IBM

I had great, smart, experienced engineers on my team. Everyone was a great teammate.

Mine was one of the few dev teams at the company that got to use Macbooks instead of Thinkpads. Most of my coworkers had spouses and children. The company really cared about work-life balance: they paid us well in salary and benefits, and didn't expect us to live and breathe work all the time. I had the flexibility to leave during the day and/or work from home when I needed to.

I felt very out of place as a new grad. There were plenty of designers my age in the next building over, but very few young engineers. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since my older coworkers were very experienced and had a lot to teach me.

I was unhappy because of the day-to-day bureaucracy and how set in their ways the managers of my team seemed to be. Meetings were 30-60 minute conference calls every day.

Individual offices are great for senior developers, but personally, as a fresh-out-of-school developer, I felt isolated and depressed in my cold, windowless office.

I would recommend this company to a person who is at least 35, but not to any of my friends who are my age.

To upper management: Continue to embrace innovation and new development.

To my managers in particular: Unite the developers and the designers so that we're all on the same page and don't feel at odds with one another.