Mentor Graphics Reviews

Pros

not micro-managed
decent pay and benefits
sr. management genuinely has employees interests in mind
nice campus in Wilsonville; nice facility in San Jose

Cons

can be political (isn't that true everywhere?)
company is not on a strong growth path. Employee growth suffers as a result. Stagnant.

Advice to Senior Management

take risks, move into new markets, grow the company. How can you fit into the "new economy"?
consider better stock options and incentive plans for non-sales employees

Pros

decent benefits
understanding to work-life balance
some good technologies

Cons

old boys club
complacent executive leadership
incompetent management
no upward mobility
little knowledge sharing or training programs

Advice to Senior Management

Break the silo culture, hold management feet to the fire

Pros

Great Corp campus and atmosphere. good culture and benefits. On site day care is one of the best in oregon.

Cons

Not a lot of job growth. pay is not great, employees do not feel empowered.

Pros

Very nice work culture
great people to work with

Cons

Hard to advance career due to very flat organization structure

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage the fresh grads to take a more important role in the business

Pros

- Some great Engineers work in the RET/OPC support space

Cons

- Inexperienced Management
- 55+ yr olds, who think of themselves as GODS work here.
- All except three in this group is a young and innovative Engineer.
- No innovation
- Politics everyday
- Poor, inexperienced manager and director.
- Primary cause of loss of business in the IC space

Advice to Senior Management

Please re-evaluate the support CAEs who have been working since 25+ year. They have no clue how the world outside has changed. No creativity, innovation or room for improvement. Stubborn, hard-headed, in-compatible CAEs work in this group.

Pros

Relaxed atmosphere within the company.
Mentor is seemed as a competent EDA vendor and are always looked at when renewing contracts

Cons

Very limited career opportunities. People seem to stay. Sales force has been there forever. Very many different sales channels with internal competition between them. Very bureucratic. Sometimes to get a quota customers give up and go to competiton.

Pros

Mentor Graphics respect employees and have very good benefits relative to other companies. Work load is light and surroundings are modest in terms of technicalities.

Cons

career scope is limited to EDA making it difficult to make a transition to some other company. Slow pace can cause sometimes demotivation.

Advice to Senior Management

hire better calibres and invest in current employees to raise their level of technicalities and skills. Close supervision for low calibres.

Pros

The environment is employee-friendly with flexible work hours with professionalism and high integrity. Most managers are supportive of employees pursuing new and challenging positions within the company.

Cons

It may not be so much a reflection of Mentor as it is the current economic situation, but pay and benefits have not kept pace with what they were previously. Cost cutting seems to have become more important the last couple of years. This may improve as the economy improves.

Pros

You will get to work with very high calibre people and tools. Work environment is mostly professional. Plenty of learning opportunities and possibilities for lateral moves. Great on-site gym and cafeteria. Teams are not overly spread around the globe. Salaries are competitive.

Cons

Work can be more tedious than interesting. Many people have 15+ years tenure with the company and they get first pick. The occasional ass will treat you like the rookie that you are no matter what you can bring. Culture can be overly conservative, an overreaction from the 8.0 fiasco. Not the place for the most modern coding practices. Not the most competitive work culture against start-ups. Partly because the tools are mature, the work is more on maintenance and incremental changes. As a consequence a lot of innovation is from acquisition. Many people do not realize how good they have it and are way too laid back. Harder to attract talents because not the #1 name.

Advice to Senior Management

Could focus on promoting company to attract talent.

Pros

good amount of vacation (although they reduced it)
nice facilities
everyone has an office
good benefits
pay is probably better than it should be for most people there
bonuses can be good, but the process of determining them is usually "gamed" and you never have a clue what is going to happen.

Cons

tons of office politics
middle managers abuse their power
difficult to move around within the company
underskilled workers who are full of themselves, and overly impressed by their own abilities

I worked at Mentor for quite a few years, but in the last few years, things suddenly got a lot worse. The amount of office politics is just staggering, and completely shut off the ability to get work done and create products. It was all about middle management and building their little castles, and who liked whom, and who got credit for what, and whose idea things were, blah blah blah. At the end, we had managers telling others not to talk to various people on the team, belittling, insulting, and cussing out people in meetings, completely throwing out the peer review process, and doing reviews based on what they alone "thought about the person" (i.e., whether the person brown-nosed enough) etc. It's just an absolute madhouse there, I've never encountered anything quite like it (thank goodness) in my professional life.

Advice to Senior Management

You guys need to hold your middle management accountable and quash all the office politics. You'd be surprised how many people you have there whose only interest is in self-promotion, not the company.