Pros
-Good people, good pay at higher levels, better if you're in an Engineering or Lead role. -Almost all policies in the Team Member Handbook are guidelines that are enforced differently by different sups/leads, naturally. -Benefits are probably better than most, good vacation time accrual, gets better the longer you're with the company. -Work life balance is decent depending on where you work. -Spot bonuses at the discretion of dept. management. -Overall training program is decent when the company deems it important, most position training (outside of software) is on the job where there can be lots of tribal knowledge that get missed. -Makes the effort to reward (bagel parties, ice cream socials, company branded clothing) for company/site milestones or goals, although sometimes this is executed awkwardly ('collectible' magnets for one goal met) and without much consideration for the audience.
Cons
-Promotions are 'checklist' items; do your time and don't screw up too much, you'll get to the next level... puts a lot of people who can't do the job in key positions. -Raises are based on market reviews and management discretion; again, don't screw up and you'll get a raise if you're peers outside of the company are getting higher wages, but if there is no increase, no raise which doesn't reward those putting in extra effort. -Almost all items in the Team Member Handbook are guidelines that are enforced differently by different sups/leads, this leads to lots of confusion and frustration when leadership changes. -Even though this is a manufacturing company that runs 24-7, it is mostly geared toward the 8-5 crowd. Case in point, during the recent earthquake in VA, 1st shift was given the OK to go home out of safety concerns, while the fab teams were cleaning up broken wafers/recovering down equipment; should have been all hands on deck! -Almost all of the software used was developed in house, with most of those developers gone, and is being held together by a prayer. Buggy, bloated and slow, the software frequently hangs or crashes making quick decisions or data analysis very difficult. -Most problems are responded to reactively vs. proactively; an enormously vast amount of data is collected, but rarely used to spot trends or predicted future failures. -Penny wise, pound foolish; will spend 'small' amounts (cause we have to cut our spend every year!) on rebuilt parts that arrive DOA or fail early, not taking into account the cost of the downtime of the tool. -General lack of repercussions -Lots of 1st shift responsibilities push onto shift workers; Equipment Owners are mainly tasked with tracking the metrics of their workstations vs. improving documentation, procedures, parts availability/reliability, mentoring more junior technicians. Process Owners are oblivious to what happens on the floor, they are in meetings all day and will page/IM the fab with requests in stead of carrying their lazy selfs up the to fab and doing it. Documentation, SPC chart names, recipe names, recipe travelers can be months out of date. Years old recipes can reside on the tools, leading to scrap. -LOTS of department hoping, many people work in an area for a year and get bored, thinking the know everything, and start looking for opportunities in other area. This is the semiconductor industry, you won't ever know everything get over yourself.