Anritsu Reviews in Morgan Hill, CA

Current Employee – been working at Anritsu full-time

Pros – Solid and stable place to work. Management is careful to avoid actions and decisions that might jeopardize company stability if the economy turns negative. Fairly laid back atmosphere. Good work/life balance.

Cons – Company has been around for a long time, and some employees have been there for decades. Change (even when obviously needed) is slow to occur. Some groups operate like independent companies, with their own processes and ideas. Very few perks which are typical at other local companies.

Advice to Senior Management – Offer incentives for people to do work rotations in other groups. HR should get more involved in talking to employees, developing career paths, tuning skills to tasks. The company should bring in more perks; on-site car services, on-site dental, etc.

Current Employee – been working at Anritsu

Pros – Wonderful team atmosphere. Excellent work-life balance. Lots of recreational activities (volleyball, basketball, tennis, table-tennis, small gym, running, etc).

Cons – Sometimes a little laid back atmosphere. A little behind the curve when it comes to modern engineering practices and tools (esp. software). Management style tends to be pretty conservative (this can be both good and bad depending on situations).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Anritsu

Pros – Anritsu USA has a family atmosphere. Most its employees have been there for many years so, naturally, they know each other very well. Management focuses on developing its employees through training and offers generous tuition reimbursement for those who want to pursue graduate or technical degrees.

Cons – Anritsu has old school mentality and lacks innovation in many areas.

Advice to Senior Management – Push for more creative, innovative solutions to everyday issues.

Former Employee – worked at Anritsu

Pros – Test instruments require nearly all disciplines of engineering, DSP, FPGA, Complex Synthesizers (PLLs), YIG based Synthesizers, Microwave circuits of all types, MMICs, and system engineering. This is the main reason a technical person would be interested in a company such as Anritsu. The benefits for higher education are quite good as well. I got my MSEE paid for in full by Anritsu. For me, anyway, they sent the money directly to Santa Clara University (SCU) and did not require a lot of paperwork from me. I don’t know if it is the same today since I was employed from the 90s up to 2008. Most companies these days pay nothing for school or next to nothing (like a $2000 budget per year). SCU costs about $1400 per class and you need about 22 classes to graduate, do the math and you find that Anritsu favors strong in this area.

Cons – Well, what can I say? I had many managers at Anritsu. Some situations were good and others were bad. I posted mostly neutral ratings for management stuff since some of my reviews made me look like I could walk on water while other reviews had me looking bad. This is no different than any other place really. Keep in mind that Anritsu is a manufacturing scene so if you have an aversion to that sort of thing then Anritsu may not be your cup of tea. I was in the R&D and never in manufacturing so I was fairly safe, but you’ll still have to interface with manufacturing a lot. It’s necessary since that’s where all the money comes from to cut your paycheck. Now that we’re on the topic of pay I’ll have to point out that my wage has doubled since leaving Anritsu. Low wage in the world’s most expense place to live was a big gripe of mine. In my opinion (based on what other engineers told me about their wage) a typical design engineer earns less than six figures. For example, an experienced engineer with 10 years of design experience might be getting about $85 to $95k per year. I think the trade off here is (or was) stability and technical growth verses pay. For less pay Anritsu offers stability and technical growth. Times have been bad so Anritsu has suffered large setbacks with regards to stability. Mostly, Anritsu is a good place to learn.

Advice to Senior Management – Give engineers more support so they can focus on design. That’s a big request, but it would make and can make a large difference. There is no sense in forcing an engineer to learn schematic entry or overload them with too many day-to-day details of some process. Good and innovative engineering does come from creativity.

Current Employee – been working at Anritsu

Pros – Great people. Good work/life balance. Generally low stress. Good benefits.

Cons – More limited mobility within the organization for the non-EE. Mediocre salary compensation. Unknown risk for the US divisions due to the declining performance of Japan based organizations. Hard to get excited about the company.

Advice to Senior Management – Speak more openly/honestly about the performance/financial health/future of both Japan and US based organizations.

Current Employee – been working at Anritsu

Pros – Good work environment. People are friendly and there are a lot of very smart engineers who work in Morgan Hill (Microwave Measurements Division [MMD]). It's a great environment for learning about different aspects of electrical engineering since test and measurement equipment requires so many of them (RF/microwaves, digital, DSP, analog, PLLs, software, firmware, etc).

Cons – Poor project leadership. Management doesn't seem to be able to recognize who should lead projects and who shouldn't. On the flip side, they seem to recognize this downfall and are trying to provide some training.

Another downside is that MMD is somewhat beholden to Anritsu Corporation in Japan. Usually they are "hands-off" but occasionally they get involved (cancel good projects or reduce funding).

Advice to Senior Management – Get some balls and tell Japan to screw off. :-)

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend