Marvell Technology

Some very smart technical people are there.

I can't speak about the entire company because they have so many things going on there. So this is just my experience with my particular business unit.

1. Cost is king so if you are a manager most if not all of your technical team will be overseas. You will lose people. You will have people quit before they even start. It's not you, it's the culture there. You will also end up losing home time to having to have calls in the evening because of the time difference. Perhaps a lot of time.

2. The laptops they give you to do any actual work are actually quite cheap and horrible and way underpowered for doing anything. You'll learn to hate yours. See comment 1.

3. Everyone will say 'You should definitely be at this conference.' No one will pay for it. You won't go.

4. Everyone will say 'You are on the list to go to this conference.' You will work hard to get ready and get all of the necessary work done. Shortly before the conference, you will find out in a random way that you are in fact not going and that some new senior person is going instead. No one who is going will go to any of the technical sessions and so the whole point of having a technical conference is lost.

5. The heads of business units might have some vague idea about the market segment that you are trying to target, but not enough to where it really matters. If you try to educate them (because they hired you to be the expert and they keep reminding you that you're the expert -the only expert in fact because the former chief expert quit out of frustration ), they won't listen. They'll imagine that what you are doing is like trying to sell smart phones and it's 2005. It's not and it isn't and the comparison isn't even close to being apt. Since they're not listening, they're yelling at you a lot. You'll try to make the place better but won't succeed.

6. You'll get a new boss without ever having had the chance to interview them. They'll just show up one day. This should be a red flag to anyone about how much senior management trusts and values your opinion.

Mostly to the CEO since my VP didn't listen: If you're trying to break into a new market segment, make sure the people that you put in charge of it know what they're doing and understand that segment. Also, make sure the VPs have proper management training because, to be honest and you must know this, some of them are absolute nightmares to work for. I'm sure they're great when they're around you but I can guarantee you that everyone else below them hates them. Despite my years of experience at different companies, I'd never been to meetings where senior directors would get so mad at a VP that they would hurl harsh words at them and storm out of the room.

Now, I understand you needing to get rid of a lot of people. That's fine. That's a business decision. At the same time, if you're going to get rid of the experts that you hired you should probably also ask yourself about the performance of the person who made that decision, made decisions about the timing, wasn't up to speed about what the competition was doing so their product release came as a bit of a surprise (despite the fact that nothing is a surprise), and then fired all of the experts so now you don't have any anymore. Notice I'm still trying to be helpful here instead of complaining to you about the stress.