Qualcomm Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Qualcomm

Pros – - Many clubs and activities (assuming you have time to attend)
- Decent salary
- Good environment
- Free drinks

Cons – - Life in my group was horrible.
- Incompetent and verbally abusive management.
- Back stabbing, mind games, stealing ideas, hiding facts from upper management.

Advice to Senior Management – Make sure you know who you hire. Follow up HR issues, listen more the employees. Some of the people in high positions were probably good engineers, but they are not good managers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm

Pros – -> You can do a lot of work without getting paid much.

Cons – - > Qualcomm HR is really really bad and they try to take advantage of people thats why they always go and hire people from companies who have recently laid off people because in desperate times people are ready to take up any position and at any salary, they specially do that with international's working here. I have not seen any other similar company do this.

-> Qualcomm wants you to work all day and night and then doesn't want to reward you for it, not even a pat on the back.

-> they have tons of directors, yes Qualcomm likes to give lofty positions to people and they have so much hierarchy in terms of positions that a person joining at a lower level feels like a useless worm here.

-> the so called upper management never cares to talk to employees.

-> Promotion system is totally vague and seems highly unjust.

Advice to Senior Management – - > Keep an eye on what your hiring people are doing.
-> Reward people based on their work and not if they are friends with you.
-> For godssake talk to everyone under you once in a while at least.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm

Pros – Right now, stable company to work for

Cons – no recognition, no promotion if you do work, no promotion if you don't speak language other than english, no promotion if u don't work late even if you come at 5.00 AM, no promotion if you say NO to your lead, no promotion if you stress on quality

Advice to Senior Management – Change the concept of visibility to productivity for evaluating employees. Because many are visible and get goo pie, but how much their contribution?????

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm

Pros – Salary and Benefits. Family life / work balance in some departments is good, some not.

Cons – Middle level management is too wide spread and upper management is too busy to monitor what middle management is doing.

Advice to Senior Management – Must get more involved in what middle management is doing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm

Pros – It pays the health insurance and has 15 days of vacation offered from the 1st year.

Cons – matrix organization, too many level of managemnt, too many politics, aftects the work and the communications

Advice to Senior Management – To reorganize the middle level of management inclusive VP (who carry with them people that they know not people that perform) and get ride of politics and the vertical structure with matrix organization. This type of organization does not promote innovation, communication and makes very difficult to work within the organization. Basically you work the politics. Especially the QTC organization of program management is not based on recognition of the good work but only politics and relationship. The good job is not rewarded but only politics of who you know. I think that QCOM is just lucky to be in the position that it is now based only on the leverage of its chipsets. The middle level management of does no do any action to make people accountable on their failure promotes grapevine and politics and does not reward people that are doing a good job. All it is of how many years did you work with QCOM and who you know. Also has an unfair way of promoting people. In this very vertical and matrix organization there are many weds that are never clear up but just move from one management place to another. Half of the managers barely speak English and have no management training other the in-house training.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm

Pros – Leading edge technology and opportunity for acquiring technical knowledge

Cons – Extremely long hours, rude and lousy middle and senior-level management (Dir, VP & Sr. VP level), chaotic, lack of processes, go-with-the-crowd-attitude, do not appreciate out-of-the-box thinking, don't give credit when credit is due, nepotism is in full effect! It doesn't matter if you are completely incompetent, as long as you know a senior-level manager, you will get in and you will have the doers working under you to do the job so that you can take the credit for it.

Advice to Senior Management – Improve your processes so the employees don't have to work 60+ hours to get something done that could be accomplished in 40 hours. Seriously review the knowldege-base and the managemnt skills of your Sr.and VP level management. Put a STOP to the growth in your middle management. They are NOT helping your operational efficiency!! Solicit direct input from your employees on the quality of their work environment. MONEY IS NOT EVERYTHING!!!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Qualcomm full-time for less than a year

Pros – You are working with the undisputed leader in the wireless and mobile market.
Great name to have on the resume.
Free breakfast , lunch , snacks, soft drinks, cab facilities and on site gym.
Working on cutting edge technologies.
Very good base compensation. RSU's are absolutely amazing , they simply cannot be matched by any VLSI company.

Cons – Extremely long working hours especially in the Physical Design group. You can end up working 100 hours week along with full night outs. Even after doing a night out , you might still be bashed by your manager for not doing this and that.

Because of the aggressive work schedules , people are expected to be available almost every time, whether its late night or weekend or holidays. Management is treating engineers like slaves. Forget work life balance, this is not the place to be in when you have a family.

They do not care whether you are sick , or dying due to a heart attack, they will still call you to check the ETA of your deliverable!

Due to big volume of work, quality takes a beating, the emphasis is on 'somehow' completing your work, and the only thing discussed in the meetings is ETA. Everybody is working in a factory mode, slogging round the clock , without any innovative thinking. This place works likes a factory!!

Generous RSU's and their vesting period are one big reason why people wont leave Qualcomm even with this bad culture.

Advice to Senior Management – While the wireless market might have become fierce, you cannot treat people like slaves just by giving them big RSU's. Engineers have to be respected.
Better planning and execution is the way to go.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Qualcomm

Pros – There is nothing great about this division of qualcomm.

Cons – Poor work ethics, lack of trust in employees, few micro managers (who are pain to work with), people will 10+ years of exp don't have an basic programming idea and are promoted, be prepared to work for long hours, the managers are from india and they get contractors from india and make them work like slaves for a promise of full time employment and use this to make others work like dogs and call themselves great managers. Hardly, anyone respects them.

   This is NOT a place for an engineer who loves doing what he does, self motivated, independent (that is not enough, will have to be nice to managers).

Advice to Senior Management – Wake up and fire dead weights.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend