Intel

There are lots of opportunities to learn new skills and challenge yourself. There are also a lot of smart people to learn from, and coworkers are generally very generous with knowledge.

Risk-taking and outside-of-the-box thinking are both valued and encouraged, but admittedly only so much. If you are unhappy with your job or simply looking for a new challenge, there are always plenty of jobs around the country and world to transfer to. In fact, you are encouraged to change jobs every 3 to 5 years.

Pay is above average for lower-end jobs (mail room, manufacturing assemblers, building maintenance, etc.) as well as for higher-end jobs (principal engineers, business unit managers, etc.). For those of us in the middle, the pay is average or sometimes below average.

The two biggest cons are: 1) constant threat of layoffs due to structure & efficiency gains, and 2) middle management is clueless. I worked in one team for 8 years. During that time, we had 4 restructurings, were split 2 times, and merged 2 times. All of those led to 5 rounds of layoffs. The constant change in the charter of the group, type of work, and threat of losing your job is not good for morale. Add to that the fact that middle management is there because they are not qualified to do the work, but they are the ones doing your yearly review. It makes it very difficult to get promotions.

None. Management doesn't listen to any of the internal feedback tools, so they definitely won't be listening to this.