Applied Materials

The pay was absolutely great until the downturn forced pay cuts. The benefits were always great. There were a lot of intelligent people with great ideas about how to improve products and processes.

While the pay was great, employees were forced to take a 5% pay cut. Upper management took a 10% pay cut. However, because the company made it to their profitability goal, all the VPs and such received huge bonuses compared to their pay cut. Employees got shafted on that one.

While there were a lot of intelligent people with great ideas, management rarely listened to them (until they hired a consultant who told them the same thing). If you did good work, you were pigeonholed doing it, and they kept piling more work onto you from the folks who were laid off. So, eventually, people got burned out because they were doing 3X the work (or more) than they were getting paid for. Sadly, their heroic efforts were rewarded with, "Well, you have a job."

Weed out the managers who do the same thing because "that's the way we've always done it." Weed out the "heroes" who let bad situations go on and on until they have to "save" them.

Reward the employees who keep the process running smoothly without heroics. Recognize the individuals who do a lion's share of the work with little to no fanfare. Show your employees loyalty... they've earned it.