Google

Google has a rich history of engineering excellence and brilliance. Even many years removed from the height of the company's innovation, some of this is still evident through a strongly ingrained engineering culture, where things are mostly done with an engineering-first mindset.

Engineering excellence is obvious across the organization, and the products and infrastructure built at Google are a testament to this.

Work-life balance is, for the most part, extremely good. Good work-life balance is ingrained in the culture. I have never experienced pressure from managers to work more than 40 hours a week, and the vacation and holidays are decent, though maybe not the absolute best.

There is a clear lack of vision from top management, as many of Google's recent "big" initiatives seem to be reactive to other tech companies, instead of proactive. When compared to top executives at similar large companies, the current management falls quite short.

A complicated performance/promotion process exists at Google in an effort to measure employees fairly across the large company. However, this comes at the cost of wasted cycles and the gamification of the system. This, along with the large variation in teams, results in non-uniform opportunities for promotion and career advancement.