ASML

Great technology, lots of expertise among colleagues.

Room to share your own ideas.

In general, a respectful communication.

I always felt like I could speak my heart.

Projects are slow and can be stopped suddenly, without proper explanation from management. As a lead mechanical engineer, I worked for 4 years on a project in which the design work was only a few months. The rest was endless risk analyses, small design iterations, documentation, etc. I understand the products need to be perfect, as downtime is extremely expensive, but it really takes the fun out of the work if things take too long. Especially when the project gets cancelled when it's practically finished. This was the last drop that made me quit my job.

Roles are organized around a module that needs to be finished. Every mechanical engineer needs to do the same job for a different part of the machine. Instead, I think it would be better if people were used for their talents more. I felt like my creativity was being wasted by having to spend my time on bureaucratic processes, while other designs could've benefitted from my creativity. People work too isolated, and I struggled to break loose from my chores to be able to help others. ASML seems to think quality is mainly created by following processes. I strongly disagree. I think a lot of the design reviews are not good at finding mistakes. People need to be more involved in each other's projects, so real peer reviews are constantly taking place.

Encourage cooperation to improve quality. Minimize processes.

Clearly communicate about the risks of a project being cancelled. The uncertainty within projects is absolutely killing for motivation. It seems that as ASML gets bigger, leadership diminishes in favor of following the customer and stakeholders.

Stop only talking about numbers in the All Employee Meetings. Employees don't care if we're a 7 billion or 10 billion dollar company. Why should this abstract number inspire us? It's not a motivating goal. We want to know why ASML leaves a positive mark on the world. As Steve Jobs would say, "I want to put a 'ding' in the universe."

Inform your employees constantly about what breakthroughs are made possible by their work. Numbers like WPH, uptime, and gross revenue are interesting for your customers and stakeholders, but they don't motivate a lot of your employees. Give them something more to talk proudly about during birthday parties. Meaning. How are they changing the world?