
Ask HN: Best big companies to work for? - deanmoriarty
In the event that someone wants to take a break from the typical startup life (e.g. after a burnout or because of shifted priorities in life) and work for a big company, what would HN recommend for a senior software engineer (late 20s) with a very solid background developed while working like a horse in startups for the past few years (and MS in computer engineering)?
These points (in random order) might be important:<p>- Very very competitive salary and &quot;deterministic&quot; benefits (401k with good employer contributions, RSUs, cash bonuses, etc.)<p>- 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 &quot;we use CVS as our SCM&quot; shop)<p>- no more than 40-45 hours a week expected as per company culture<p>- Stable job (no serious failure possibility in the next 3 years or so for the company)<p>- Possibility of working from home (even just once or twice a week to break the routine)<p>- Main headquarters in SF bay area (where I&#x27;m located)<p>I&#x27;m of course expecting Google, Facebook, etc. But I&#x27;m curious to see what else might be there.
======
notAtGoogle
I had applied to work at Google. A few years ago, Google would have been in my
top 5. This time the experience was disappointing. Their offer was low, a
little lower than what I make at a startup. When I tried to negotiate with my
recruiter, she said "we think this offer is good enough" and that was it.
Instead, they offered me a small signing bonus if I responded yes WITHIN THE
NEXT TWO HOURS.

So they made me the offer on thursday, I responded on Friday afternoon, and
they demanded an answer by Friday at 5pm. I ended up rejecting the offer but
the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

~~~
sshumaker
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.

~~~
varelse
Blind allocation for senior talent is just st00p1d.

And I speak from personal experience. As Erich stated, all the cool work is
taken at Google. Blind allocation will likely land you on a team doing work
unrelated to the standout work that got you noticed by Google in the first
place.

If you don't mind trading away your life's passion for Google's admittedly
fantastic perks, then it's a great career move. OTOH if you're finally making
your mark in the world such that Google notices you, don't fix what isn't
broken, avoid Google(1). My stint at Google could best be described as "Career
Interrupted."

1\. Exceptions: Acquihires and moonshots in your area of expertise. These are
no-brainers and a great deal. Google perks plus compelling work? Sign me up.
Sadly no longer an option for me because I got labelled as unmutual for
leaving.

------
sshumaker
Even though you're expecting it, I did want to mention Google. We're actively
hiring and there are lots of really great opportunities, especially for
startup / mobile folks who also have really strong fundamental CS backgrounds
(e.g. algorithms, data structures).

Having come from the startup world myself, I'd encourage anyone who wants a
change of scenery, even if it's only for a few years, to apply here.

    
    
      * Great company culture, competitive pay, and amazing benefits
      * Lots of interesting problems to work on
      * Learn about developing at scale
      * Good work-life balance. 
    

And, especially if you want to go back and do a startup again in a few years:

    
    
      - Expand your network of really talented people.
      - Understand the kinds of products and teams the top-tier companies are looking for
    

Although I also wouldn't be surprised if you decided to stay for a lot longer.

One of the downsides to the hiring process is that team placement can still be
a bit random. If you're a senior dev who still loves actively coding and is in
the startup world, and is thinking about applying but is worried you'll end up
working on something that doesn't interest you, drop me a line at the email in
my profile. Especially if you're interested in mobile.

Disclaimer: I'm a hiring manager at Google.

~~~
saiko-chriskun
I'm been a full-stack web/mobile developer for various startups over the past
couple years.. I've always thought it would be cool to work at a larger
company like google for awhile, seems like I'd learn a ton.. but I didn't
really go through school and don't have your standard strong CS fundamentals
as a result, so haven't been quite sure about what to do :P. Any tips on the
best way to acquire these skills through self-study?

~~~
sshumaker
Read "The Algorithm Design Manual", and do exercises from every chapter.

Whether or not you decide to interview at Google, building up strong CS
fundamentals will make you a better programmer. And we're not the only ones
who ask those types of questions. :)

------
chetanahuja
_" Challenging working environment where neat technical problems are still
solved despite not being a startup"_

This phrasing makes me chuckle. Why's there a presumption that "neat technical
problems" are the sole preserve of startups? If I were to make a
generalization at all, I'd say a successful company with a solid customer base
has a lot more areas of technical challenges (both new products as well
improvement and scaling of existing products) than a small startup,
(especially when those small startups are in the consumer space where product
features/design and customer support are far more important than sheer
technical solutions).

~~~
deanmoriarty
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.

~~~
ProblemFactory
I agree with chetanahuja that there are _more_ "single developer's technical
problems" in established software companies rather than startups.

During my time at Google, there was an engineer next to me working full-time
on GCC, because found compilers most fun and technically challenging. On the
open-source version, not a private branch or anything.

Very few startups would have the scale and stability to allow an employee to
work on something that maybe delivers 5% faster code or 5% faster build times
in a few year's time.

------
eLobato
Red Hat. You'll work on open source stuff all the time, in systems,
infrastructure (Openstack), kernel development (Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS),
cloud stuff (Satellite, Foreman, Katello, Openshift), or even programming
languages (JRuby).

\- 401k match and bonuses from the start. RSUs after you've spent a
significant time in the company.

\- Lots of problems to solve in areas that are out of reach for a lot of
startups.

\- Good work/life balance in my experience.

\- I am 100% remote, and I'd say 50% of my team is remote too.

\- There is an office in Mountain View, but your house is probably more
comfortable ;)

Again this is just my own experience, I definitely recommend it.

~~~
seivan
Why do I get the feeling that Red Hat is a software company run by software
engineers?

It's hard for me to shake off the distinction between companies run by
business/product-goons whipping their engineers into submission to produce
code that they can sell and companies run by engineers themselves. Wether or
not the CEO codes is irrelevant, but the fact that it's entirely engineer
driven.

~~~
rwmj
It seems to me that key management in Red Hat come from Digital/DEC, and have
the same engineer-led ethos that Digital had (before it was acquired by
Compaq).

Edit: Also Red Hat is somewhat cult-like (I say that in a good way). Open
source, "upstream first", etc are taken _very_ seriously.

------
ryanstewart
It seems like Adobe checks a lot of your boxes. The pay, from what I've seen
personally, and tracked on Glassdoor seems pretty competitive. They've got
great 401k, benefits, RSUs, bonuses, etc.

All the engineering teams I've worked with are fairly forward thinking in both
process and technology. Most teams use the hosted, enterprise GitHub for
source control. There are a bunch of technical problems across the company
spanning everything from researching photo/video manipulation, open source
projects like Brackets, to a bunch of cool stuff going on as part of the
Creative Cloud (or even analytics/big data in the Digital Marketing part of
the company).

The company will definitely be around in 3 years and is on a good trajectory.
A lot of teams have an unofficial work from home day every week, and while
"main" HQ is in San Jose, a lot of fun stuff is going on in the SF office. In
general I've found it to be a great culture in terms of work-life balance as
well as encouraging volunteer activities.

~~~
empire29
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.

~~~
je_bailey
Nice to hear that they are having a positive impact. Sling is one of the most
compelling pieces of software that I've worked with in a long time. It's odd
that AEM/CQ5 being as big and as disruptive as it is, doesn't get any play
here in HN

------
jameshush
Microsoft Silicon Valley is actually pretty awesome. HQ isn't in the bay area,
but their Silicon Valley campus is 10 minutes away from Google's HQ in
Mountain View.

~~~
chirau
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.

------
rwmj
Red Hat

\-- all of the above, except the head office is in Raleigh NC, which probably
doesn't matter as you can work at home full time if you want, and there is an
office in Mountain View if you prefer to work in offices.

------
madsushi
I'd look at NetApp. They're consistently listed as one of the top places to
work (in the US and worldwide) and have a variety of software projects
(hardware/firmware work to web management tools).

------
rubyrescue
A friend in SF who was the prototypical "startup designer" just got tired of
it after too many failed projects and too many unstable positions and got a
job with General Electric designing extremely technical user manuals. He loves
the rhythm and by his account it seems like a great job. Not sure that he can
ever work from home though. Otherwise it fits your criteria.

~~~
ytcracker
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.

------
lxt
I don't know if we count as big, but Mozilla fits all of your criteria.

------
tsm
Groupon is headquartered in Chicago, but has a big office in Palo Alto. Very
modern tooling, decent compensation, working from home is fine, keeping your
own hours is fine, 40 hour weeks (including lunch) is the norm, interesting
problems.

~~~
rpmcb
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.

~~~
ironchef
It might've been the plumfare crew. They had little issue with my working
remotely as well. Of course when they attempted to pressure me to come in the
office more I gave them the choice of having me less hours and in the office
or more hours and working from home. Not there any more, but just adding more
views on things...

I would differ with the "modern tooling" opinion though.

------
_zen
Does anyone here work at Dell? How has the culture changed since they went
private? Are they still "corporatey", or are they trying to be more "start-
upy" like their recent ads hint at?

~~~
weej
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).

~~~
yuhong
Including Michael Dell I think.

------
HappyRSEmployee
Rackspace, cloud server company.

[https://github.com/rackspace](https://github.com/rackspace)
[https://github.com/rackerlabs](https://github.com/rackerlabs)

\- 401K is available. Salary is competitive market rate for SF tech even if
you're not a particularly strong salary negotiator. Quarterly bonuses, shows
up as another ACH deposit to your bank account besides your regular bi-
weekly(Fridays) deposit. Commuter-card, currently $125 free a month. If you
want more than that, it's deducted pre-tax from your paycheck. Currently
healthcare is Humana & Kaiser.

\- Opensource is the name of the game. Built on Openstack, so python is big
here but we do have Ruby and nodejs too; and probably other languages I'm not
remembering right nwo. Challenging problems exist to work on and still given
room to develop new ideas and pitch them to upper-management. Also allows at
least 1 day a month for hack-a-thon to work on anything you want(ya know, as
long as it's legal and not NSFW). I saw the beginnings of floobits.com when it
was alpha-ware that crashed. They ended up being accepted into YCombinator.

\- Life balance focused. There isn't the attitude that burning beyond
40hr/weeks is expected at all.

\- Stable. I don't see Rackspace disappearing anytime soon.

\- We have several people who work from home at least twice a week.

\- Main HQ is actually in Texas, but the SF office isn't bad. No cubicles,
open plan. Big eating area, foosball, table-tennis, plenty of space to bring
your bike into the office and a machine that makes bubbly water. Free drinks
like ice tea and diet soda. The soda is kept out of site though because people
are trying to be healthy. Out of side, out of mind ;) ...But if you know where
to look, you can get it. There's an Xbox on a big screen TV that people
sometimes play football(as in soccer) on too.

------
atagh
Have you heard of Workday? We, the employees, continually vote Workday as the
best company to work for in the bay area. I wouldn't consider us a big
company, but we fit a lot of the criteria that you've specified. I've been at
Workday for a while, and we have very interesting technical problems.

------
leopoldo
And what about something like OP asks for but in the Northeast?
Chicago/Boston, NYC, DC??

------
cjdrake
You should work for Intel. We have free coffee.

~~~
caw
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.

~~~
analytically
Apart from [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/slumping-intel-
cu...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/slumping-intel-
cut-5000-jobs-2014-21580346)

~~~
jpwright
> The company intends to jettison the jobs without laying off workers, said
> Intel spokesman Bill Calder. The reductions instead will be achieved through
> attrition, buyouts and early retirement offers.

------
lquist
Your best bet might be startups that have been acquired by mega-corps. Such
as:

* Heroku (owned by Salesforce) * Climate Corporation (owned by Monsanto)

The above two and some similar companies should hit all your checkboxes.

~~~
estsauver
I work for The Climate Corporation, and while I really like it, it really
doesn't have a 40-45 hour a week culture right now.

------
givehimagun
[Disclaimer: I work at GM]

General Motors fits all your criteria besides location. We have IT centers in
Austin, Phoenix, Atlanta and of course Detroit.

I've been here a year and there is an amazing amount of bootstrapping and
getting things done across the company. Fortune 5 company, making a billion in
profit a quarter, moving all of it's outsourced dev in house and turning IT
from a cost center to an innovation/profit center.

I work on shopclickdrive.com which is GM's foray into selling cars online (we
leverage our relationship with our dealerships...a third of our US dealers
signed up for the program in 3 months). Very cool stuff when you think about
how no other auto manufacturer is trying to sell cars online...especially at
our scale.
[[http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140124/AUTO0103/3012400...](http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140124/AUTO0103/301240060/1361/One-
third-of-GM-s-U.S.-dealers-sign-up-for-Shop-Click-Drive-program)]

Beyond the we use SVN as our SCM, we're moving our stack to all the best
practice stuff: client-side mvc, restful apis, SOLID code backed by automated
unit and functional tests.

If anyone is interested, email me at gaurav.patel@gm.com.

------
bthornbury
Microsoft fit all of those criteria except the main criteria in SF.

Generally, you would only need to be in the office if you have a meeting ( as
long as you get your work done).

Depending on your team, you may or may not be expected to work over 40 hours a
week. On my team, we are encouraged to work 40 hours with no overtime.Even if
we need to stay in late for a bug fix, we would come in late or leave early
the next day.

------
AustinDude
Charles Schwab seems to be pretty good in regards to taking care of their
employees. This is my first corporate job and most people I work with have
been @ the company for 10-20 years. All of those people rave about working for
Schwab. I don't feel quite the same way but I also don't have anything to
compare it to. They love benefits and how well the company treats them. The IT
side is pretty well funded and you can work with some neat tools.

If you get on the wrong team, you will have a tough time getting past the
"group-think" established by the ranking veterans who refuse to innovate.
However, that seems to only exist at the "team" level rather than the
organizational level. I had to learn the appropriate place to take certain
ideas.

A downside is that they don't seem to fire anyone which can lead to quite a
bit of "bloat" at the lower end of the staffing spectrum. However, the higher
up the technical ladder I climb the more brilliant people I meet.

The corporate red-tape is a never ending battle and my favorite managers @ the
company thus far have been able to remove me from those situations and let me
work on fun stuff.

The culture is a little too formal for me. The dress code is "business
casual". I feel like a renegade for wearing a t-shirt to work. They have an
odd reluctance to spend money on certain things and have no trouble dumping
100's of K into something else. We still use 4:3 monitors at work and I can't
bring in a widescreen from home. It drives me up the wall.

Overall, the company will treat you well. You will receive a reasonable
compensation. You will fight normal corprate red-tape related fights. The
"unofficial technical leaders" are really smart people and drive the company
in the right direction. A few people seem to take advantage of the "it is hard
to get fired" here mantra, it shows.

------
Spooky23
Look at the government or public institutions like medical schools or
hospitals.

There are lots of interesting projects in state and local government. Great
benefits, pay is usually competitive with a company (but no bonuses), and you
usually get a defined benefit pension.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
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.

~~~
Spooky23
It all depends.

I've had the privilege of working on some really amazing technical projects
for a state government.

------
msutherl
My corporate work experience is minimal, but I think it's possible to find a
good groove at Intel. You would have to check if they have teams working in
your area of expertise in Santa Clara or San Francisco though.

------
spiderPig
VMWare seems to be a company that'll fit your bill. I don't work there but
personally I found their APIs and documentation to be among the best in the
industry. Just high quality.

------
csswizardry
They’re headquartered in Amsterdam, not SF, but Booking.com are probably worth
a mention. (They have offices globally.)

I was invited over to their HQ to give a talk late last year and _wow_. An
amazing company, every employee has a huge smile and nothing but great things
to say, they have a really great culture, are a very wealthy company, and
engineers are given a lot of freedom. Had I not just started working for
myself, I would have taken them up on the full-time jobs they offered me!

~~~
seivan
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/booking_employee/2014/01/bookingcom
---a-toxic-company-for-developers.html)

[http://blogs.perl.org/users/bookingemployee/2012/03/truth-
ab...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/bookingemployee/2012/03/truth-about-
bookingcom.html)

~~~
xux
>It is estimated that the Dutch transported 550,000-600,000 Africans as
slaves. Although slavery is banned, the Dutch society still has exploitation
of expats ingrained in their mentality.

Just read the blog... what the hell?

~~~
bkor
Indeed, the law he's referring to applies to everyone. Expat or not. He later
on clarifies that it solely applies to Booking.com. This kind of emotional
writing I can do without. It is way too easy to assume he's talking about all
Dutch people, so IMO badly written and not worth it.

------
VLM
"no serious failure possibility in the next 3 years or so for the company"

I've mostly worked in big non-tech companies and one common thing I've seen is
the eternal oscillator of centralization/decentralization. So the company
might not fail, but that doesn't prevent your entire team from being shut off
like a lightswitch as things are either centralized or decentralized or both
around the same time.

Also see mergers and project cancellations.

------
trapped
Strange nobody listed Apple Inc.

~~~
erichocean
Not really, there's not much interesting happening on the software side there,
and Tim Cook wants it that way.

Can you imagine having to work under Craig Federighi? Uh, pass, that guy is a
political creation I wouldn't trust to architect a Rails app.

Bottom line: If you want interesting, innovative software work, Apple is at
the bottom of the list these days.

------
mournit
Intuit is consistently ranked highly in lists at Glassdoor, Fortune, etc.
Often cited as a relaxed work environment compared to others in the Bay Area.

~~~
busterarm
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.

------
je_bailey
Okay, it's on the East Coast instead of the west. But SAS is one of the best
places to work for in the world. Some of the perks that seem applicable to
you:

* 7 hour work day

* Flexible work schedules

* Everyone has a private office

* On site Day Cares

* On site Health Care

* Gymnasium, Natatorium, Hundreds of acres of trail laced land bordering a national park.

* Extremely stable company

* One of my co-workers on the development team just celebrated her 25th year at the company.

Personally, I feel empowered and respected. It's a great place.

~~~
mailshanx
Does SAS hire people with a machine learning / software dev background? Would
you be be okay with passing on my resume?

~~~
je_bailey
It's quite possible. I would keep an eye open at
[http://www.sas.com/en_us/careers.html#openings](http://www.sas.com/en_us/careers.html#openings)
However the organizations that would be interested in your skills, which is
our R&D group, is separate from mine. I wouldn't even know which person to
show it to :)

------
saryant
You should look into Chevron. They're in San Ramon. Other than Shell, they're
probably the most liberal of the major oil firms with their work policies and
they have massive technical challenges to solve. The only thing I'm not sure
about is if they have a software department in their San Ramon
headquarters—those guys might all be in Houston.

------
wlievens
ARM has a CA office IIRC (not HQ though obviously). It's nit a big big company
but it is a nice place to work.

------
tharshan09
I am not if I should start a new thread but if this exact question was asked
but instead of a senior dev, a university graduate (with experience in a large
company and a startup). What would your suggestions be? (also.. I am located
in UK)

------
vocaro
Amazon is expanding fast in SF, and we're hiring! Come check us out...

~~~
jyothepro
Any ios dev happening in Bay Area

------
jason_dstillery
We're not so big, but we check off most of your boxes (except that we're in
NYC). Anyone who's interested, details are in my profile, feel free to shoot
me an email.

------
startlaunch
Check out: [http://automattic.com/work-with-us/](http://automattic.com/work-
with-us/)

We work on WordPress.com and other cool services.

------
leanpreneur
SAP would have most of the items you care for. Probably the recent
acquisitions like SuccessFactors would be a good place.

Disclaimer: I am a hiring manager at SuccessFactors.

------
linuxhansl
Salesforce.

Lot's of investment/work in "BigData" (Hadoop, HBase, etc). Interesting
scalability challenges at all levels. Great work/life culture.

------
pmiller2
What about companies for a junior with 2 years professional experience and and
math degrees from legit but no-name colleges/universities?

------
logn
Take a look at SAP. Not all areas of the company are desirable to work for,
but they have a lot of good groups from old acquisitions.

------
docwhat
IBM -- It's got a lot going for it, if you don't like one division/project
there are bunch of other ones to look at.

------
joshhart
Not sure what your definition of "big" is. I have worked at Linkedin for 4
years and have been very happy there.

~~~
pscsbs
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.

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fabrygio
Marvel is hiring, but we are located in NYC.

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deanmoriarty
OP here

Thanks for all the responses so far, definitely interesting names I wouldn't
have considered otherwise!

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midas007
Trimble Navigation, Caterpillar, SAIC, Genetech, General Electric, MITRE,
SLAC, SRI.

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

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stevenspasbo
Check out Workday, we meet all of your criteria.

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youareasadfuck
Why did you have to ask HN for this you sad idiot?

~~~
CWIZO
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 :/

~~~
bulatb
If you're on Android, check out Hacker News 2. Much better experience.

