Intel

Most of the reviews are a reflection of a particular business group, leadership, or manager. I have worked with 5 different managers from 3 different geographies, so I guess I can rate it well.

• Fantastic work culture, very employee-friendly, human, sensitive, and responsible.
• An amazing pool of talented people, across the world. International exposure is amazing.
• If you are a part of a COE (centre of excellence), you would be working on cutting-edge technology.
• Ample infrastructure, like dev machines, HW, SW, and lab space (of course on a justifiable basis).
• Most of the managers are encouraged not to micromanage and connect with people well.
• Huge office space (in Bangalore at least), open areas, a gym, multiple cafeterias, good food.
• If you are a good performer, you will enjoy a good salary and benefits.
• This is a far better place than it feels from outside news and talks about it.

• Very (very) slow in decision-making due to huge bureaucracy levels. It seems impossible to put everyone on the same page.
• People on the technical ladder feel powerless/unheard after a particular level, and it's extremely difficult to convey a change to the top levels.
• Business decisions related to a product mostly come from top-down, and execution teams have very little say. If you have a moron at the top, as an architect, forget about logical work distribution.
• Slow growth at higher levels; you are expected to please everyone to move up, without being a threat to anyone.
• Too much duplication of work across the world. Many business groups and product teams do the same work that a COE does, maintaining their codebase in several different places and tools, causing an absolute waste of time for everyone.

Overall, if you have an appetite for aggressive growth or you want to contribute significantly to the business/product, you might not find this to be an exact match. But if you want steady and constant growth with very good work-life balance, this is the place for you.

• Changes are good for the company. Many changes show that the company is trying hard to pick up velocity, but too frequent and too many changes mostly indicate chaos. We have an insider joke among techies: "The area in which Intel does its maximum R&D is org-restructure".

• After doing a change, stick to it. Back it up for a few years to show it was not an impulse buy by some immature leader. Do not just open huge business groups, only to close them down next year. Set your priorities straight.