Intel

Lots of advanced technology, some very intelligent peers. The immediate team member's culture can be hit or miss, but mine have been great.

You can easily move within the company into different products or disciplines.

There is a fairly professional culture vibe (depends on team) that promotes a safe working environment (which is great), but is also very bland (cubes, grey walls, very poor celebrations).

Focal (the review process) creates a horrible culture by deliberately suppressing employees' careers and wages. It creates an artificially limited resource (promotion budget) that encourages people to game the system by doing only what gets them promoted and not what helps their teams, their product, or the company. Promotions and raises are typically not a problem for more junior developers, but there is an extreme plateau for senior developers where advancement is not truly a meritocracy but more luck and opportunity based.

I should also note that while the pay is decent for a tech company, it is extremely lacking for a top-tier tech company. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Nvidia, and others pay significantly more. The CEO practically brags about getting a good deal by shortchanging employees (they deliberately aim to be average pay and have no intent of being above average).

There is also an extreme divide between engineering and non-engineering disciplines with different standards, expectations, and perceived value. Cross-discipline skillsets are absolutely not rewarded or recognized despite being desperately needed. This exacerbates the big company problems of management hierarchy, political games, and poor decision-making.

Lastly, the current CEO, Brian Krzanich, is devastatingly bad for the employees of the company. Between his awful oversight of the layoffs in 2016, blaming first-level managers for his own poor decisions, and intentionally deceiving employees in every single corporate meeting (like praising himself for giving back to employees due to recent major tax savings while hiding the fact he simultaneously removed bonuses that were worth more than the tax bonus), Intel has been hemorrhaging brainpower. Unfortunately, his actions have short-term stock benefits despite the long-term decimation of company culture and morale. It is unlikely he will be removed from his position by the board.

I've been at the company 10 years, and it has been going strictly downhill for the last ~5-6. I've lost all my trust and allegiance to the company, and the only thing that keeps me there is the personal connection to my team.

Bonus Con: The IT, corporate services, and hiring departments deserve their own special place in hell.

Yearly reviews should not need to be fit to a curve (or at least be standardized across the company). They really should not have a limited budget to prevent people from gaming the system.

We need to value people with multidisciplinary skills. People who are good managers AND engineers are hard to come by; we should value them when we find them.

And we must get rid of the CEO who blatantly lacks respect and understanding for his own employees.