Google

The many perks include free gourmet food, snacks galore, cultural events, speakers/authors, and lots of smart people from all over the world to meet and work with.

There are many choices of projects to work on and relative freedom to do so.

There is plenty of work to do here, from improving existing systems to creating new products.

It's like a kid in a candy store if you are eager and driven to make things better.

There is a wide range of technologies, including handhelds, operating systems, HTML5, Linux, file systems, and compilers.

Lots of smart people, but lots of subpar people somehow managed to get hired as well.

20% time is a myth. I suppose some people get to do that. I don't know any personally, as every group I've worked with is stressed and working hard on the project they're on.

At Google, it was better to be early than good. Being in the wake of a mass exodus of (mostly) young millionaires (many of whom had Google as their first job) and being handed their mediocre work to fix can really kill your incentive to "go further" here, especially when later senior folks are not well compensated equity-wise. Google is a big company that provides a comfy job, but none of the burning desire to go that extra mile because they aren't making the effort to take you with them.

Get better at rewarding your post-IPO senior people. We weren't lucky enough to get here early, but we are fixing much of what was left us by a sea of (industry) inexperienced academics. When hiring, try to focus more on real-world skills and industry experience rather than degrees and GPAs.