Intel

Free fruit – get your 5-a-day.

Active sports & social club. So easy to make friends. Staff are generally very friendly.

Very little traffic in Shannon – good for short commutes.

They are good about working from home if needed. But you will be working.

FOCAL (annual review system) ranks you against your team mates. About 5% of people must be given the worst rating, which means no bonuses, even if you're an okay engineer. This is bad for morale, work/life balance, stress levels, and co-operation within teams. Lots of time and effort are spent on high-visibility activities that are not relevant even to Intel.

There's no time for learning and exploring new tech. Some good training courses are given on x86 architecture, but nothing on the highly complex software each engineer ends up having to master basically on their own.

Engineers are not financially rewarded. Project Managers tend to be hired at Grade 7, but Engineers at Grade 6. Only the top 10% of performers, approximately, are even considered for promotion in any year. A typical pay increase without promotion is 2%.

Stop the FOCAL madness. It's not good for staff, and it's not good for Intel either.

Don't be fooled by the better reviews here on Glassdoor – mostly it's interns, and they have not experienced the harder realities at Intel.