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Senior Hardware Engineer

Senior Hardware Engineer
Current Employee
Has worked at Nvidia for 9 years
September 8, 2015
Santa Clara, California
2.0
Doesn't RecommendNeutral OutlookNo CEO Opinion
Pros

Working with leading-industry technology - although some may consider that an illusion.

Original company founders are superb presenters.

Job security.

Cons

Difficulty adopting industry-standard practices.

Lots of legacy, outdated engineering practices.

Engineers get boxed into their area of expertise, making it difficult to grow out.

It is very easy to let your professional career stagnate after a few years.

The company does not lay off under-performers, which may be good for job security but may have slackers lying around.

Leaders are obsessed with cutting costs. This results in unpopular company benefits and difficulties in what many would consider fairly straightforward hardware procurement at other companies: not being able to upgrade storage to SSD, only one medium-sized monitor provided to each engineer, having to work with systems that are 5 years old or older, not enough lab equipment (i.e., oscilloscopes, temperature regulators), etc.

Some decisions seem to cost the company more money and headaches when certain equipment has to be passed around (because there aren't enough) and gets lost in the process.

The leader has never been big on work-life balance and abuses the "work hard, play hard" spirit. I have heard several jokes here about engineers being lured with a carrot to be beaten up with a stick.

Advice to Management

Please investigate ways to reward engineers and provide easier ways for them to connect with their end products. Our products nowadays are not that interesting.

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