Microsoft

The salary was okay for the area. Health benefits were great, with 100% medical coverage plans. There is the opportunity for corporate training and career advancement.

The company culture seemed "stupid." Management ignored problems pushed up from the bottom rungs, and even the managers at the lower rungs would hide problems under the rug rather than escalate.

Everyone in management was purely focused on hitting their "milestones," rather than ensuring major bugs and problems got fixed. Team leaders pushed employees to simply do as told rather than innovate.

Also, upper management pushed "pet projects and features" into products that clearly would gain nothing from adding those features, other than to help someone get promoted for getting his/her feature into the market.

It was like working in a Dilbert cartoon strip. Poor decisions are made, engineers try to deliver, critics are silenced and ignored. All the engineers see the train wreck coming, then it happens. Upper managers get promoted for hitting deadlines, the product fails in the market, engineers are punished with bad reviews and quit. Repeat.

If you want to build great, innovative products rather than live off the old MS Office backbone, don't saddle engineers with idiotic policies, like forcing everyone to use a PC instead of Macs.

You don't make improvements by eating your own dog food and ignoring the better food out there. Hold leaders accountable for poor quality and prioritize it over hitting deadlines.