Google

Some of the best engineering talent and systems in the world. Many great challenges to work on and an incredibly diverse product portfolio. Tremendous opportunities to learn from some of the best in the industry.

Gives you the opportunity to build products used by billions of people. Fantastic workplace perks and benefits.

I was at Google for the better part of a decade, and during that time, I observed many changes in the company culture and leadership strategy. Generally, Google still behaves a lot like a startup, which is not really the right model for a company nearing 100,000 employees. The product strategy is poorly thought out, and the culture encourages teams to spin up new product efforts without doing their homework and thinking beyond the first launch. As a result, many new products end up getting launched which have poor longevity. Google also expects that every product scale up to the billion-plus user level, which means that many niche products don't get the support they deserve. Finally, leadership has become increasingly disconnected from the rank-and-file of the company, and trust in HR and leadership is very low. The most obvious example of this was the $90 million payment to the head of Android after being accused of sexual harassment, but there are countless other examples of recklessness and poor judgment by the company's leadership.