Dell

Trial by fire. If you make it here, then everywhere else you work will seem slow.

Everybody I talked to was either seriously afraid of losing their job or would make half-true, half-cryptic humor about being downsized at any time. It did not instill pride in your job or company loyalty if you think that any possible failure might "put you on the street."

Management needs to communicate what changes need to be made and for what reason as soon as they are known. Any delay on management's part cuts into the time that we engineers have to design, calculate, test, etc., and you end up with a design that is not as robust.