Amazon

There are a lot of smart people and lots of opportunities to learn from them, with frequent tech talks and generally open communications policies.

All of the managers I've had have been people that I've felt like I've worked with rather than for. They've been generally interested in figuring out what's needed for our customers and getting the group's feedback on how to get it done.

I haven't experienced any of the micromanagement styles that I've seen mentioned in other reviews here.

Most software groups are responsible for software that is used by a production website or service. This means that, depending on how old the software is, how well it was written, or how well its operations were thought out, it can fail gracefully or not.

Some groups have frontline on-call support teams, but many do not. So, if the production software fails a lot, you may be on a pager rotation that can cost you some sleep :(

Make sure that your groups have a sane operational support plan.