Amazing company, amazing leadership, slow moving
Pros
Prior to working at Bosch, I had no idea how large the company was, or how far their reach goes into what seems like every market. Thanks to Bosch's large reach, I had the benefit of working on a wide variety of projects. The workforce is very diverse, too! It seemed like they sponsor a lot of visas and take in a lot of international interns. It was great to meet so many people from different backgrounds, which is something you rarely find in the suburbs. While working there, I had the pleasure of being paid to travel internationally for various reasons. I don't know of many jobs where software engineers are treated like anything besides code-monkeys. The work from home policy is very lax. The office on a Friday is more akin to a ghost-town than it is a corporate office. Because you have to take calls and travel internationally from time to time, Bosch gives you a company phone with unlimited data (with hotspot) and has international coverage. All your communications go through your company phone (not your personal), so work/life balance can easily be achieved by not looking at the company phone. All in all, Bosch is a great company. It seems like they definitely care about their associates.
Cons
The company, seemingly due to its wide breadth of products and locations, can feel like it is very slow moving. Perhaps it's a "German efficiency" thing, but it seemed like there were dozens of hoops (or as they call them, "Quality Gates") to go through for requests that felt like they should have been pretty straightforward and approved without difficulty. Although I love being treated like more than just a coder, sometimes the amount of meetings can really bog you down. Some days I would spend half the day on Skype calls with people from other countries/locations. While I certainly don't mind taking a break from coding, it can really be hard to get motivated enough to get back into programming when another meeting is looming ahead of you in the next hour. Due to the fact that Bosch is a global company, sometimes you'd have to take calls at 10 at night, or 7 in the morning. Although the pay was pretty competitive (especially for entry-level programming jobs), getting paid only once a month was kind of annoying. Although it really shouldn't matter, those that aren't the best at budgeting should really take that into consideration before applying. I don't know if it's still like this, but Macs don't really play nicely with their infrastructure.
