Arm

Good name on CV. Opportunity to work on latest technology which has become a de facto standard in quite a few markets. Good work life balance.

Software is not the main focus of the company, but just something that comes "free" with the hardware IPs. Hence there is an evident lack of focus on execution as no pressure comes from (not) having SW products that need to be sold to customers.

Recently the company is trying to market itself as not only an HW company but the culture is too distant from US big names (Google, Facebook, Microsoft) and also from US based, product focused semiconductor companies such as Broadcom or Qualcomm. The SW teams are also hugely involved in political games between managers, poor communication with other groups, frequent reorganisations to shuffle managers around resulting in projects being abandoned and people frequently jumping from project to project.

Compensation is improving but not enough for the Cambridge area.

Create a dedicated SW organisation, and avoid having many different SW groups around working on the slightly different flavours of the same field.

Create uniform (lightweight) processes for SW, as it is not your usual HW business.