IBM

By and large, fantastic co-workers. Some wonderful projects, technically very interesting. The development environment is a smoothly oiled machine that can be highly productive.

Fellow IBMers, by and large, are very supportive when their management doesn't stop them.

Mediocre middle-managers.

Some major, expensive technical decisions were made to advance personal careers at the expense of the company.

If you are not in a 'hot' area (currently anything with 'analytics' in the title), then it's challenging to get funding. Without money, life becomes grim, even if the area is profitable or essential for other areas.

In the last 8 years, it has increasingly felt like the Soviet Union, where fear becomes a primary motivational tool.

Managers are easily fooled by ambitious employees. Your time is better spent working on some minor (and typically low-value) project that helps the manager than actually improving the product or fixing customer problems.

Apply the same rigor to yourselves as is applied in PBC period to the developers. When someone declares victory over an expensive project, actually dig in and see if the emperor is wearing any clothes.