Yahoo

If you want to know about the thick of things that happen in large-scale internet backends, it's a great place. Until they closed down their research labs, they were in the top 6 software research organizations across the world. They built a whole lot of technology over time.

Most pathetic environment, especially lately as the company is in shambles and facing survival/stagnation challenges. Most of the middle management is clueless and is looking only for their survival. My manager, reportedly learned from an HR friend, was scared as I had a pay-scale too close to his. When I tried to move around to other project groups, I faced a stiff bureaucratic setup that simply did not give in. People who did not know the difference between internal and external smart pointers (and I told them about that during the interview) told me I did not have enough hands-on. And yes, as you can guess, it's full of such people as they were never very particular about their hiring.

Get off your chairs and let people do some work. It's for the org, ultimately.