MongoDB

I have not encountered a better-managed company in more decades than most of you have been out of diapers. Almost every time I find something crazy, it turns out there is already a schedule to fix it.

When there isn't, I find a ready ear and encouragement to action. Everywhere something is expected to happen more than once, time is taken to evaluate how it can be handled better next time, and it is.

The roadmap for development goes out years and is driven by the entire technical staff. Every development project connects to roadmap goals.

There's plenty of turnover, but I have not seen anybody leave in disgust.

A yoga instructor comes in twice a week at 5. All technical work can be done from anywhere on the internet. Employees are expected to act like adults and are treated like adults.

• There are frequent seminars by authors of important work.
• There are reading groups for important papers.

Software development practices are modern, including continuous integration, Git, code review, and stand-ups. New C++ code is C++14 plus Boost. Equipment is modern. Solaris is a third-class platform. The intern program is well-run and serious.

Lunch is only catered in on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Like everywhere else, way too much of the code is awful, although unlike most other places, serious time is devoted to making it better.

Employees are issued Macbooks by default, and IT officially supports only Macs, which stinks if you detest Apple. Although they do try their best, cheerfully, for the rest.

Developers seem to mostly run Ubuntu on the desktop, which is icky, but nobody forces it. I have seen Fedora, Debian, even BSD and Windows.

There are no offices; rooms with a door are parceled out by the hour.

Bathroom stalls at the New York office are becoming oversubscribed.

Much of the support code is in Go.

They frequently hire CS instead of engineering graduates, who then need to be taught to be engineers.

Insurance is Cigna.

Almost everything that can be outsourced is, so you will spend the first week making accounts on outside websites for everything from paycheck deposits to the org chart.

Development mostly goes on only at the New York office; remote development spots are unlikely, although there are sales support and customer engineering openings all over the world.

Although the software is Free on GitHub (with tests), it's nobody's job to look at pull requests.

Stock option offerings are nothing to retire on.

Free snacks include the usual, plus cheese, hummus, and yogurt, but not organic.