Cymer Reviews

Pros

Interesting and challenging technology
Competitive pay and benefits package
Close to home
Understands the need for continuing education and provides tuition reimbursement and flexible work schedule

Cons

The majority of new VP's are former Applied Material employees
Way too tall of management structure
Too many chiefs and not enough worker bees
Outsourcing engineering jobs to India
Matrix Management

Advice to Senior Management

Try to get back to positive work culture that existed during the early years when Cymer was a great place to work.

Pros

There are many talented and knowledgeable individual to work with. In general, work environment allows team collaboration and technical learning from sr. staffs.

Ok compensation.

Cons

Reactionary management style. Complete lack of planning in organization and program execution resulted in frustration at individual level. Lots fire fighting, lots long hours to make up for incompetency of program management. Technical leadership tends to be micro-managing; having very little trust to individual contributor's technical decisions. Quick to lay people off when experiencing down turn.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to plan and communicate strategic plan to individual level.
Stop hiring and promoting people based on nepotism

Pros

There are many wonderful and talented people who work there. It's a San Diego based company. Could be a very good business if run correctly.

Cons

There is no true leadership at the top. Incredibly high employee turnover especially at the Sr. management and VP levels. After being in business for over two decades, they're still a one product company serving a technology niche. They are not an employee friendly company as they have had far too many layoffs to claim otherwise (though generally they provide fair severance arrangements). They do not allow their people, even Sr. Managers and Vice Presidents, to make decisions; nearly all decisions, no matter how inconsequential, are made at the very top.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in a management consultant for an honest self evaluation. Interview people from all departments and at every level. Listen to and trust your employees. Change senior management.

Pros

Very interesting technology. Bright, capable coworkers. Generally competitive pay and benefits. Cymer is the worldwide leader in providing lasers to the semiconductor industry for lithography. Due to their market dominance over time, they have a large installed base, which gives them some buffer in market downturns, at they derive a large amount of revenue from spare parts and service.

Cons

Intensely stressful. Very cyclical business, with frequent layoffs. Extreme nepotism in upper management. The company originally was built around being the technology leader in their industry, but as the market has become tighter, they have shifted more to being focused on costs. This has detracted from their tecnnological edge.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce the number of VP's, as the organization is severely top-heavy.

Pros

Cymer once had an upside. Before the pay cuts, they offered fair salaries. With their reputation, they had to. Cymer is worth considering if you're out of a job and have bills to pay. It might also be worth considering as a first job to pay off your student loans and car loans until a real job comes along.

On the bright side, you might learn something about the technology that you can use in your next job.

Cons

Cymer is run by and for the senior scientists. If they do not have the answers, then the problem can not be solved at Cymer. This frustrates both the mid-level managers, engineers and technicians. That fact might be alright if the senior scientists were not insulting in how they treat others.

I have never seen a group of brilliant young PhD scientists treated so badly... and that says a lot.

Advice to Senior Management

Retire as soon as possible.

Pros

Management team has a passion for what they are doing and concern for their employees. Alot of new management in the last few years, and for the most part they have been a good choice.

Cons

Like everywhere else, the market is down and there is not any upside for salaries.

Advice to Senior Management

Tighten up the ship and keep sailing to weather the storm. Consider the small things to keep up employee moral.

Pros

When I started there, the company was pretty small. It was fun and exciting to be there while the company was going through some spectacular growth. At time Bob Atkins was very good at communicating with the employees. I was selected to be one of the employees that would have lunch with him. That was fun and Bob was very easy to talk to. He certainly made it an exciting & fun place to work. I would work for him again.

One of the aspects of the work that I liked was that I worked with people from all over the world, especially scientists from the previous Soviet Union & block countries. I really enjoyed talking with them.

Cons

they lay off pretty quickly and more often than other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

I can't think of anything.

Pros

High tech company with descent pay.

Cons

Cymer is another semiconductor company that has not found the way to a balance between engineering house and manufacturing company. The environment is ego centric around engineering, placing little to no value on the rest of the supporting infrastructure. Cymer continues to fall into the trap that is balancing of the bottom line is adjust the variable assets of the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Educate and develop your employees in methods that will help them align and ultimately help Cymer survive the turbulence of the semiconductor industry. This will help to gain industry friends as Cymer employees move to other companies.