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Welcome to process hell of the 1990s

Senior Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Intel for 1 year
December 19, 2016
Hillsboro, Oregon
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Paychecks arrive on time at the agreed-upon amount.

Cons

Intel is process hell, and none of it is documented. If it is documented, nothing is maintained. You spend far too much time navigating illogical processes that have no accurate documentation, whether this is for purchasing or using your "benefits". Corporate policies are years (decades?) behind the norm for high-tech employers, if that is health benefits or workplace practices.

The IT department itself, and any services provided by them, is a perfect example of what can go wrong in a large corporate environment. The IT department is obviously not accountable to making employees successful; they have ancient practices and do little to support users. The policies they have in place for your personal mobile device or any computer system that you use are beyond draconian, and the policies are entirely illogical. They force you to change the passcode on your personal phone every 60-90 days; however, they don't use a single one-time password (aka 2-factor authentication) anywhere within your standard IT systems. If your business unit allows you to use a non-Windows workstation, good luck on getting it to actually work. Most of the IT policies seem to be to just wish you luck and stop talking to you. Their policies may work fine if you are in the fabrication facilities; however, not if you work in a modern group focused on software, as the security policies block many development environments from even working viably without spending 40% of your time playing cat-and-mouse, trying to find how to work within the new policy or the one that intermittently acts differently.

The work environment is pretty toxic. They reward "lifers" that have been there forever, who then immediately dismiss new ideas as not being valid. They obviously need fresh ideas (innovator's dilemma); however, their own practices and structure often drown those ideas before they can even be discussed.

The CEO tries to claim it is a "growth company" while doing nothing to modernize business practices, empowering employees, or even investing adequately in growth opportunity. Most of middle management spends their time clambering over each other, trying to grow their headcount and budget allocations rather than actually running their business units. Everyone is building their own fiefdom with duplication of resources and effort, wasting massive allocations of resources in the process...until your team loses, and then you get the axe.

Advice to Management

Actually, bother to consider the perspective of new hire employees that bring fresh perspectives about how toxic the place is.

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