Apple

It is nice to be around so many really bright people, and I did pretty well financially with my stock options/employee stock purchase plan.

As a female engineer, it was impossible for me to develop or even stay up to date.

There were some really great guys who treated me as an equal from the first moment. However, there were too many others who excluded me, talked down to me, and discounted or ignored what I had to say.

I was shut out from the projects and information that I needed to stay up to date or develop as an engineer. I did everything in my power to try to get around this, and was still shut out.

They have a diversity program, but are very naive about what is really going on.

I also got the distinct impression that the software engineers would never get the same respect and status as the hardware engineers.

In addition, certain people would obstruct teamwork and information sharing, presumably to preserve their job security.

The last thing that really bothered me was that certain teams were required to work seven days a week for two or three months straight in order to get a product out.

First-level managers and program managers should get a lot more training than they do today.

Working seven days a week makes people's total output go down. Set the right weekly milestones and have people go home and recharge on the weekends. They will get more done every week.