The design of the company’s offices takes the “open concept” idea to an extreme. Everyone from secretaries to the president sits at long white banks of desks, similar to those on investment-firm trading floors. “If being invisible from your colleagues is what you crave, we’re not the right place for you,” Bloomberg wrote in his book. One drawback, though, is that everyone is into everyone else’s business—which includes some of the managerial temper tantrums that have become legend.

One person who’s famous for yelling in the office is Matthew Winkler, editor in chief of Bloomberg News. One of his tirades, in which he screamed at a group of employees who were protesting the sudden firing of a colleague, was recorded and posted on the website Gawker. (Winkler declined to comment.) Former employees also reported dramatic run-ins with former C.E.O. Fenwick—now head of a company project called Bloomberg Ventures—who could erupt in desk-pounding, cursing rants. (Fenwick declined to comment.)

Even so, many employees find Bloom­berg to be an invigorating place to work. “There’s a lot of buzz all the time. It’s a really fun place to be,” says a current manager. “There was a free-spirited ability to do or try anything,” a former marketing manager says. “If you have a good idea, you can run with it.”

There are other perks too, including mountains of snacks free for the taking. One former employee describes the newsroom as reminiscent of a “big, modern airport,” with a spread of fresh fruit, iced tea, cappuccino, gourmet chips, cookies, and nuts where employees can graze.

Bloomberg’s maternity leave is generous by U.S. standards. Employees get 12 weeks of paid leave, with the option of taking an additional four weeks unpaid. Benefits also include backup child care and a lactation room, and the company pays 100 percent of health- and dental-insurance premiums.

What really keeps people tied to the place, though, is the money. On the sales side, a key part of the compensation is traditionally paid out as Bloomberg certificates—deferred bonuses whose value is based on sales. This translates into healthy six-figure pay for many sales employees.

And even some of the female staffers who say they hated aspects of the way they were treated qualified their statements by saying how much they enjoyed the work. “It’s an amazing company,” says one marketing manager who worked there for seven years. “I loved my job. But the work-life balance wasn’t going to be acceptable. At some point, you’re just like, ‘I want to spend some time with my kids. I just need some sort of ability to do that.’ ”

A few women said they had managed to keep their careers on track and also have children while working at the company. “Women at Bloomberg have been promoted during maternity leave, upon returning from leave, and during their pregnancies,” says Czelusniak, the company spokeswoman.

One of the most surprising aspects of the class-action lawsuit is that women are among the alleged perpetrators of discrimination and hostility toward pregnant women and working mothers. In their complaint, both Patricot and Loures describe encounters with the firm’s global head of data, Beth Mazzeo, who is one of the highest-ranking women at the company and has three kids herself. Patricot alleges Mazzeo told her that her career had been “paused” after she had her first child. After Patricot asked for a change in schedule, she was demoted, and Mazzeo was verbally abusive, the complaint says. Loures also saw her responsibilities shrink under Mazzeo, according to the complaint. Czelusniak says Mazzeo was promoted during and after her maternity leave. Mazzeo declined to comment.

Speaking of pregnancy discrimination in general, and not of the Bloomberg lawsuit, Gary Phelan says, “Often the people who are the alleged wrongdoers are females, who often have children.” Phelan co-chairs a practice group focused on family-responsibility discrimination at the law firm Outten & Golden. “I think part of it is they just remember how hard it was for them. Part of it also is resentment.”

Michael Bloomberg has just achieved a political victory, persuading the New York City Council by a vote of 29 to 22 to pass legislation allowing him to run again. His company is also making some changes. In July, a former American Express executive, Melinda Wolfe, joined Bloomberg L.P. as head of professional development, responsible for diversity and inclusion. And perhaps of greatest interest to the company’s hundreds of working parents, flextime has been introduced. Requests for work-from-home schedules can now be submitted to a committee for approval. A current Bloomberg manager says, “I think people are happy to hear that it’s going to happen, but they’re still not sure of the details of it.” She adds, “Some might feel afraid to be the first to take advantage of it.”

Today, some women in Michael Bloom­berg’s orbit can’t imagine that an alternate persona could even exist. “I don’t find it credible at all,” says Ester Fuchs, a professor at Columbia who worked closely with him on public policy for five years. “He’s probably one of the most fair-minded, even-handed people I’ve ever come across.”

“If nothing else, it is clear he is adaptable,” says Joyce Purnick, a former New York Times political columnist who is writing a biography of Bloomberg. “What worked well on Wall Street in his time there does not work in public life. So as mayor, he dropped the macho stuff.

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Knocked Up in the Workplace

Under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978, companies can’t discriminate against women because of any reason related to pregnancy or childbirth and must treat pregnant employees the same as any other “temporarily disabled” worker. And thanks to the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, most workers, male or female, can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a newborn, adopted, or foster child. (The law applies only to companies with 50 or more employees and to employees who have worked at the company for at least a year.)

Though many states have their own family-leave laws, only five—California, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island—offer any sort of paid leave to pregnant women and new mothers. In California, the first state to approve paid family leave, new mothers get up to 12 weeks of partially paid leave, and fathers get six. Pregnant women in New York get up to $170 a week for 26 weeks through the state’s temporary-disability insurance program, and a new law gives workers in New Jersey up to $524 a week for six weeks to care for a child or sick relative.

Overall, the U.S. lags far behind almost every other country, particularly those in Europe. All new mothers in the European Union get at least 14 weeks of fully paid leave, and some countries are even more generous. France gives 16 weeks of paid leave, and U.K. allows a year of leave, with partial pay for 39 weeks. One of the best deals is in Sweden: Either parent can take a year of fully paid leave. —Jen Itzenson

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