F5

Top ten reasons to work at F5:

1. Very smart engineers - the people there know their stuff.
2. Laid-back atmosphere - not too much pressure. It sometimes gets a bit busy during release time, but nothing crazy gets thrown at you. If your workload feels too high, you can always ask for help, and most of the time, you get help.
3. Engineers rule and have a great deal of flexibility.
4. Don't need to waste your time writing crappy documents - documentation is for losers.
5. Flexible working hours. In fact, just don't show up at the office - work from home.
6. Great benefits - healthcare, 401k, commuting stipend.
7. Great location for the headquarters - near great restaurants, parks, and Seattle Center.
8. They feed you every now and then.
9. Great Christmas/holiday parties.
10. Free beer most Fridays.

1. Pay raises are often dismal and disappointing; you're lucky or favored if you get anything above 4%.

2. Too much favoritism. The wrong people get promoted all the time for kissing butt, but then again, it's the same everywhere. This also applies to stock-based compensation; many employees get nothing, while others get a lot.

3. Most managers, barring a few, are clueless. Most managers don't have any idea how the product works, but they still attempt to lead you.

4. God help you if you join the test team. Most of the testers at F5 don't know what they are doing. If you manage to survive the test team long enough, you get promoted to become a manager.

5. Like with many companies, there's a pecking order and different sets of rules for different people.

6. Despite what they say, it's not very easy to move between teams.

7. Don't expect too much feedback from managers or upper management. Most of the time, they don't know what the employees under them are working on.

8. The company meetings or all-hands meetings are a bore.

A lot of the development process is ad-hoc, not well managed at all. I wouldn't even know how to clean up this process. If you're listening, work on standardizing the development process.

Treat your employees well, else there are no shortages of companies looking for smart engineers.