eBay

Ideas win, data wins, people are exceedingly friendly, and the entire organization seems to be rowing in the same direction. The culture is almost deceptively open--you get the feeling at first that you'll be able to change the company in big ways, and everyone listens to you. The compensation was extremely competitive, particularly the RSUs, given the trajectory of the stock as of late.

They haven't been able to figure out how to integrate Quality into the Engineering process yet.

Even though people are open to new things, the skill of the average engineer within the organization is much lower than at any high-tech company I've been exposed to. It often seems like they have 10 mediocre people working where one really good person would do better.

The code is so convoluted, so deeply coupled, so disastrously unreadable. It is difficult to imagine how they can implement features at all.

When I left, it appeared as though things were headed in the right direction, with more focus on true SOA implementation and a unified presentation layer. As long as that keeps up, things will probably improve.

My biggest problem was, the rug was pulled out from under me not once but twice in 5 months, as directions and plans and technology stacks were re-thought and re-argued endlessly. If things stabilize, eBay could be a formidable engineering organization. At the moment I think it's more momentum keeping you afloat than innovation.