Good Tech, Decent Benefits, Decent Work Culture, Tough to Get out of the "Bottom Pile", Other big company problems.
Pros
+ Good Technology: TI has several good technology value propositions that make it a good place to work (and learn i.e. grow professionally). There are a lot of people (or were when I worked there) who are senior, career TI'ers who will teach their juniors a lot. You need to find a good one, and see if you can work for one. + If you get in to the right group, you will be richly rewarded, because you get to work on new, challenging problems, and if you deliver, TI will compensate and promote well. The key is to find a group where YOU can contribute. The group must do well too. Being in a group that doesnt, or your contributions are not visible is not going to help. + Good culture / work environment. + Honest: Never saw a need to do anything dishonest. Didnt do options backdating or other bad stuff. + Good benefits, although these days, like everywhere in USA runaway cost of health insurance is becoming an issue. There is also a large selection of technologies and opportunities, being a large company. So there is a lot of scope to move around. A lot of folks I knew did so and were well rewarded for doing so. The culture will reward achievements, albeit a certain type of acheivements. + There are good resources to learn, e.g. IEEE papers were free through the intranet. + Management is generally supportive of going to college for an advanced degree, though it must be a practical plan which works with your job. + Most managers will not complain about flex time, within reason.
Cons
- Tough to get out of the bottom pile: Your potential has something to do with getting recognized / promoted. But, being in the right place matters much more. If you don't get the good assignments (work on the new gee-whiz interface, some new platform etc) then you wont be rewarded. That will affect what you get paid, promoted etc. - Silos and politics. Like every other big company, I imagine. This makes it tough to get through with game changing technologies which require working across silos. If a Sr. VP pushes it, of course it will happen. Question is, are they the closest to the customers needs? If not, they should listen to the people who are. - Rather arbitrary and capricious promotion process for engineers: The tech ladder needs you to have a assignment that you can demonstrate some glamorous achievement to get promoted. If you don't have that, the tech ladder wont reward you for delivering solid results on whatever is important to your management. This de-correlation between the recognition and what your manager wants you to do, is a career killer. e.g. If you work on a SW project - something - e.g. a compiler, then if you deliver generation after generation of compilers, it becomes a case of "What did you create that you deserve a promotion/recognition/whatever?" The same think applies to HW folks too. If you don't invent a new circuit or something, you don't get recognized. - Some bad managers, who cause people to leave.