Google

• Top-notch facilities, great perks, and lots of flexibility once you reach a certain level of seniority.

• If you're a top performer, compensation will be top of market, and you will work on interesting projects with very good people.

• Management really does listen. They've cut down on cost-cutting and pointless metrics collection after backlash. I believe that leadership genuinely cares about the company and employees.

• Dogs at the office. Dogs are the best.

The incentive system and promotions favor visibility and salesmanship over actual work. This leads to silly situations where everyone and their dog are a "lead" so they can be promoted, and actual work gets sidelined.

Google doesn't push out low performers; instead, they tend to stay in their role forever while others move on, leading to departments where the levels of excellence you'd expect of Google are not met.

There is some amount of pointless process and bureaucracy, like at other big companies, but at Google it's somehow more infuriating. Partly, it's frustrating because it's applied arbitrarily and unevenly. More importantly, though, the pin counters and process writers undermine the culture of personal responsibility and creativity, which makes the top performers leave for places where they're more trusted to get on with it.

Be more aggressive about pushing out badly performing employees. Don't add more process and bureaucracy; instead, double down on a culture of ownership and personal responsibility. Cut costs where it counts, not 50 bucks on TGIF beer. How is that even worth your time?