Disney

Disney is an incredibly inspiring company to work for.

Disney-related perks and cross-company ties are also present.

Pay and benefits are very reasonable.

There are good, solid resume-building opportunities for a major recognized brand.

A vast amount of intellectual property and material to work with is available.

Strong and professional human resources practices are in place.

Executive leadership is incredibly unstable, and very weak to non-existent middle management exposes it to all levels. Major political turf wars trickle down the reporting structures and lead to transparently bad decisions. High management turnover leads to frequent re-orgs, highly reactive strategic shifts, and perpetual wasted effort.

Constant threat of frequent and far-reaching layoffs implicitly encourages self-serving and defensive behavior between groups. The fear drives people not to succeed, but to ensure there's always a reason another group can be seen as more of a problem. Large parts of the division are effectively paralyzed, engaged in an endless cycle of risk mitigation and defensive planning.

This is not a technology company. It is an entertainment company that happens to employ people with technical skills. Technology is aggressively managed as a fungible commodity. A need to play within this power structure means technical leadership is often less technically competent the higher you go.

The company size, bureaucracy, communication overhead, and love of endless discussion with frequent travel makes it very difficult to reach the consensus necessary to make bold decisions or chase emerging technology trends.

The focus on risk aversion and short-term profits means one must typically look to other divisions to provide the inspiration associated with working for Disney.

Stop punishing entire teams with widespread layoffs when they take informed risks.

Give technology an equal seat at the table with product and finance.

Invest heavily in strong middle management to free executive leadership to focus on strategic vision.

Stop rewarding defensive finger-pointing, and be less tolerant of endlessly circular discussion.

Cut the insistence on personal relationships to get anything done, even if that means gutting the seemingly bottomless travel budget.

And take a good hard look at your priorities when you have more product and project people to plan and monitor the work being done than actual people doing the work.