Applied Materials

The salaries here are generally pretty good, assuming that you can land full-time employment. They LOVE to hire contractors.

There are positions that require high-tech thinking and can be very rewarding IF you are fortunate enough to get into one, IF you are fortunate enough to be working on a (presently) "hot" project, and IF you are fortunate enough to have a decent boss who won't steal the credit for your work.

If you like to travel, this place can keep you on the road all that you can handle and more.

If you are a PowerPoint and meeting junkie, this is your nirvana.

If you are a person who lives on the phone, this is your place.

Very, very top-heavy (over-managed).

Imperial and greedy management style (no one below Managing Director level matters at all; we're all just interchangeable widgets, according to them).

Legions of VPs, project managers, and others trying to make themselves appear important at your expense.

The vast majority of jobs here are pedestrian at best.

Management historically tends to cut good people when cutting projects instead of re-purposing them.

It's all about who you know, without apparent regard to what you have actually accomplished.

The new downsized cubicles are a total joke and a massive disservice to all who suffer in them.

Facilities runs the entire company. The evidence for this is quite plain to see. It is the worst I have experienced in my entire career. Facilities should not be run like a profit center.

Endless meetings, preparations for meetings, meetings to plan for meetings (literally), and other mindless related things.

A new hot corporate initiative a week or so, it seems. 95% of which are not only wasteful, but are in many instances quite actively destructive.

This company can completely take over your life if you let it. You want to work 100 hours a week? No problem, it will happen. They literally used to warn about this during new employee orientations.

Whatever you hire in as, you are likely to remain as.

Don't plan a long career here (unless you are a bureaucrat).

Be more careful about acquisitions and directives. Most recent acquisitions and directives, like Solar, have proven to be disasters from the street-level viewpoint.

The amount of money that has been outright squandered on them in the past 10 years or so is simply staggering.

Cut out about 75%-85% of management above director level. Don't demote or re-purpose them; get RID of them.

All they appear to do is attend meetings and make decisions clearly aimed at their own self-interests.

Charge management for holding endless and repetitive meetings somehow. Ding them on their reviews, or charge their department budgets. Make them understand the true costs of holding meetings in terms of lost productivity and general demoralization. Stop viewing meetings as "work".

Stop the facilities shrinkage; restore the larger cubicles.

Base cubicle and office sizes upon actual needs.

Let the local managers determine what is needed for their organization and personnel, not some faceless committees who clearly don't have a clue about what people actually do in their jobs or what they need to accomplish it.

Get realistic about our purchasing practices. The AVL is stifling us. If management actually thinks that it is saving money or protecting anything, they are dead wrong.

Try somehow to look into the endless layers of management, including "project management," that take wholly undeserved credit for the work of others. It has become so bad that it is a running joke around here.

In general, leave us alone to do our jobs. Give us realistic goals and get out of our way so we can get there.

Question time frames and goals for projects.

Question the validity of target dates. Many are wholly unrealistic, quite arbitrary, and can be highly destructive.

Realize that orders slow down this time of year (fall). It happens pretty much every year. Demanding growth, or even flat orders, in Q4 is misguided at best. Things will pick up in Q1; they almost always do. Plan for Q1 and beyond, of course, but don't expect our customer base to change their habits any time soon.