Applied Materials

Decent pay.

• Beautiful area.
• Good benefits.
• Large company, so lots of places to go in terms of career advancement and relocation.
• If you're a nerd like me who loves to learn and is interested in advanced manufacturing and cutting-edge technology, the fab is a haven.

• Contractors and vendors are treated like second-class citizens. This bothered me even from an outsider's perspective.
• Inter-organizational collaboration/relations can be VERY bad.
• Career advancement is entirely at the hand of your direct manager as a technician.
• Managers imposed arbitrary limits/time-gating on advancement/promotion that aren't even written in policy.
• Working in a full bunny suit much of the day.
• Work can be very hard and fast-paced, or very, very slow (most days are very slow). Can't expect much consistency in R&D.
• Even though the work is largely blue-collar, you will get a lot of office politics and white-collar passive aggressiveness in the work culture. You'll find there are many unfriendly and conniving coworkers. This culture seems to be encouraged. You can end up feeling lonely at work or falling into weird cliques like a high school due to this lack of personability.

Clean house. People seem to be under the assumption that things will just work, but few people have any idea how to do anything beyond typical duties. If you want to grow as a company and adapt to the ever-changing chip manufacturing industry, this lazy and inefficient attitude cannot continue to exist. Train your managers to not dissuade go-getters from trying to get stuff done. This isn't a union job; don't hesitate to punish or fire problematic employees. Do this instead of the all-too-frequent massive layoffs that constantly loom over everyone's heads.