Intel

Pro #1) Intel works hard to take care of its employees, and they far exceed other manufacturing companies, though they come up short when compared to the software industry. Perks are good (not great).

Middle management seems to be encouraged to take care of their employees. They encourage you to use the parental leave program, encourage you to take vacations, and are generous with sick time if you are really ill.

Pro #2) I never (really) feared for my job at Intel. As a Software Developer, I had plenty of opportunity to move around. In the event of a layoff (called 'Redeployment'), Intel typically works with you to find you another job within the company.

Pro #3) The cafeterias are great, not the best (and not free), but the fare exceeds the average lunch counter.

Pro #4) The insurance is generally excellent. Intel even offers up to $10k (lifetime) for fertility treatment. Though if you have a family, you'll find the only reasonably priced plan is the High Deductible HealthCare plan (or Kaiser, I guess, if you don't mind Kaiser).

They drastically increased the price of the traditional PPO for dependents in the past few years. It's not on par with Microsoft, but considering that the majority of the employees aren't in Software, this is far better than the competition offers.

Pro #5) Most of the offices have been redone, so it's no longer the drab grey cubicle-land that it once was. (The downside to this is they are moving towards an "open office" concept, which means there are few places to concentrate when you are writing code).

Pro #6) Intel now allows employees some choice when selecting a laptop. If your individual manager allows it, you can get an IT-issued MacBook Pro. (My preferred dev OS is OS X, so I struggled a bit with Windows when I first started and even bought my own Mac to work on before they made this an option).

If you don't have strong feelings about the laptop you carry, you probably aren't using it enough. :)

Pro #7) One thing I really liked about the culture was the data before feelings mantra. Most of Intel follows the philosophy that as long as you have the data to back up what you say, then it doesn't matter if you are an entry-level tech or a Senior Fellow (highest engineering rank), you can drive your idea forward. It's not always practiced, but it was practiced more than I've seen at any other large company.

Some background, if you are unfamiliar with Intel's inner workings: Intel is first and foremost a silicon manufacturing company.

The core of the company is the TMG group, which controls all the factories (fabs) and researches & implements new process technology (they are responsible for shrinking the chips year after year).

The other major groups within Intel are the architecture groups (Server, Desktop, etc.), which create the designs for the chips (which TMG manufactures), the Software Group (SSG), and IT.

I'm leaving out a lot of other groups, such as Finance, HR, etc., because I have no direct feedback on them.

This background is important in understanding the dichotomy of reviews on Intel. The TMG side of Intel is a huge manufacturing company, which employs a ton of skilled technicians, engineers, and material scientists.

The average employee on the manufacturing side only has experience with manufacturing, and it's military-like precision. The other companies that the tech's have worked for are generally other manufacturing companies.

That isn't a disparagement of these people; they are the lifeblood of Intel, but Intel isn't competing with Google to hire them. Many of these folks thought the addition of 'Free Soda' to the perks was a bold step (this was done around 2008).

Intel is constantly waging a war of providing just enough perks to keep the software people from bolting, without spending more than they have to. I'm not trying to make that sound negative; it is what it is; they're a for-profit company.

Con #1) The perks aren't that great. If you want to make your friends jealous with the posh treatment, Intel is not the company for you. If there are other things you like about your Intel offer, then the perks are enough that you don't feel like you're working for a rust-belt manufacturing company.

Con #2) The non-manufacturing groups are lacking focus and execution. I can't count the number of projects that I worked on that were cancelled mid-development.

I worked in the "new" architecture groups for most of my time at Intel (the groups responsible for designing tablets, phones, wearables), and was constantly disappointed by the lack of focus in the management.

Whereas Apple might create the iPod and then iterate through multiple generations to get the first shipping product, then iterate that product on the market until they have a runaway hit, Intel management seemed to prefer to toss a bunch of things at the wall to see what would stick. Worse, if they were throwing spaghetti at the wall, they wouldn't even bother to boil it first. They'd toss a package of dry noodles at the wall and then declare that it would never stick. Not so bad, if you don't spend 6 months packaging up the noodles prior to that.

I've worked in plenty of places that would cancel a project before release (for many reasons), but at Intel it seemed like most projects ended that way. Look at Intel's history of failed mobile OS's (Moblin, Moblin2, Meego, Tizen).

I sometimes felt as though Intel was secretly running a white-collar welfare program, designed to keep software developers off the streets and out of trouble.

Con #3) Intel's insides move very slowly. If you work within the system, you will die before you can accomplish anything. If you work outside of the system, you risk being fired, but you'll at least have something to show for your efforts.

Don't get me wrong; Intel has a lot of great people, but the system they have for rewarding employees (called 'Focal') is geared towards individual accomplishment more than moving the company as a whole forward. It seems obvious to measure an individual based on whether they completed their own key objectives, but in practice what I saw was a lot of "not my job" based behavior.

I don't fault workers for this, but management needs to take a much better look at the goals they are setting to ensure that they are geared towards increasing productivity and delivering products that people want.

My last year at Intel was spent trying to align my business unit with the company's stated best practices for software development. What made this difficult is that these services are hosted by Intel's IT group. Again, individually, I have a lot of respect for the folks I worked with in IT, but as a collective, it was impossible to do anything in less than a year.

Application admins are reviewed based on their uptime and not on the timeliness of new product offerings, etc.; so if you have an existing dev process that requires a non-standard tweak to get it migrated, don't expect anyone to fall over themselves accommodating you. Worse, the IT Hosted Apps were often years behind the latest release. Again, if you are a manufacturing company, that's great; no change means no chance of breaking. Software Development? That's not keeping up with the industry.

Con #4) Egalitarianism is more a talking point than a real philosophy. If you aren't familiar with it, Intel prides itself on the fact that the execs don't have assigned parking or corner offices. Those things are true, but the execs typically have desks in corners with windows, and they have admins who will immediately stand up and approach you if you get near their desks. Also, each executive has a private conference room, so they don't have to talk where you can hear them.

I get that there are real business reasons for this, but the executive privilege has been slowly eroding the egalitarianism in more mundane areas as well. The chance of you bending the ear of any random Fellow or VP, outside of a very controlled forum (such as the quarterly BUM), is pretty low.

The culture/policies also draw a very thick line between the Blue Badges (regular Intel employees) and Green Badges (contractors). Again, there are good legal reasons why they don't treat contractors the same as employees, but the separation is much clearer at Intel than any other place I've worked.

Con #5) Intel is increasing their use of lower-wage contractors for everything. Typically, these contractors are L1 Visa holders from India. Some of these folks are great, but there are a lot who seemed to be learning on the job.

In senior roles, most of my experience was with middle management wanting you to delegate much of your work to these contractors. It turns your job as the "engineer" into being more of a project manager.

If that's a direction you want to move in with your career, then Intel is for you.

I could go on, but frankly, this should be enough to help you know if Intel is for you or not. Good luck and God bless.

I loved working for Intel, and I only left because I felt that I was stagnating technically. Projects were either dying on the vine, or were staffed mostly by contractors that needed their hands held every step of the way. That, combined with the infrastructure that never seemed to evolve, made me feel as though I had become a cog in a great bureaucracy.

In making the decision to leave, my wife and I had a lengthy discussion about whether I wanted a steady paycheck for the next 20 years, or to continue to develop my skills and love what I'm doing. It's sad that Intel no longer offers both options.