Sandisk

You may work on interesting problems that depend on the group. You will come across people who are talented and skilled in the art, who will motivate you to learn and acquire new skills. My schedule is very flexible, but that depends on your group and where you are in the food chain.

The future of SanDisk and its rather unique position is in question after the pending but imminent acquisition by Western Digital, a rather stagnated, low-technology dinosaur that is trying to save itself by buying rather than innovating. With not much incentive on the horizon, key talented people will likely leave. WDC is not a company that can attract top-notch talent in Silicon Valley.

Pay and benefits are average and don't compare to companies such as Apple or Google, but some of this has to do with the dynamics of the semiconductor industry. In a very good year when stocks are doing well and bonuses are paid 100%, you won't do that bad, but that doesn't happen too often.

For a small company, there are surprisingly too many levels, something like 10 levels from a base engineer to a senior director. Worse, from an outsider, the company, especially technology groups, appear to suffer from an extreme lack of diversity to the point of almost appearing racially biased. There are way too many engineers hired from India. The executives of the company are uniformly Indian and unfortunately biased towards promoting from their own ranks only.

As a result, many executives (not all) lack technical background, talent, and experience; in fact, most don't even have an advanced degree from a reputable school, which is really needed to lead a semiconductor company that thrives on the promise of Moore's law. They make key strategic errors that come to roost after some time.

Overall, this is not a place where a PhD from a top 10 school will feel at home. Come here if you absolutely can't find a job elsewhere.

This advice is for the new management, that is Western Digital.

SanDisk is not Western Digital. You cannot run it the same way you run your current doomed business. That is why most key SanDisk employees aren't slaves who would just desperately work for whatever you throw at them. If you try to reduce benefits in the name of cost cutting and don't provide any competitive incentives, they WILL leave. Why would they work for you? An empty fab won't do much for you.

Folks will carefully watch what is going to happen in the next few months and make their calls, so be careful what decisions you make.