Intel

Lots of great benefits: quarterly profit sharing, stock purchase plans, restrictive stock units granted in accordance with your review, and a yearly contribution to a retirement fund which averaged around $5-6K. Good health care and dental. The pay was very good. As a technician with a night shift differential, I was making close to $100,000.

The job was repetitive and boring. As a technician, there was little latitude to actually work on the tools. Most tasks consisted of pressing a button and waiting for the software to finish the test. I worked twelve-hour shifts and, for the most part, worked by myself in isolation in the fab.

I didn't feel there was a team mentality but rather that everyone operated as individuals. I was amazed at the level of incompetence of some of my fellow technicians. Some have been working there for 20-plus years but have no grasp of current technology. The only thing that saves them is that the tasks are so amazingly simple.

Attempting to shift from a technician to an engineer was very difficult. I am a senior in computer science at ASU, and because my section didn't require a computer scientist, they were not interested in helping me achieve my degree, even though there were hundreds of openings for computer science graduates throughout the company. It is an odd culture that is focused on output and not so much about the quality of its people.

As far as management, I had some really great managers and some really bad managers. I rarely had a manager for more than a year, which meant constantly having to adjust to a new management style and new personality. It becomes tedious after a while. Also, there are just too many managers who are terrible people persons. My last manager was just so aggravating and unwilling to work with my degree pursuit that I left Intel after eight years in order to focus on my degree.

At Intel, a person should be able to seek their full potential, to be able to take on greater roles of responsibility, and to demonstrate their abilities to further the company. I felt that never happened for me.

Just to delineate my performance over eight years at Intel: I always received "exceeds expectation" or "outstanding." I was promoted to the highest level of technician, pay grade 57.

When I left Intel, no one even interviewed me on why I wanted to leave. I submitted my letter of resignation and left two weeks later. It just seems weird that upper management doesn't even seem to know why their personnel are leaving.