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Photo credit by Flickr/Split the Kipper

LinkedIn has put together its annual list of the top 50 companies where people in the United States most want to work, and an overwhelming majority of them have opportunities galore for software developers.

This certainly isn’t news to us here at DZone. We did just publish this piece a few weeks back. Oh, and this one, too.

But helping you all turbo-charge your careers is (obviously) a big part of what we do here, so we’re willing to keep that broken record spinning.

While the usual tech suspects are of course on the list – Google’s parent company Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple – there are also quite a few that devs might not immediately think of – PwC, JP Morgan Chase, Major League Baseball.

The most in-demand skill sets are likewise varied: data structures, JQuery, cloud computing, R, Go, Java, Python, JavaScript, CSS, C++, machine learning, algorithms, agile methodologies, solution architecture, UX/UI design. The list really does go on. You can even put those C skills to good use at Tesla.

But speaking of Tesla, we would be remiss if we didn’t point out that not all of these companies have stellar reputations for treating their teams admirably. There were of course headlines revealing “grueling work conditions” at Tesla just a few years ago. Hell, even this more recent piece in The Wall Street Journal argues that the company is a “hot spot” for job seekers “despite long hours and frenetic pace.” Elon Musk did recently proclaim, after all, that “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.”

Then there was this doozy of a report about Oracle back in January (number 9 on the list), which details an on-going lawsuit filed by the Department of Labor alleging that the company underpaid both women and minorities to the tune of $400 million.

And we can’t forget these reports about Amazon. But hey, if you’re not working in one of their warehouses, you’re probably fine.

At the end of the day, though, we suppose no company is perfect – although there are clearly some that are better than others. Accounting firm PwC, for example, will chip in $1,200 a year for six years to help employees pay back their student loans.

But when I Googled for headlines about PwC’s working conditions, this one popped up, highlighting a lack of competitive pay, long hours, and unpredictable tasks. Sigh.

It all just goes to show that you really need to do your homework before jumping in bed with even the most prestigious employers. And as I recently pointed out in another article, you may actually be better off eschewing these companies all together, at least until you really know what matters to you as a person as well as an employee.

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