Most Important Company?

[Donovan]

I'd like to start a conversation about working (an unpopular topic here, I know).  Assuming that you had to work for some amount of time (say, 10 years or so?), what company would you most like to work for? Alternatively, what for-profit company do you think is doing the most important work in the world?

I'm personally asking for a rather selfish reason, which is to get a list of companies to investigate for my career.  I'm now fresh out of college and working fairly lucratively as a software engineer.  Problem is, I'm not really a fan of the product that I'm working on (woo telecoms!), but this company is by far the best for my skill set within a decent radius of my DW's graduate school.  However, when she finishes in a year we would love to get out of this area, and when we do so I would love to find work somewhere that provides a good or service that is actually useful to the world.  Maybe I'm optimistic or naive, but at the moment the top one on my list is Tesla Motors.

Note: Don't worry if your real answer of best company doesn't really have much need of someone in software. I'm still really curious what companies you consider to be the most important.

Thanks for the input everyone :)

[iamlindoro]

I've worked in Fortune 500 companies, I've worked in many startups, and having tried both ends of the spectrum I have to say that the best company to work for is...

... self employed consultant.  There are a number of reasons for this, but primarily, I work from home, set my own hours, charge more per hour than I ever got while employed for someone else, can deduct all my business expenses, and can pay myself only the benefits that matter to me.  Plus, I have a Solo 401(k) and can contribute as both the employee and employer for a total of $51K pre-tax every year.  I sincerely believe that there is no better tax-advantaged situation for someone aiming at early retirement than the Individual 401(k).

The down side is that it took me almost a year after a layoff before I had enough work coming in to make it lucrative.  I was hustling, hard, that entire time looking for the work.  At this point I spend 90%+ of my time working for a single company, so it's effectively like working for an employer, just completely on my terms and to my advantage.  It's not for everyone, but it's certainly for me.

Since you work in telecom, there may be a LOT of work like this for you.  I also work in software development.

[taekvideo]

In the tech world...
There's Intel which is leading the way in processor design.  They apparently have a roadmap all the way to 5nm already.  Going to be a lot of revolutionary stuff going on there as they are forced to move beyond silicon and standard lithography techniques to keep Moore's Law going.
IBM is of course great... they do a lot of cutting edge research, and also are a huge proponent of open-source projects.
Then probably the most under-appreciated tech company, Applied Materials.  They design and manufacture the machines which are used to produce the latest integrated circuits, LCD displays, etc.

[gimp]

I worked at Intel. They're paying shit right now to new people. With that said, it's a great company and if they paid me as much as others offered I'd still be working there. 14nm is here, 10nm is just around the corner, 7nm is - reading between the lines - almost at the point where they start ordering machines. 5nm will be very interesting. Of course I use only public knowledge in telling you this. I hope 5nm is a GAA structure.

/offtopic