It's a really large company so, has you pointed out, this is just my experience.
Pros:
It has provided compelling compensation in Oregon (significantly more than my previous position, but I'm junior so large jumps are normal) and work (leading edge tech in my field, plenty of external eyes looking at it).
All my managers all the way up to and including the CEO are very successful engineers and understand the technical detail of what they're managing extremely well. Pat is very capable of talking about details of upcoming processes during internal meetings, for example.
I also feel empowered by my manager and colleagues to point out how we could improve our methodology, although that often results in extra projects for me, requiring some sacrifice of personal time if I want to complete them all (which is what I'm looking for right now but not sustainable in the long run).
I quite like OKR system and I feel like my manager really understands what I'm doing and provides useful feedback.
Cons:
I feel there's a bit of a "fire-fighting mentality" in parts of the foundry, especially as you get closer to the fab. There's an unspoken pride in spending your day working late to fix some issue.
Many teams are constantly in meetings debugging issues caused by human error and no one seems to ask the question "how can we automate this so it doesn't happen again?" because they're HW not SW people.
A lot of my automation side projects require buy-in from other teams and there's been some friction in showing them the value of their cooperation ("this is how we've always done it" kind of attitude). Thankfully I have more senior engineers and managers who have a vision to fix these issues so it's going in the right direction.
I believe this is not unusual in HW manufacturing.
If you get placed in a team that has a bad methodology and has a manager that has no vision on how to completely revamp it, then it's going to be a real slog.
If you're thinking of accepting a position at Intel Foundry, feel free to drop contact and we can talk further about my experience here.
If you don’t mind me asking, what is your role in particular? Are you a module engineer, a metrology engineer or are you in design enablement? Also, is Intel Foundry currently hiring given all the cuts and layoffs? I hope your job is safe amid all the turmoil!
> If you don’t mind me asking, what is your role in particular? Are you a module engineer, a metrology engineer or are you in design enablement?
I'm a test engineer in Design Enablement, specifically in Advanced Design testing high speed IO.
I'm sure you can find my Linkedin through my callsign if you'd like to know more details or reach out.
> Also, is Intel Foundry currently hiring given all the cuts and layoffs?
Yes, there's case by case exemptions, just depends on that team's needs and staffing levels.
There's also voluntary internal movement as part of the pre-layoff process.
Pros: It has provided compelling compensation in Oregon (significantly more than my previous position, but I'm junior so large jumps are normal) and work (leading edge tech in my field, plenty of external eyes looking at it). All my managers all the way up to and including the CEO are very successful engineers and understand the technical detail of what they're managing extremely well. Pat is very capable of talking about details of upcoming processes during internal meetings, for example. I also feel empowered by my manager and colleagues to point out how we could improve our methodology, although that often results in extra projects for me, requiring some sacrifice of personal time if I want to complete them all (which is what I'm looking for right now but not sustainable in the long run). I quite like OKR system and I feel like my manager really understands what I'm doing and provides useful feedback.
Cons: I feel there's a bit of a "fire-fighting mentality" in parts of the foundry, especially as you get closer to the fab. There's an unspoken pride in spending your day working late to fix some issue. Many teams are constantly in meetings debugging issues caused by human error and no one seems to ask the question "how can we automate this so it doesn't happen again?" because they're HW not SW people. A lot of my automation side projects require buy-in from other teams and there's been some friction in showing them the value of their cooperation ("this is how we've always done it" kind of attitude). Thankfully I have more senior engineers and managers who have a vision to fix these issues so it's going in the right direction. I believe this is not unusual in HW manufacturing.
If you get placed in a team that has a bad methodology and has a manager that has no vision on how to completely revamp it, then it's going to be a real slog.
If you're thinking of accepting a position at Intel Foundry, feel free to drop contact and we can talk further about my experience here.