IBM

IBM has a huge support system for employees. If your goal is to climb the corporate ladder, IBM is very well set up for that because of the strong top-down culture. Salaries are competitive. Details of the work are too specific to be useful for such a huge company, but IBM is very committed to their basic values and is particularly customer-focused.

The culture produces an explicitly zero-sum game, with battles over money and promotions. IBM's attitude towards money is extremely tight. Usually, interactions with upper management about money are negative; travel arrangements, office perks, etc., are all very closely controlled, and costs are minimized. This tends to produce a less-than-enthusiastic response among employees, at least at the lab I was in. This is in stark contrast to newer companies (Google, Amazon) that are more bottom-up driven. IBM can be very stifling.

The company culture is that "since we've always been doing it this way and have been making a lot of money, it must be right." There is some truth to that, but not as much as it seems management thinks.

In any top-down company, the culture of climbing the ladder will tend to be set strongly, because the people setting the culture are at the top, and the people at the top have a strong desire to climb. In companies like that, not climbing is explicitly seen as failing.