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If you had (or have) the skills could work for any major tech company, which one would you pick and why? Consider from the point of view of working there, not simply which company makes the best products.

asb,

Big tech company = major procedure and process control. For every hour of actual tech work, prepare to spend two in documentation, change management, communicating with clueless PMs in boring meetings, and existing as a faceless, modular entity.

Gadianton wrote:Big tech company = major procedure and process control. For every hour of actual tech work, prepare to spend two in documentation, change management, communicating with clueless PMs in boring meetings, and existing as a faceless, modular entity.

I'm familiar with the system both through experience and through colleagues and friends.

I also believe that when done properly, it's cheaper to spend time in documentation, design, and preparation than spending even more time with even more people trying to debug an issue, or figure out how to modify the existing but poorly documented or poorly designed system.

Furthermore, many big companies understand the importance of fun in the workplace to help recharge employees after doing some of the inevitable drudgery. That said, I agree that big companies do suffer some disadvantages due to process overhead.

Gadianton wrote:asb,

Big tech company = major procedure and process control. For every hour of actual tech work, prepare to spend two in documentation, change management, communicating with clueless PMs in boring meetings, and existing as a faceless, modular entity.

I'm not so sure, successful web based companies learned many years back that time-to-market was killing them with old school software life cycles. I'll bet the likes of google, Facebook, ebay and amazon follow more "agile" processes, where some level of extreme programming is keeping them bleeding edge.

Amazon and Apple, with Other edging out Microsoft.

Whichever one would agree to hire help/tech support people who can speak English, are not in India or in foreign countries(unless those in that country only help fellow countrymen), have enough people on staff to handle the calls and have real people answer the telephone.
If they can't do this then maybe we can get up a collection and pay Pakistan to nuke India so they will be forced to get tech support somewhere else.

Of-course for GOOGLE.