LinkedIn

Amazing culture, probably the best. I have worked at Amazon, Apple, Intuit, Adobe, Walmart Labs, and Google. I also interned at Facebook. Facebook culture is the second best.

LinkedIn lives by its values, especially “members first,” that applies to employees too. For example, if you plan to build a system that gives points to how frequently someone responds to queries, one may think this will increase productivity. But in LinkedIn’s ecosystem, you can’t build this because it shows “someone is better than someone else on something (responding queries).” This is not allowed, and promotional evaluations are purely positive, without comparison.

You cannot even accidentally prove someone else wrong or bring them down. People from Amazon or Apple joining LinkedIn may take time to adjust to this.

Consistently the best food in the Bay Area, and good variety.

Unlimited time off. If taking more than 3 weeks at a stretch, you only need approval then. Also, 3 months of parental leave.

Amazing open-source aptitude.

People trying to micromanage and/or play politics are automatically corrected and tuned in by a strong company culture in less than a year. Some may try escaping by changing teams every year, but that becomes evident soon.

Lots of T-shirts.

Subjective: Your contribution to open source and product, both, will be rewarded more if working exclusively on the product (i.e., in the Apps team). But if working exclusively on the infrastructure, you really have to go the long mile. Because open source contributors are in abundance, and they are all super skilled. There is literally one Principal Engineer on frontend infra in the whole company.

Company-wide, Rest.li (API) and Ember framework (Frontend) are pretty much standard. You can choose different tech, but limelight projects build on these only. Although, that is changing slowly, but verrrry slowly.

Keep up the good vibes, people!