Verizon

The San Jose team genuinely does have a handful of excellent engineering staff, and a handful of engineering managers who actually care. These people are, however, largely in the minority and are not put in decision-making positions.

There is opportunity here to improve things within certain spheres. Just be aware that the only people who will end up caring about those improvements are your fellow engineering staff. Depending on your motivations, this is either a pro or a con.

Pay rates are broadly fair, and I think most people are happy with their salary. The 401k match is decent.

The organization is riddled with politics and incompetent people. This impedes the organization in a fundamental manner over time, and the executives have, on repeated occasions, wrongly deflected blame for their inaction or incompetence directly onto engineering staff. This breeds a highly problematic culture where people have become jaded and siloed.

Most staff seem unhappy with the benefits package in some way or form. Dental coverage gets worse every year, and the vacation is exceedingly limited. HR also does very little to make any improvements in this area, and will not let staff buy back vacation time or take unpaid leave.

No RSU or stocks. This is a major rub for most people from the valley tech scene. The company tries to make this up with bonus schemes, but it's honestly not the same.

Since nobody else has mentioned it, the food at the on-site cafe is awful. On occasion they do something okay, but it's generally pretty terrible, and options in the surrounding area are limited.

You can't constantly re-org and hope that will fix the problems. Hire or promote leaders who actually care and want to lead by example. The dithering of existing management relieves them of any credibility.

The goodwill and morale of engineering staff is running very low. The inability to ship a product due to constantly shifting timelines and feature sets is killing the organization and forcing many folks to leave.

The director tier and above is riddled with people who really do not understand the industry and constantly look to hedge their bets in a toxic manner. The CEO genuinely seems to care, but most everyone between him and directorship are highly ineffective.

Fix the cafe and provide some half-decent food.