Dell

The benefits are decent, even if some have been cut back recently (no more Employee Stock Purchase Plan). The salary seems competitive, although yearly raises aren't keeping up with inflation anymore. There is a fairly large variety of positions at this company, and you have an opportunity to switch career fields if you want. There have been engineers that have switched to marketing, for example. This would be a good place to work if you came here right out of college, but you might have some problems if you've worked somewhere else first.

It's a large company, and with that comes the inevitable corporate stupidity. Sometimes change seems to happen for no other reason than padding the resumes of executives.

People at this company are addicted to e-mail and meetings. It seems like everyone's answer to any kind of problem is to hold a meeting with as many people as possible, without regard to the applicability of that meeting to its attendees.

The organizational structure of the company is in a constant state of flux. It seems like there's a reorganization every quarter. The sad part is that my job is reminding me of Initech (from the movie Office Space) more and more each day. There are 7 different people in various levels of leadership positions on our team alone. This has resulted in some unfortunate situations for the average cubicle drone.

There was one task our team was working on that we had to reaccomplish 3 separate times because different "leaders" on the team couldn't figure out what they wanted.

There are days when an argument comes up about some process or task that makes you wonder about the place, since the problem should have been solved several years ago. Usually, the argument is over which team should be responsible for a task, or how that team should accomplish that task.

When I'm working on a new task or project, it sometimes feels like it has never been done before at Dell. One great quote I heard from a co-worker sums up this situation: "Is it me, or does it feel like Dell just started making computers a couple months ago?"

Keep in mind that everything I have listed here may not apply to everyone at Dell. Within engineering itself, I have heard that some groups definitely have a higher level of employee morale than others.

Now that you've succeeded in improving our products, you need to turn your attention to employee morale and retention.