Vantaggi
Amazing minds, cutting edge technology, ability and opportunities to learn. Quality training at least in the earlier years before the cutbacks kicked in. I had the great fortune to work for Sun whilst it was still in its ascendency and experienced an amazing place to be an engineer. So many clever people that were happy to help out, to share their knowledge and lead by example. Sun engineers strived to be the best, to solve problems and to provide fixes, in essence to do the right thing by the customer. There were also opportunities to travel. Sun had annual tech training for their entire engineering and support organisation. My first experience of this was Denver, followed by San Francisco and later I got to present to my peers in Las Vegas. Such incredible times, such amazing memories. Then there was the 2000 kick off event in Disneyland, Paris. Clearly Sun were doing very well at this point. Oh course in the early years there were beer busts every month, a professional but relaxed atmosphere and such a vibe as the company was growing so fast. Processes were there and for the most part made sense but management were open to feedback from engineers and often sought them out to solve problems. As a techie it was such a cool place to learn, grow and become a better engineer.
Svantaggi
When the cuts really kicked in, the culture changed. Management dictated policy, processes and direction and the engineers began to be treated like children. Then there were the annual reductions in force (layoffs) that sapped morale and got everyone nervous. Training later suffered as the quality trainers we're let go and contractors were brought in, when you could get it (this was after years of no pay rises, so training was offered as alternatives until that got too expensive). Did I mention lack of pay rises? After a few years management knew they couldn't change anything, so didn't bother. Annual reviews became pointless, depressing and futile. There were quotas on how many top grades could be given out each year, so even if you'd over performed in the current year, if you'd had a grade 1 review the previous year, tough ... you'd get a lesser grade this year. This encouraged everyone to do the bare minimum and as such quality suffered.