Cypress Semiconductor Reviews

Pros

- amazing products
- profit driven and delivers results
- stock has been profitable in recent years
- great core values that employees are constantly reminded of

Cons

- very poor compensation, salary, raises, promotions
- abusive management (verbally)
- no growth or learning that can be used outside of the company
- lack of recognition unless you are in top 5-10%
- lack of respect for people
- employees aren't treated as humans
- work under constant threat of being given the boot
- no appreciation of hard working loyal employees
- lack of vision for future
- VERY POLITICAL (can not emphasize this enough)
- haphazard business driven decisions, "Lets do this NOW, ALL OF YOU!"
- Stingy and miserly when it comes to spending money on professional industry standard tools (they like to home-brew EVERYTHING)

Advice to Senior Management

treat every employee as you expect to be treated by your investors. its the team that makes the company, not the individuals. quit with the politics. quit trying to enumerate TJ (it only works for him, the rest of you come off as jerks)

Pros

Lots of smart dedicated engineers
Interesting products and good technology

Cons

Abusive upper-level management. Almost every meeting with an executive (and there are lots of them) includes someone being insulted, cursed at, and belittled. The threat of termination is often given and carried out. The worst job I've ever had. Second place was McDonalds when I was 16.

The management style is very old school and there is no interest in changing it. For example, they use a waterfall project management process that's very rigid. Most R&D projects elsewhere are run using an Agile or Adaptive process that is much better suited for projects with uncertainty. At Cypress there's an expectation that you will meet schedules that are created before key questions have been answered. Management focuses on these schedules rather than meeting customers needs, quality, or life-work balance.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your employees.

Pros

Excellent and commited professionals at all levels. Great benefits package including the employee stuck purchase plan. Some great middle management but lack of overall vision from upper management.

Cons

I felt that upper management did not have a clear vision. For example, they would make reorganizations only to abandon them at the slightest hint that it was not working. Employees live in constant fear of layoffs.

Pros

Interesting CEO and culture, interesting products.

Cons

Financially up and downs, but this is not exactly the company's fault.

Advice to Senior Management

I won't talk things I don't know about.

Pros

1. Always trusted the competence of my peers and coworkers. Cypress hires "the best", and it's true.
2. Always felt like I am doing something important
3. The hardest working people are recognized for their accomplishments.
4. TJ leads Cypress with profit in mind at all times. This makes sure you'll likely have a job (and good stock price) next year.
5. Compensation for international employees is above average for their respective region.

Cons

1. While your coworkers will be amazing, your success at Cypress is decided by your management, especially the ones who assign you work and decide your fate in the focal review.
2. You're always doing something important because your group is always understaffed and overworked. 50 hour workweeks are normal.
3. Since everyone's already working 50 hours a week, you have to sacrifice other aspects in your life to succeed and shine (depending on how good your manager is at negotiating a reasonable schedule that satisfies employee work-life balance and time to market).
4. Sometimes the only path to profit is to slog tons of hours, shorted-handed, to beat the company's competitor to market. Expect a promotion only in years when the company is doing well (and has money to spend on promoting you).
5. Compensation for USA employees is below average.

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees like gold and they'll make gold. Treat them like crap and they'll make crap. Everyone works hard in this company, but compensation doesn't match that of competitors or other companies in the area. It shouldn't be surprising when employees leave because they can get paid more somewhere else for less hours at work.

Pros

I like the work environment. My managers have been very willing to let me go after the work I'm interested in doing, within the confines of their responsibilities of course. I like the fact that within my two groups now there has not been any set predefined rolls, so everyone does a bit of everything. As an NCG this provides me a lot of learning opportunities.

Cons

The pay is less than other comparable companies. I hear lots of story filtering down about T.J., its best to stay out of his way. The paperwork can also be excessively heavy at times.

Pros

Stock options if they are low
Some cool tecnology
Gas station on site
Facilities are pretty nice, but cubes are tiny or shared unless you are a director.
ESPP was really, really good. 18 month lock on price.

Cons

Long hours
Late hours - much of the work is overseas. Be ready for LOTS of late and early calls. Doesn't mean you don't have to be at your desk at 8 AM though.
Poor raises. Get what you can while negotiating. It will be 1% max for rest of your life. Forget about promotions too. I was promised one for 2 years and finally gave up and left.

Advice to Senior Management

Process is not the answer for everything.
Treat employees like people, not widgets.
Cheaper is not always better
Be ready for a mass exodus when peoples options start to run out.
At least provide the illusion of a career path.

Pros

Good products to work on
Great communication from company
Your ideas and suggestions welcome and will be rewarded as long as there are in line with company's roadmap
Great oppurtunities for employee training
Great first and second tier management

Cons

Salaries don't match that of competition
Engineering experience, specially design experience and ideas not valued
Not many other companies in the area
Employee moral low, because of various factors
High level management too products and company centric than employee centric

Advice to Senior Management

value engineers more

Pros

-Good salary, benefits, etc.
-The company is very open, with very little internal secrecy.
-It is fast-paced and things happen quickly.
-You're always working on something new and frequently face new challenges.
-The company culture is not overly political.
-The CEO is not afraid to decisively take action to correct legitimate problems and issues.
-Generally, it is not hard to be quite mobile with your position in the company. That is, it's not hard to move into other positions that you may be more interested in.
-Generally, your goals and your work that you are supposed to accomplish are very well-defined. There is little ambiguity to what you should be trying to accomplish.
-In general, there are very few draconian policies in the company. The company puts a good measure of trust in their employees and the employees are mostly trustworthy.
-The atmosphere is very professional. There are very few people in the company that don't "pull their weight" or are excessive time-wasters.

Cons

-Most of the skills gained on the job are "soft skills" and there aren't so many "hard skills" that you gain on the job. Or, it is hard to document or show what you have accomplished using the "hard skills" that you have on the job.
-Often, over time, processes in the company quickly move from being lean and efficient to bureaucratic and slow.
-Often, the different business units in the company do a poor job of supporting each other or collaborating with each other.
-The atmosphere can be overly professional. That is, it is somewhat hard to develop relationships that go beyond professional. The "water cooler talk" is generally just more talk about work.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall, I believe the management at Cypress is doing a good job. I would say that the company could be much-improved if there could be a way of getting the different business units in the company to work together and collaborate together much better.

Pros

Ability to work Cross functionaly

Cons

Decisions are made slow in upper management

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize talent