Guidewire

Guidewire is a pretty special place. Great technology, a lot of people who really care about building software that works, and a lot of practicality. Bullshit doesn't fly here; there is a lot of skepticism around things that make other organizations starry-eyed. Pragmatic applications of unit testing is a good example: we test much better than most organizations, but we recognize there isn't a silver bullet out there, and testing is no substitute for good architecture. We also don't let pure architects exist; if you've got an opinion on something, you better damned well be writing code for it.

Best crew I've ever worked with.

We do roll a lot of our own technologies. That can be bad if you want to add the latest J2EE acronyms to your resume. But if you are a general technologist, it is a pretty fun environment. We've got our own language, web layer, OR layer, etc. All of it is done pretty well, when compared with the usual J2EE garbage, anyway.

We are also tribalizing a bit as we get larger. Probably not much that can be done about that.

Good developers like to work at startups, where they can make big contributions and where the culture is lightweight and innovation-friendly. We should stay like that.