Pros: The benefits are great: stock purchasing, free fruit, and caffeine drinks. I was grateful to have a job during the recession that was never in doubt. I have stayed as long as I have due to this security. It was great to have access to crazy powerful machines and brand-new tech. I learned a lot, mostly by my own initiative, and worked with some great people. Made some lifelong friendships. Intel sent me on several trips to conferences and to visit other sites around the world. It was a lot of fun.

Cons: I worked on a software team at Intel, and after 8 years and several projects, I can claim that Intel doesn't know how to do software. There is little appetite to get better at improving any and all aspects of building software like professionals. Sure, the company pays lip service but does not follow through with meaningful changes. If you want to build software like a professional, look for a career elsewhere. The focal review system is stupid and incredibly unfair. If you speak out against your team's behavior or practices, expect to get noticed by your first or second line manager and punished at focal time. You can contest your treatment, but because your fate was determined by all the managers horse-trading for the limited resources to give out every year, you can't effectively refute the unsubstantiated claims. In short, you have to play the political game well and often. Recognition is sporadic and arbitrary. Early on, I received a Division Recognition for setting up a server for the org to use. My team, who didn't help on the project, and I all received the award. However, later, when we achieved something much more significant, nothing. We even mentioned this to management, but still nothing. Hiring is broken at Intel. The one time out of 8 tries that we hired someone on our team was when every member of the team said, "Don't hire this person." However, the manager did anyway because it was perceived that we would lose the req and this person could plug one hole on our team. It was a disaster. The person never did more than the one thing, did not even do that well, and brought negative attention to our team within the org. Furthermore, when we asked for additional headcount to meet our commitments, the headcount we had, including this person, was always used against us. There is often pressure to hire whomever you can, whichever resume you have in front of you now, because the req can close at any time. This wasn't an irrational fear either. Many times, we would be moving through the process, only to have Intel Corporate come through and set a hiring freeze. This is stupid. It should be that if the team has been given permission, headcount, to hire, that they should be exempt from these hiring freezes, at least for 45 days or something. However, it is not like that, and the unintended side effect is that teams will hire substandard candidates just to fill some headcount. Do that several times, and the org is infected with the wrong people. Another problem with hiring is the equity and diversity push Intel is making. I am all for hiring diversity, but not at the cost of talent and productivity. Make every effort to get diverse candidates into the pool of applicants. However, now Intel will hire some non-white tech female (for example) and tell an org, "You can have this person for free, won't tally against your headcount, if you can find some place to put her." This is not how you build a strong, capable team. To do that, you need to find as many candidates as possible, interview them, and take the strongest person regardless of race or sex. I understand there is discrimination. However, I think engineers are quite often interested in grabbing the person that helps their team and their cause the most. The way Intel handled this last round of layoffs was dishonest, stupid, and damaging. At focal every year, your manager can affect two items: your rating and your stock bonus. Performance is supposed to be reflected in your rating, NOT your stocks. However, this year (June 2015), Intel decided to use the stocks as another metric to trim some employees. Intel made several acquisitions of companies and apparently didn't like carrying over 100,000 employees worldwide. So they used the stocks. So people with a "Successful" rating with the lowest stocks, Stock Level 4, twice in the last 4 years were let go. The problem with this is that it is unfair, and managers gave SL4 to their employees for a variety of reasons. For example, quality is an adjunct function at Intel, and so managers often gave the better stocks to their direct employees rather than the quality contingent attached to their team. What was the result? The quality teams at Intel had huge losses. I guess it's all for the best. Quality concerns at Intel were always an afterthought. Intel is a very conservative, Republican-like company. That doesn't show up until Intel comes out AGAINST Net Neutrality. In Portland, the company's stance is particularly incongruous with the workers who work there, largely a liberal population. To argue that internet connectivity is not as fundamental a utility as telephone was back in the day is being dishonest. I understand that companies like Intel and IBM can draw straight lines from blocking Net Neutrality today to profitable sales for their companies, but we want leadership and principles from our company. Sadly, Intel is not a company with principles. We have to take web-based training every year for ethics, etc. Yet, Intel's upper management has landed us in court case after court case over the years for their unethical behavior. Look it up if you're interested. Finally, a lot is said about work-life balance. It is true that you can work a normal 9-5 type shift and survive at Intel. However, I have never seen that behavior from those on the rise. Everyone that has ever advanced at Intel has worked their butt off with 50 and 60-hour work weeks for years, including me. That is the only way to get ahead, and everyone knows it if they don't admit it aloud.

Pros: Continuous Learning Culture. Benefits above the legal minimum; it is difficult for a company in Guadalajara to offer better benefits than Intel. World-class facilities. Budget for meetings each quarter for team building. Collaboration with teams from different geographical regions. Annual salary review. The best jobs for electronic engineers.

Cons: Stagnant salary. Lots of internal bureaucracy. Company in poor current condition. Difficult vertical promotion. Increasingly frequent staff cuts.

Pros: Sabbatical, self-learning, opportunities to learn.

Cons: Lack of leadership. No winning products.