Google

Coming out of college, I think Google provides a huge opportunity to advance quickly, but to a point. You'll be given considerable responsibility, and paid accordingly with some pretty terrific perks.

Google is fighting the 'law of large companies,' and is doing pretty well, but there's a certain inevitability afoot too.

Over the four years I've been there, I've noticed a scaling back of perks (and also, at times, a sickening culture of employee entitlement), a steady rise of red tape to run a scalable service in the production environment, a certain amount of stiff corporate speak, and uptightness over branding and image. In some cases (though definitely not all), an aversion to risk-taking has to some extent dampened my enthusiasm a little bit.

Still an amazing place to be, though.

Consider more career paths or guidance for senior engineers. I get the impression that this is where careers go to plateau. I'm 27 years old, and at this level, I find myself compensated very well and with more responsibility than I know what to do with. But I get the impression my choices are being an individual contributor for the next decade, or vying for a management spot. Even so, I think this is a problem for software engineering in general, and I think Google does a much better job at making it a liveable and enjoyable situation than any other large company I can imagine. Even so, though, I'd think that a bit more effort in this area could have a noticeable impact on improving retention of experienced engineers (which is already at a pretty solid level relative to just about any other Silicon Valley firm).