I worked for a very large company with ties to the Bush administration that everyone loves to hate. Here is my take, and I would never want to work at a compan

I worked for a very large company with ties to the Bush administration that everyone loves to hate. Here is my take, and I would never want to work at a company of that size again... 1) I can say I did learn a lot during my tenure there, however, they were such a huge collection of edge cases that not much was directly applicable to anywhere else I have worked. I can say that I got a good grasp on not breaking large complex systems though. 2) I found this to not be the case, and this was very disappointing to me. When I started there I was expecting to be surrounded by the best and brightest on a mission. I found that in the case of this company, in my group(say around 100-150 people) it was 5% of the people doing 95% of the work, surrounded by people content to do just enough to not get fired. 3) semi true, I do maintain contact with several people there. 4) Perks- NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! Benefits at this place sucked. After I left(2008) the company suspended raises for everyone for at least 18 months. While I was able to change titles to a much higher "paygrade", the company did not want to ever make my salary reflect the title. 5) Probably the biggest reason I never want to work at a large company again. Most managers were promoted beyond their competency, so decisions were made based on how much power they could wield and not what was best for the company. A great example is how they would not allow certain blackberrys to connect to the enterprise server because one of the managers thought the scroll wheel was a toy. iPhones were banned because it took > 1 hour to cut off your access if you were terminated. Thats right folks, exchange/Phone policy dictated by the fact that the company thinks they will probably fire you and they cant cut off your access quickly enough. 6) true 7) Absolutely. Im now at a small company(~150 employees) and the lack of all the crap I mention above has drastically improved my well being.