Qualcomm

Qualcomm is at the cutting edge of technology, and you might actually get to see some of it. I suppose if you are an actual Qualcomm employee, it would be great to work there. It is exciting to learn about new things in the industry. I don't think that free soda, coffee, and tea make up for the bad stuff. If you are a man and from India and work hard, you will probably do really well. So many other people like it there. I would still give another group at Qualcomm a chance if the opportunity arose.

As a contractor, though, it is not such a great place.

Pay is not great for the long hours they expect of you.

I had a desk but was seriously discouraged from using it and expected to do all my work in a noisy lab with continual disruption that made it very difficult to do quality work.

I think (hope) most of my dissatisfaction had to do with the group I was in.

I was never really sure who I was supposed to take direction from. One person was very aggressive about demanding my time in order to make something look good for the upper management (and take all the glory, of course), then there was no interest in following through to a truly useful end.

I felt used and was rarely given the satisfaction of completing what I was working on.

As soon as this person knew I had something special planned for an evening or weekend, there would be some crisis that required me to choose between my job and my private life. Only once did I feel this was justified.

Privately I was told I was doing a great job, etc, etc. But in public it was a different story; there was consistent and subtle disparagement, disrespect, and clear indication to others that I couldn't possibly have anything worthwhile to contribute to any plan.

I have worked with aerospace, automotive and mechanical engineers since the early 1980s and this was the first place where I felt seriously at a disadvantage being female.

The prejudice is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

I also felt that there was no future for me in my department because I am not from India. Only people from India were rolled over to full-time Qualcomm employees. And if you are not part of the Hindi grapevine, you never know what is going on.

Constant interruption is not the same thing as multitasking. And it doesn't matter how many phones you test if the tests don't actually test what needs to be tested.