Agilent Technologies – “Start taking care of the younger employees here or lose them for higher pay in bay area in a few years”

Pros

Work/life balance, reasonable boss, many experienced folks here that a newly graduate can learn from. People are friendly and it does seem like there's not much politics involved, at least at the engineering level. Generally speaking, great working atmosphere.

Cons

Much below average pay compared to bay area standard, the company makes up for it by providing work/life balance and relatively flexible schedule.

Advice to Senior Management

Seriously, start taking care of the younger engineers. Recognize they are the future of this company as there are too many lifers whom are under-achievers here. Don't low ball on the raises, promote those young stars and take their feedback seriously. Retain them otherwise all that's going to happen in a few years is to see them leave their jobs for higher pay in bay area once they get their experiences.

The sad truth is that those lifers will be here no matter what (that's why I call them lifers), even if they are discontented with their jobs only because they have families here and bought homes already in this remote little town with no similar job opportunity within 30-mile radius. They'd rather whine about their jobs than simply pack up and go. The senior management subconsciously acknowledges this and seems to exploit this by down-sizing the employee benefit package (salary and health plan) all in the names of "reacting to this turbulent economy” knowing the employees would have no other place to go anyway.

This mentality works for those lifers who simply want a stable employment and a monthly paycheck (and I believe they’d rather put up with these changes than being laid off and have no where else to go). But note that this management philosophy FAILS DISASTROUSLY when applied to the young engineers that work here that are single and are highly mobile. The company just needs to come to its sense and RECOGNIZE this fact and do whatever it takes to retain your top young talents, even if it means creating some kind of "hidden" double standard policy.

After all, ask yourself who’s doing your next spectrum/network analyzer, running your fabs, your software programming 10 years from now?

Managers out there if you are reading this, please wise up and really contemplate on the following:

ALL it take to lose a young engineer with great potentials and values (whom the company has also invested time training) is a quick phone call from a company in the bay area with a promise of +10% raise, relocation assistance, and matched benefits (besides the pay here isn’t stellar at all by any means). So there you go, you’ve just LOST your next superstar, he/she's gone in two weeks.