American Express

Pay is good. Benefits are good. Work-life is very good. Amex doesn’t have to be your life. The stability of a big company that always makes money is very comforting.

They refer to their people as resources. They’re moving away from the outsourced contractor model, but the mindset runs deep in the culture. Someday, perhaps, they’ll make an honest transition to a digital product company, but for now, they are still struggling to understand the differences between products and projects. So, you’ll find teams that are constantly killing themselves to do things poorly on tight timelines.

Kill the contractor mentality. Unfortunately, this means you need some serious leadership turnover. Far too many “leaders” love being the boss. Way too many are just sloganeering, bean-counting suits. Promote some honest-to-goodness engineering leaders.