Seagate Technology

The work is interesting. A lot of freedom is given to engineers to take their own initiative. Work life balance is good most of the time, but can get very busy and stressful at short notice. The company culture is friendly (no back biting, shaming, or bullying that I've seen). Great place to get experience in a large globally recognised company.

Progression is very slow. Very limited numbers of promotions available to staff each year. Pay is much lower than industry average. Pay increases with promotions are very poor (only £4K difference between Sr and Staff engineer). With high attrition, the company is chronically understaffed, and current staff is grossly underexperienced (sounds like a good opportunity for progression, but it is not). Past 2 years have seen a freeze on pay rises and bonuses (with high inflation, this is a severe real-terms pay cut). Managers are under high pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines. Management (mid to senior level) act in a very shortsighted manner (seems motivated more by short-term self-preservation than genuinely driving technology forward). Projects are started with full, clear knowledge that they will be redundant to company needs before completion.

Solve the attrition problem. Day-to-day company operations are becoming unsustainable without experienced expert staff. The attrition rate is severely hindering productivity. I'm less than 3 years in the company and feel that I can't progress much further without more experienced staff to learn from, as my daily work has just become firefighting and blind troubleshooting.