Pros
- They obey the law. - The pay is decent. - Their executives say a lot of words about improving diversity and inclusion. - Employee Resource Groups (ERG's) exist and hold events with ice cream or other food. - The Information Security and Mapping departments contain many good managers and treat employees very well. - If you're motivated, you can learn a lot by getting onto Information Security and Mapping email lists, showing up to talks, and taking notes.
Cons
- Managers have tremendous latitude to approve/deny "unlimited" vacation, which means if you get a bad manager or a manager who dislikes you, you will have zero (0) actual days of vacation. - The on-call structure is also determined by each individual team, and is entirely at managers' discretion. This includes whether any on-call work is compensated at all, and how much on-call work is required to keep your job. If you get onto a bad team, there is no upper limit on how many nights, weekends, and holidays you could spend putting out fires. - Some departments, like Platform Operations, mostly contain bad managers who literally laugh in the faces of employees expressing distress, in front of many other employees. - Akamai does the minimum for transgender people that they are legally required to do. When I was there, their "LGBT" ERG was almost entirely cisgender gay men handing out Human Rights Campaign flyers and patting themselves on the back. The company had no gender-neutral restrooms anywhere in the world, and the LGBT ERG was reluctant to say or do anything about that. If you want an LGBT ERG to do anything but celebrate marriage equality and give you ice cream, try another company. - Their approach to disability is also "we will obey the law, and do absolutely nothing else." To the best of my knowledge, there is no disability ERG, many accommodation requests are denied, requests that are accepted take weeks or months, and nobody whose request is denied sticks around for more than a few months. - Their approach to infrastructure/operations is seriously flawed and outdated. When I was there, I felt like Akamai was worse than average, but after leaving and getting context from people at other companies, I feel like their NOCC offices are best described as sadomasochistic performance art.