Google

As a software engineer, one reason to go to Google is because they have some of the most impressive software and hardware infrastructure in the business. How do they manage to answer any question you can think of in under a second? How many computers do they actually have? How can you possibly manage so many computers? What does it take to run security for them? If you work there, you can (eventually) learn something about everything. And with hard work, you can have a huge impact on this amazing system.

The company is big. Really big.

It has struggled for years to maintain a "startup-like" environment, and in many areas it succeeds. But as the company scales, there are more frequent instances of internal politics guiding decisions instead of pure technical merit.

Keep Google focused on building some of the world's most impressive technology, and you'll continue to attract the best technologists. If you get bogged down in incremental improvement, they will flee.

The infrastructure organizations need to have a cleaner division of responsibilities so that lower management feels empowered to get things done. Upper management doesn't have the bandwidth to manage if too many decisions get escalated to them.