Intuit

Nice gym, offices, and good pay. Engineers are friendly, and the cafeteria has many choices.

Where do I begin? First, before you accept an offer at Intuit, you should read many of the posts on Glassdoor that express cons. Here are some of the posts that I absolutely agree with:

• "You are evaluated based on your level of obedience."
• "The basic culture of the team in San Diego is to find someone to blame for a mistake and then fire that person."
• "A manager has free will, HR is for namesake."
• "poor middle-management"
• "RIF every year after tax season and re-organization"
• "You have your own thoughts and ideas -- they are NOT welcome here."
• "To survive you have to 'Be Yourself - The Intuit Way' (yep, it's an oxymoron, but that is the best way I've come to describe it)"

Don't judge a book by its cover means don't let the nice external grounds and office environment that you see during an interview make your decision on accepting a position. Consider what others have said who have actually worked at Intuit San Diego.

First and foremost, you will find that your pay is not commensurate for the amount of time required to fulfill your job. That is, take your annual salary and divide by 60 hours per week, which is what many work to keep up with deadlines. Your hourly wage has just been lowered.

Second, the San Diego CTO dev part of the company, and specifically the "Services Fabric Team," has a host of managers whose agenda is to please their upper managers rather than to lead and inspire a team of intelligent engineers. You'll find it stressful and NOT rewarding work. You'll find that many have quit the company for better opportunities or have been quietly fired.

Third, if you have a problem with a manager, you'll have to keep it to yourself. Do NOT turn to human resources! The bottom line is that HR will ALWAYS side with a manager. Sorry, but that's how it is at Intuit.

Fourth, I agree with what others have said -- to work at Intuit in San Diego, you can only succeed if you allow Intuit to mold you. Do not express your own opinions and follow the Intuit culture even if you don't agree. Otherwise, you will be that person to blame. Intuit is a good place for college hires who don't have experience working for other corporations. Intuit likes the fact that college hires are easily moldable!

I'll say what many others have said: replace your middle managers with new ones. It's that simple!