Qualcomm

Depending on the group, work-life balance can be overly good.

If interested in wireless communications, there are lots of classes and trainings.

Very poor management that put the company in a tailspin towards bankruptcy.

Engineers are paid much less than the Silicon Valley competition, while execs are paid more.

The H1B program is being abused both to shackle immigrant employees and to depress wages.

Eagerness to work and being a solid contributor is taken for granted immediately. Promotion and pay raises are based solely on the number of years with the company, not on performance, which drove out a lot of the brightest engineers.

Total compensation packages have been in constant deterioration for the past few years.

Constant risk of being laid off with no potential reward to make up for the risk is something you have to accept.

Overall, I would suggest accepting a position at Qualcomm only as a last resort if nothing else is an option. This is especially true for software engineers.

The company is not structured in a pyramid where engineers are the largest portion of employees. There are more managers, directors, and program managers doing nothing other than attending pointless meetings than there are developer engineers. This needs to be addressed for future profitability.

There is a negligible compensation difference between high and low performers, which kills the motivation to work hard; merit increases are pretty much non-existent. Effectively, high performers are being forced to change jobs. Using the San Diego location as an excuse for keeping wages low is not the way to go, apparently.

The CEO, Chairman of the Board, and President positions need to be consolidated to a single person, which would save on enormous costs, make the company more profitable, and enable agile decision-making. Similarly, the number of Directors, VPs, and managers needs to be reduced.

And the most important point: matrix management only complicates business life; it has no benefit whatsoever. Another point is that people working on one project need to have their offices very close to each other. Having multiple people working on completely different projects sitting in one office is just inefficient.