AT&T

Great, hard-working, fun-loving people.

High team spirit.

Flexible hours and work-from-home policy.

Good compensation for contractors.

(Keep in mind this is one division of many, so your mileage may vary significantly in a different group or division)

Upper management is out of touch with what it takes to run a software development organization. Forever changing priorities waste tons of money on developing poorly thought-out features that are often scrapped in favor of new ones.

Conflicts between one side of the company, whose bonuses depend on trimming costs, and the other side, whose bonuses depend on delivering features, lead to staffing snafus.

Company periodically gets on an outsourcing kick, which ends up dropping code quality and maintainability through the floor. Ultimately, the project has to be scrapped and rebuilt. I've been through this cycle three times, and ultimately management decides that outsourcing was a terrible idea and says they'll never do it again. But then new management comes in, and they do the whole thing all over... Sad, really.

I know you have to adapt to changing marketplace conditions, but don't let company product priorities be affected by political squabbles leading to wasting millions of dollars in development time and effort.

Realize that you get what you pay for, and don't kill projects by outsourcing them.