Cree Reviews

Pros

1. Cree demands absolute accountability from it's employees, at least in my division. There is an overwhelming amount of talent in the company and it shows. For the most part, management keeps an open-door policy and will try to support you in meeting the goals of the business. The business is exciting and Cree has a world-class product in lighting-class LEDs. The compensation is good, especially for a young Engineer carrying some serious financial responsibility.

2. You are given no leash at all on the tools at Cree in my group. You can learn as many as you want and go as deeply as you want to. Once you learn something, you basically become responsible for it. It's an interesting system. You naturally fall into a tool.

3. I have come to call Cree a "boot camp" for Engineers. It is a very marketable resume builder because it is known for yielding world-class work ethic if you can make it through at least a year.

4. The triangle is a fantastic place to live. I particularly love Chapel Hill and Raleigh. It's swimming with young professionals who have money and like to go out.

Cons

1. Unforunately, the IT systems at Cree are not very good and information is not shared well. I find myself constructing reports that should be completely automated at least 1-2 times per day. That is the biggest downside to Cree. As a result, young Engineers must work extraordinary amounts of hours. The reviews saying you work 60 hours a week are not exaggerating. If you are new, you will live there. You will also be new for a very long time, which is why I see many people that are gone before the 2 year mark. It's basically expected.

2. Generally, 2 days off per week are allowed for salaried Engineers, but sometimes we even work on our weekends. This is the main reason for the title of my review. Cree needs to learn that people work to live, not live to work.

3. You will not get the conventional weekends as a new Engineer. Most entry level people will work Sunday-Thursday or Tuesday-Saturday and work extremely odd hours.

4. Cree does not encourage other pursuits in your life or any professional development besides "on-the-job" learning.

5. Lower-level employees generally get very little credit for sometimes remarkable feats. Then, they are belittled in front of the team when things don't go well.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to treat people fairly. You are continuing to lose tremendously talented people who love your company and products and would be passionate about your business if they could lead a normal life. Fix the IT system and automate some more processes. This will allow the company to launch products faster.

Pros

Can gain some experience s

Cons

Limited growth opportunity, company has some fairness issue. After a while, you start thinking everyday that what did I really learned today to enrich myself other than collecting some $ for the 10+ hrs at work.

Pros

1) Critical management comments make you rise up to the occasion each time... that helps in polishing your skills
2) hands on experience were they expect engineers to be on the floor
3) fast management decisions that directly impact company revenue
4) benefits okay
5) In rare occasions your idea can get heard and implemented as long as it is really good!! But do NOT expect this to help you in your annual review (disclaimer)

Cons

1) ZERO work-life balance
2) not a company for a person in their 20s where you need to see the world and have fun... work schedules are like 12-14hours (no extra pay)
3) Pay scales suck.. if you are an engineer or lower you get ripped apart. You are basically a personal assistant to the "scientists". Scientists get paid well and everyone below that are dispensable and dont get paid with market standards.
4) As an engineer you existence and respect is not taken care of. You get yelled at and insulted in group meetings. Makes you wonder if LEDs important or basic self respect in life!! I am a BIG supporter of LED lights but I cant compromise my life and basic well being by working for such sadists.
5) 99% of the time engineer is given the work to move batches and wafers and you need to be higher up to get actual process development opportunities.
6) too much hierarchy in the system ... and you are made to think that if you are an engineer you are above technicians/operators. I am a person who like treating people equally, and I hate to be the bad guy and be mean to techs/operators when things go bad.
7) more visibility to top management when you make a small mistake and ZERO visibility when you do a good thing
8) New engineers start career in night shift. this is the worst shift. day shift passes so many things onto you that you end up staying 12-14 hours everyday. Finally your social/family life suffers. Is this really worth it?
9) The more longer you stay in Cree, the more "powerful" you become. But trust me, you become unmarketable to the outside semiconductor industry if you are an engineer in Cree. Scientists have it different as they own all product development.
10) final line --> AIN'T WORTH SPENDING YOUR LIFE HERE!!!!

Advice to Senior Management

- Be nice to your engineers at times
- UNDERSTAND that your employees are your greatest wealth and strength. Treat them well and and you will see results better and so will your share holders be happy.
- Learn the manners to be nice so that your people will work harder and be more happy to work for you
- You can pay slightly higher to the hard working engineers and save money by cutting down the CEO's lavish expenditures (esp when we hear a 20-30k $$ spending in ONE trip for flight alone)
- Allow engineers to have some development opportunity.. for God sake!!! You recruit them as "Process Development Engineer" and you make them move wafers for customer orders... what the HELL!!

Pros

Cree is a leader in LED technology and is a good place to make a difference and contribute to changes. There are many good people working at Cree and opportunities to learn most areas. It is also a great area, close to the beach and mountains and a reasonable cost of living.

Cons

Terrible management and a very negative workplace. Management is full of scientist with little interpersonal skills, although very smart. Planning is poor and everything is last minute. There is an overall view that cheaper is better and that it is cheaper to make it work, but overall cost is not calculated. Need to embrace a true manufacturing mentality. Also needs to update IS infrastructure.

Advice to Senior Management

People skills needed. Management needs to learn to treat people with respect and still get work done. Needs to embrace manufacturing mentality and grow with the size of the company. Treatment of the employees is very poor and results in too high of a turn-over rate.

Pros

great colleges to work with-very good engineers, teams stick together, inovations happens fast
great individual leaders you never get bored.

Cons

bad managers too long in high position not trained-fear of competition

Advice to Senior Management

get a lot of training. the good ones are rare and are really good.
the bad ones =well they rule the place-

Pros

Lots of work, lots to learn.
Great place to start a career
Helpful managers, sometimes annoying but mostly cool.
Good Quality of work / projects

Cons

Work Life Balance will go out-of-whack.
If you are not a Scientist, growth is stagnant.
Compensation meager at best

Advice to Senior Management

Please tackle the issue of compensation seriously, employees are seriously under pad for the time / effort they put in.

Pros

Interesting place to work. Fast paced, challenging,

Cons

Sometimes high pressure and challenging.

Pros

Free gym and an on-site cafe.
Decent benefits including medical, dental, 401k, tuition reimbursement, stock purchase plan
Winter party every year for employees

Cons

- Work/life balance does not exist.
- Do whatever it takes to achieve the goal is gospel.
- Some managers are abusive and demeaning to staff.
- Those that complain can and will be replaced.
- Executive level is set in their ways and have no interest in employee morale.
- Little chance of growth within company.
- Little communication from upper management with regard to organizational changes.

Advice to Senior Management

You will get more productivity from your employees if you didn't make them choose between the business and the family. Employees would have less of an issue working 60+ hours a week if they were allowed to leave to attend little Johnny's play at school during the day, or go to the doctor without fear of repercussions. Employees do not feel valued by management or respected yet are expected to respect management. Management do not follow their own value statements.

Pros

Cree has great benefits, great job security, a great product, and excellent market position that should allow them continued dominance and mastery over their competitors should nothing surprising happen. Working at Cree was a very valuable experience for me in many ways.

Cons

For all of the great things about Cree and there are a lot, there are four major things that it does not handle well.
      The first is that there is no concept of work-life balance. They expect you to work weekends, holidays, erratic schedules, and 12+ hr shifts. It would not be so bad if trying to schedule vacation days was not like trying to pull out your own teeth with a pair of pliers. I lost a significant number of vacation days, because there was no "convenient time" to schedule my vacation request. If you are not an R&D Scientist then you are going to be hard pressed to have all of your holidays off.
      The second is that Cree's merit compensation is also a misnomer, since merit is based more off of the "amount of time" you work and the "number of years" that you have worked there and not the "quality of your work". Cree loves warm bodies. You can be incompetent, but if you work over 80 hours a week, you will be well compensated. Despite expecting you to work a ridiculous number of hours they only pay you what the market pays for a 40 hour a week job.
      The third is that Cree does a very poor job at building their internal talent and helping valuable and talented employees move up the ladder. Many of the fellow operators, techs, and engineers that I worked with that were obviously over qualified were unable to go anywhere. On more than one occasion I was told myself, that I was hired as a tech and despite my engineering degree, that a tech I shall remain. They told me in the interview that I would probably be an engineer in a year. Cree prefers to either hire desperate experienced people who have been laid off for cheap, cheap college grads, or to poach an employee from another company over promoting from within. Cree would also prefer to hire a new employee rather than send you to training to improve your skill sets.
      The last is that Cree's culture is very much "Caste" based. There caste's breakdown from lowest to highest as: the Manufacturing Operators, the Technicians, the Engineers, the R&D Engineers, and the R&D Scientist. The culture dictates that each caste is intrinsically superior in every way to the castes below them. They demand absolute respect and obedience from them irregardless if they are even above them in the org chart. To reciprocate these inherent rights they feel that they deserve, every caste is expected to treat the lower caste's very poorly, often times it felt as I was being treated as if I were less than human. The R&D Scientist caste is considered to be infallible and they treat everyone as if they are their servants. If you are not R&D, then your opinion is most likely pointless. Your overall respect, recognition, and intangible perks are directly tied to your caste level. Like most caste based societies, you cannot move up. Personally, the extreme level of arrogance gets old fast.

Advice to Senior Management

Put a stronger emphasis on developing the talent that you already have. You have hoarded a wealth of talent that almost every company would be jealous of, but most of them are in positions that they are obviously over qualified for. Invest in cross training your employees in all of the castes. This will allow for fewer employees to be needed, less of a strain when someone is sick or on vacation, and result in a much higher morale. Take it upon yourself to enforce what you state as the company culture of a "Merit driven culture, where hard and quality work is rewarded" rather than the actual culture of "Merit = Time at work and to remember what caste you come from".

Pros

it's currently expanding, so that is kinda exciting to work there. lots of good opportunities to learn as an entry level person.

Cons

compensation is not as good as i thought; no work life balance; push employee to work long hour with large amount of work. management was not very supportive; overall not a good experience working there.

Advice to Senior Management

try to actually care about the employee and make sure they are happy.