Applied Materials

AMAT does hire PhDs. It's a pleasure to work with them.

If your future boss at AMAT is Indian, while you are of another race, most likely your Indian bosses will only take care of and be reasonable to their countrymen, while giving the most amount of dirty and exhausting work to you.

AMAT is an Indian-dominant company. In the Q&R org, most of the management levels are taken by Indians.

AMAT's Q&R org in Santa Clara is only a shell (no proper equipment, no testing capability, no support, no proper resources), while the real headquarters of AMAT's Q&R org is located in India (all reliability tests are assigned to AMAT India).

Every year, Q&R engineers in India are directly given H1B visas and allocated to the US.

Indian management does not give other races opportunities to grow and develop careers. They just don't know how to treat subordinates with respect, let alone what leadership means. Each meeting becomes their showtime and the moment to play politics.

In AMAT's Q&R organization, non-Indian engineers quit their jobs in:

• 1 month
• 3 months
• 8 months
• 10 months
• 1.5 years

I haven't seen any non-Indian Q&R engineer survive more than 2 years. Each non-Indian Q&R engineer works 12-14 hours every day without effective support and guidance from their managers.

When you ask for resources and support from your Indian managers/directors, most likely they just pretend not to see or hear. They talk the talk but do not walk the walk.

As a result, other races in the Q&R org are "rare species," and this Q&R position has a very, very low retention rate.

Moreover, the working culture in some BUs is often described as toxic.

When you have an interview, if you are not arranged to interview with the team members, that will be a red flag. Most Indian hiring managers are dictatorial and afraid of letting you know the real group culture.

In Lam, ASML, and KLA, there are product engineer positions, quality engineer positions, and reliability engineer positions. In AMAT, in order to save money, these three positions are combined into one: the product quality and reliability engineer. One engineer in AMAT actually works on three people's tasks in other semiconductor equipment companies, but with a meager salary.