it quieter than the main floor.
The Void also a lot of old games and magazines that the developers use in their down time.
The Void also has a taxidermied fish on display from 1910.
There are plaques throughout the office showing bits of San Francisco, developer, and Bloomberg history. This one points to New York.
The conference rooms are named for platonic solids, like tetra or octahedron. The pattern of the solid then repeats around the room.
The Wellness room is for nursing mothers and employee health screenings. It’s the only closed off room in the entire office.
The art deco outside of the building has been kept since 1925, although the interior has been refurbished to be modern.
16 individual 4K TVs make up the screen in the event’s space. During hackathons, different groups could show off their projects simultaneously.
For a different kind of startup experience, check out SurveyMonkey’s offices.
Its employees use treadmill desks and do planks in between coding>>
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