Akamai Technologies

Overall, Akamai has a great work culture. It's great to be surrounded by lots of smart people with lots of respect for one another, and lofty ideals for how to stabilize and secure the underpinnings of the modern internet.

Each department and team seems to act like a separate fiefdom. Mid-level managers are working at cross purposes to one another, and budgets are ridiculously tight even though the company is seemingly doing well. Some teams lack staff or just refuse to do work that is absolutely needed by another team, even though it would benefit the company as a whole. It can be frustrating if you’re the type of person who believes in the company's mission and wants to fix things.

The result has been a huge brain drain over the years, where many people who were the bedrock of the company's reputation have left (or been canned). The ones who've stayed and been rewarded by middle management are the ones who take their time, slow things down, don’t ask questions, and defer tasks to other groups. If you like being one of those people—or if you are blessed with a great manager who is helping rather than harming—it can be a cozy job for you!

Someone at the top needs to get rid of ineffective and destructive managers and reallocate budget and headcount across the entire engineering organization. This would ensure that the actually-important systems get funded and supported, and teams are incentivized to work together instead of competing for resources.

The company needs to listen to the architects who actually care about platform safety and security. It should fund the boring systems that the rest of the company relies on, rather than spending all the money on acquisitions and flashy new systems that are less reliable and less scalable.

Not every product can be fixed by buying a new, smaller company and using its products instead.