VMware is a good balance between the craziness of a startup and the stability of a large company like Oracle.
Pros
Very open culture (e.g. all employees receive reports of sales made), passionate and brilliant co-workers (many PhD holders who could have retired by now still come to work every day because they love their work), visionary CEO (always speaks her mind and isn't afraid to execute risky but promising ideas), interesting work (for software developers, anyway), healthy snacks (daily organic fresh fruit, nuts, yogurt, etc.), flexible work hours (just like most other hi-tech shops), environmentally sound policies (the entire headquarters was architected from scratch to be a green building), excellent products (our customers love us and we keep winning awards), good tools (for engineering, anyway), membership in the Stanford community (access to lectures, etc.).
Cons
Almost nobody understands what we do. Also, if you want to live in a big city, commuting to Palo Alto can be frustrating.
