AMD

Started as a contractor, with good base pay but no benefits beyond those legally required. This is unlike past companies where benefits were similar, but the base pay was poor.

With the current hiring model my team uses, anyone they want to keep often becomes permanent within two years of contracting.

I'm now permanent and have great usual corporate benefits, far higher than average pay for QA (again, based on past experience with other companies). I'm also enjoying the work environment.

Despite my job requiring at least some hands-on work with hardware, my team found a way to minimize our exposure to each other during the pandemic.

We all work from home, except for one person who handles hardware changes. We rotate that responsibility daily.

Work is flexible. Getting time off is a matter of informing rather than requesting, and taking that time is highly encouraged. It's very easy to set boundaries between work and home life if you have the desire to do so.

Company is growing fast, hiring and promoting often. There's lots of room to make a mark and maybe even create a new role for yourself if you see something the organization is missing that you can provide. There are many opportunities to provide your input, be heard, and make an impact that you can see and be rewarded for.

Workload can be a lot, and deadlines can be tight, leading to crunch time. These crunch times range from 1 week to a few months (not common, just a rough transition into a new project).

The company will ask for long hours and weekends, and it's up to you to say no if you aren't comfortable with it or just burned out. I've found they're very respectful of their employee's declining overtime, and they don't really pry for personal reasons.

The rapid growth of the company comes with the downside that we are gaining new business faster than we can build our infrastructure (new hires, new teams, scaling up, etc.). It can kind of feel like you're working in a startup that just made it big, even though you're in a large and established corporation. They are working on resolving this problem, though.

Work on process improvement more. Focus less on reacting immediately to things and rushing results. I spend too much time getting tasks and requests with no planning or coordination through instant messages or emails.