IBM

Talented employees. Coworkers are supportive and willing to provide guidance when asked.

The IBM Club provides opportunities to network, as well as work/life balance. Most of my connections with IBMers are with people who were not in my department or project.

The ability to use flex time/telecommute is a real plus. There is no fixed number of sick days. No, you can't have a cold for a month, but when you're sick, stay home. Statistics say fewer sick days are actually taken with this policy.

The employee review process.

Instead of being rated against your own commitments, you're rated against your "peers" in your job band. Many of these peers have different job responsibilities that aren't an "apples for apples" match. You can meet all of your management-approved goals for the year and still receive a low rating.

The "relative contribution" element of the employee review creates competition among coworkers. If business conditions limit the opportunities available on a project, senior engineers can further limit these opportunities by taking on tasks that lower bands could assume. They need to do this in order to improve their own "relative contribution".

Go back to a review system where employees work with their managers to define their goals and are rated based on how well they met those goals, not in comparison with what their peers are doing.