Ask HN: Best big companies to work for?

I work in IT at Caterpillar and they meet all of your points except being located in SF.

Disclaimer: I work for Adobe.

Not only does it fit most of the criteria youve listed, Adobe technical leadership is becoming infused with alot of new blood since the acquisition of Day. Technologies like Apache Jackrabbit/Oak, Apache Sling, Apache Cordova/Phonegap are becoming integral pieces of Adobe's go to market on the DMS (Digital Marketing side - which is the lesser known enterprise offering side opposite the Creative Cloud/Creative Suite products).

It may be an big, "old" tech company, that gets a bit of grief for stale technologies like Flash, but IMO theyre moving in the right (and interesting) direction as quickly as their internal structures and market offerings allow.

I've been a sysadmin since the mid-90s, working almost exclusively for startups and small companies. Eventually I got tired of it, and went to GE in late October (not as a sysadmin, but a security/automation related position).

So, on the bright side, there are no more insane hours, there's no begging for money, I'm doing a bluesky / "fun" project for a living, and for a big company a lot of it seems to be more fast paced like a startup. My coworkers are nice people, and my boss is like a real life Ron Swanson.

Downsides? We're not really supposed to telecommute though some managers allow it. There's a dress code, but it's tolerable. Lots and lots of meetings, and lots of lots of management. There can be a lot of communication issues between different departments. Almost everything has a well designed workflow, but they often break down due to those communication issues. As GE is a very large and political company, people without great social networking skills may need to work on them.

All in all I'm happy there, and it's a really nice change from burnout-inducing workloads, pagers constantly going off at 3:00 AM, and wondering whether any of us will have a job by the end of the day.

I think every personal rejection to Google would be a hell because after all the hell interviews... there comes the moment you have to reject the offer. I find that pretty sad :(

I don't think, that pressing down wages because so many want to work for Google does the company real good. Happier (content) programmers are better programmers.

As someone who has experienced an exploding offer, don't ever take them. If it's that hard of a sell and they're putting that much pressure on you, you don't want the job. I will never, ever except an exploding offer again even if it comes from someone I know.

Funny that you mention Google's low offer, there was an interesting article about salary at the big companies around here: http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valley...

The hiring process at Google is affected by a lot of variables. But for senior engineers, the salaries + benefits (especially stock and bonuses) are definitely very competitive.

It's also much easier to negotiate a better deal if you have a competing offer from another firm. And doing extremely well on the interview process also helps, along with a strong track record or in-demand skill set (e.g. mobile development). This is generally applicable to the most tech companies, not just Google.

Disclaimer: I'm a hiring manager at Google.

What makes the OP a "sad idiot"?

real mature

You must be really sad and angry to register just so you could post this ignorant comment.

PS: I accidentally upvoted this ... hazard of using HN on a mobile phone :/

Says the coward who hurls insults under a veil of anonymity with a fresh throwaway account.

Does anyone hear a small, annoying whine in here?

I know you're just trolling, but honest question, where else would you ask?

I think it's large enough to be considered a "big" tech company. I've enjoyed my first year at LinkedIn. Small enough to have a big impact, big enough to not need to worry about resources.

Nearly all of my former-company's middle-management and business development people were ex-Intuit. I'd like to think that means that Intuit is good at getting rid of its worst hires.

Obviously though I have my doubts.

I'd like to second this. The smaller campus when compared to Redmond gives you the benefits of a big company while still feeling like a closer community of a smaller company.

I agree as well. Microsoft Research in Mountain View is pretty awesome, my time there was nothing short of amazing. I have sinced moved but I enjoyed my time there and the compensation and benefits are top notch.

I've heard the opposite.... very very opposite. They have scorched the Perl community from what I heard.

EDIT: http://blogs.perl.org/users/booking_employee/2014/01/booking...

http://blogs.perl.org/users/bookingemployee/2012/03/truth-ab...

I was going to say Intel checks all the boxes

- Very very competitive salary and "deterministic" benefits (401k with good employer contributions, RSUs, cash bonuses, etc.)

Total comp is high, but the bonuses are super deterministic. There's 2 cash bonuses, both based on formulas that are published. 401K is just a contribution, not a match, RSUs based on performance (4 year vesting for each issue). You also get discounts on Intel products. There's also a very nice "kudos" system where you can send people small cash awards for promoting company values or doing a good job.

- Challenging working environment where neat technical problems are still solved despite not being a startup, possibly with modern tools and technologies (e.g. not a "we use CVS as our SCM" shop)

Intel takes sand and turns it into computers, and they spend several billion dollars a year making that happen. There's a lot of tough technical problems all over the place, like how do you make drivers and software for a chip that doesn't exist yet?

- no more than 40-45 hours a week expected as per company culture

Depends on the group again. Some managers will push you to work more than 40 (all the time, not just crunch), but you have to let them control you.

- Stable job (no serious failure possibility in the next 3 years or so for the company)

The company is definitely stable. In the event that your particular group is restructured or given the axe, there's retraining opportunities to keep you in the company.

- Possibility of working from home (even just once or twice a week to break the routine)

Most are okay if you work from home once in a while. Consult your specific manager on their views of structured or regular work from home.

- Main headquarters in SF bay area (where I'm located)

Santa Clara or Folsom would be the nearest sites, but both of them are huge.

There's free tea and soda in addition to the coffee.

And free fruit!

I'm on the end user consumer side (can't speak for enterprise). Unfortunately, no, there hasn't been change for the better. Their primary focus is on reducing operating expenses rather than focusing on technological innovation. There has been some reorganization; however, in the end it's still the same old guard leadership that's been in charge for decades (nothing new).

For this person I would advise working against any company that isn't a software/tech company (or, at the very least, that doesn't have the development of software as a line of business or as the primary means of support for their revenue driving activities).

These organizations--governments, schools, and hospitals--aren't "tech companies". Their cultures are generally the opposite of what a person interested in technical challenges in software would want. They're places where "playing it safe" and "playing politics" are far more important than writing software.

You reckon they'll be around in the next 4-5 years?

As a former Groupon employee in Palo Alto (they acquired my startup this past year) I can tell you working from home is most definitely not "fine."

My startup was based in San Francisco. Even though Groupon has an office in the city, they mandated my entire team be in the Palo Alto office from day one.

The rest of the things you mention are spot on. Besides the commute issue I had no complaints.

It isn't that large companies don't do interesting things, it's that they also do a lot of horribly uninteresting things. Large companies often have large customers (e.g. governments) with obtuse and inflexible requirements, internal politics that restrict what you can invent, legacy code bases that have to be maintained and/or transitioned away from, etc. There is no doubt a whole team of people at Microsoft whose jobs are to make and test patches for Windows Vista. Those people are surely well-compensated for their work, but they're not exactly changing the world.

You are right, reading the sentence again it doesn't make sense at all.

I definitely confused "technical problems" solved by the company mission vs the feeling of excitement and freedom that a single developer gets solving a "technical problem" in a typical early stage startup.