eBay

The culture is generally relaxed and human. Wages and benefits tend to match those of other internet stalwarts. In certain roles, attractive travel benefits are offered. The right candidates in certain disciplines will also receive speedy, upward-oriented career paths.

Shareholders dictate the company's actions, so any negative change in stock performance or stockholder opinion will immediately have consequences for employees. These can range from travel bans and perk cuts to massive reorganizations and layoffs.

As previous reviewers pointed out, eBay loves reorganizations as they provide the perfect get out of jail free card for incompetent managers. Another such device is acquisition.

They prefer to spend huge sums on buying technology start-ups instead of investing internally.

Note that the company sees itself as a commerce company that acts like a retailer internally, not a technology or internet company, in spite of what they may state publicly. As such, the main focus of its core business is on marketing, not on technology, and developers therefore generally fare worse than their marketing colleagues. The latter also can rely on third parties doing much of their work and thereby get promoted and receive raises much faster.

For eBay management, business expediency is everything, so if your desires cannot be subordinated to any pure market-based measure or you do not speak MBA, you will rarely find long-term happiness here.

Learn to say no to shareholders by learning how to sacrifice short-term expediency for long-term profitability. Make three-year plans that last three years and stick to them. Learn to do without reorganizations and instead focus on solidifying existing structures.

Return to your roots and become a technology company again. Invest strongly in developers and designers by bringing them all in-house and giving them the space and resources they need. This may look foolish to you and the shareholders at first, but within a few years, profits will increase because you will have no more overhead from paying for resources you do not directly control.