Sandisk

It used to have good benefits and culture. It can be a good learning career if the employee is active and aggressive. The working environment is well maintained, plus the employer sponsored a free cell phone. There is good exposure to both engineering R&D and mass production systems.

What made SanDisk great is starting to fade away and SanDisk is becoming more average. People are very conservative and everyone is rather protecting the status quo than taking a risk of making real changes for the benefit of being more efficient.

SanDisk typically follows a 3-year up and down cycle and right now it is in the down phase. One year of free dinner every evening can be followed by another without a single one. Not sure if there will be another up phase since it is being acquired by WD.

Management is rigid with lots of politics. The management team is not adapted to technology changes and the business model isn't working out anymore.

Allow newer and younger talents in the management team. The old way of doing business is not working anymore. I have seen a lot of engineering initiatives taken by the management for the sole purpose of easier management, but that has nothing to help the engineers. These projects are mostly abandoned half way, which weakens the management team's credentials in micro management. Micro management can only create more work to engineers and managers, especially when the managers are not that technically competent to start with.