Verizon

Decent pay without the high-stakes pressure of working at an actual tech company.

Good work/life balance.

Great benefits and employee discounts.

Pays for supplemental education.

Allows several opportunities to try different departments and follow your interests.

Poor working environment and tools for developers and research engineers, resulting in security violations done out of desperation to complete actual work.

Lack of transparency and communication among managerial, director, and VP levels.

Too much emphasis on generating revenue in the short term without understanding the effort required to deliver on these requests.

Not many merit-based incentives for promotions; everything is based on quotas provided by HR, unless you're really able to make some noise.

Verizon is a giant company and therefore can be pretty slow-moving when it comes to making changes.

Keep pressure on upper management when it comes to making insightful decisions, rather than trying to react to whatever is happening in front of them at that exact moment. More proactive thought and strategy are desperately needed when it comes to doing anything beyond the scope of cell phone and internet plans.