KLA

People are smart, decent benefits, good place to learn "soft" skills straight out of school. People on the mechanical team are all level headed and easy to work with. You learn a lot the first year to year and a half. I would leave after that.

1. Politics and risk mitigation. Any design that deviates from past designs will be shot down immediately. Who is pitching the concept seems to matter more than the concept itself during CDRs.

2. Concepts and designs are never validated on a subsystem level. Thus, there is never any data to properly evaluate how well a design works and furthermore never the data required to give design specs for the next system.

3. Projects are always understaffed and schedules are not founded in reality. In my three years at the company, not once had I finished a project on time. This is common place. Do not buy into being behind schedule. It will only create unnecessary stress in your life. Work hard, but know you will never get ahead and the harder you work the more work will be dumped on you.

I left because I felt the group did not do "real" engineering, there is no clear path for upward mobility within the group, and the machine that is FaST is too frustrating to work within. With the current KT-LAM proposed acquisition, shedding of talent, and lack of interesting work, it made sense to leave.

1. Listen to your employees. You have all these grand ideas and proposals laid out during the Engineering Conference and then there is no follow through.

2. Throw your employees a bone every once in a while. Direct managers should personally acknowledge individuals when they put in extra hours, work weekends, or implement a well received design.

3. Validate designs with data, not just gut feelings.

4. Staff the optical department and get rid of those who don't play nice with others.