Arm

ARM as a company has a great future. ARM CPU architecture will never go out of fashion. There is an IPO. I like the CEO.

ARM Trondheim middle management is not very experienced in dealing with engineers of diverse background. They are well suited to handle fresh graduates and engineers from NTNU (the local Trondheim University). They are very ill prepared to be people managers for engineers coming from abroad. They also tend to put ICs who are close to higher management into managerial positions so they can justify promotions in the next cycle.

Imagine an engineer with 9 to 10 years of experience suddenly has 13+ subordinates. In the next cycle, they will justify a promotion by citing the number of reports under this manager. Recently there was also an internal re-org in Trondheim Norway, which was NOT for business reasons but to "support" individual career growth of some engineers (as stated by the ARM Norway GPU director in an open forum). These handful of engineers got elevated to strategic positions and will be in line for promotions in next cycle.

The rest of the engineers go one level down in management hierarchy. For example, originally a senior engineer would have had 2 levels of managers under the director, now he would have 3 levels of managers under the director. An entirely new managerial hierarchy was created without any business need (the Director said this was to support individual career growth).

So they supported the individual career growth of maybe 5 engineers while pushing down tens of engineers down the hierarchy. Worse of all, this was not even consulted with all the engineers who were directly affected by this career growth inspired re-org. Engineers who were from NTNU or had close relationship with the senior managers were not affected and in-fact benefited from this move.

The rest get to languish in their wallow. If you are not from NTNU and not a fresh graduate, please re-consider joining ARM Trondheim. You will realize this to be a bad career move after just six months. Management will reply in Glassdoor saying "85% positive rating" but remember, most of the engineers in Trondheim Norway are from NTNU. and they strongly encourage engineers to give positive feedback in Glassdoor.

If you are going to do a re-org for NON business reasons, make sure you take the feedback of each and every engineer who will be affected by the move.

You don't practice the ideals you preach so often.