Pros

One of the top three EDA companies (Obviously mentor is the 3rd after Synopsys and Cadence). Decent number of FTO days that is not compared to any other company in the Silicon Valley. Note this is prior to 2009 cuts which took it down from 24 days to 15 days which is still OK but not superb as it was before

Cons

Most of senior managers in the product divisions (specially in the small product groups that don't have decent revenue) are clueless. Many of them are from different industries and don't understand much about EDA or semiconductor and want to run the company as a pure software company.

Advice to Senior Management

Chairman, CEO, and most of the GMs/VPs are clueless about what is happening in the product divisions. The board of directors should rock the boat and change most of the managers.

Pros

Friendly, knowledgeable and helpful staff. There is a small charismatic minority at Mentor who wants to rock the boat and create change at Mentor. Unfortunately Mentor is a mammoth that doesn’t want to wake up. From what I have heard the US has excellent benefits, in Europe everyone has good benefits because of work protection laws. You don’t need to work for a specific company to receive good benefits.

Cons

Favouritism at Mentor Europe is as clear as crystal water. A while ago some 30-40 seasoned employees were made redundant from Mentor in Europe. During the same time at a certain department a contractor with links to the company was offered permanent role with significant increase in salary while the department halved its staff.
When asking my manager for a reference letter, he responded that Mentor has as policy to never provide reference for its former employees. I have never heard of such absurdity! Just visit Linkedin and see how many former Mentor employees have received recommendations from their former colleagues. I know for sure that this statement had nothing to do with my performance since I during the same year had received recognition for exceptional performance.

Bottom line, Mentor Europe is extremely unprofessional and poorly managed.

Mentor Corp. Executive Team have no vision. They have been setting the same unrealistic goals for the past 10 years and they have not even been close to achieving them.

On the corporate website you can read: “Mentor Graphics® is a leader in electronic design automation.” What exactly is Mentor a leader in? Is it technology? is it number of licensed users? Is it revenue? Last time I checked the financials they were number 3!
Leader isn’t second or third place, it is number 1! If Mentor is the leader than what is Cadence and Synopsis? Maybe they are number 1 and 2 in the pro league while Mentor is number 1 in the amateur league. The fact that Mentor claims to be a leader while being number 3, shows that the company has no intention of changing.

Advice to Senior Management

Rock the boat!!!! Put fresh blood in the senior ranks, people who are hungry for success and progression.

Pros

Great company, benefits and pay are very good. Facilities are nice with gym and cafeteria.
Best thing of all, no cubes everyone has nice offices. One fo the best companies to work for.

Cons

EDA is not a growing market. Company keeps looking at making acquisition in other markets in order to generate growth.
Employees used to get 5 weeks of vacation per year, which was very unique, but has now been lowered to 3.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is still concerned about their employees. It is a medium size company with a little bit left of the small company feeling, however there needs to be more efficiency. Not all employees have the urgency to get things done.

Pros

Type of work/Technology.
Good career growth in terms of individual skills/expertise.
Working environment.

Cons

Salary/Pay package is lower as compared to market.
Market salary/package surveying is poor.
Lack of understanding of local trends in terms of balancing inflation and currency devaluation.
Not very successful in retaining skilled employees due to pay package/remuneration.

Advice to Senior Management

Must take into account local trends of compensation, compensation practices of MNC, facilities to skilled employees, and understand local market in terms of balancing inflation and currency devaluation.

Pros

1) Leader in the industry, so opportunity to work in leading edge technologies. 2) Relatively flat organization structure. 3) Individual offices for all employees.

Cons

1) Very hectic software release cycles. 2) Career growth opportunities seem to be few and far between. 3) Less visibility for and little acknowledgement of work done.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more recognition to individual contributions and acknowledge employees work periodically. Interact more with employees and use one-on-ones to collect employee feedback.

Pros

motivated and knowledgeable team, generally good atmosphere between colleagues, still good chances for business and personal financial rewards, local management capable and willing to help. As one of the 3 major players in EDA Mentor Graphics is well known and accepted which makes it easier to get considered in business deals.

Cons

Top to down communication often not very efficient. Sometimes it takes more time to sell an opportunity internally than to a customer/prospect. It often takes too much time for planning of a new fiscal year (strategy, compensation details, tactics, goals) where it's not clear whether one heads into the right direction for quite some time.

Advice to Senior Management

Maybe one should remember more frequently that employees and their motivation determine a major part of the success and hence should be really considered to be the most valuable resource.

Pros

Interesting to work with new EDA technologies, and a supportive work environment. Work/life balance is excellent. Management mostly leaves people to do their own thing. I don't work any overtime, which is great. I've had a chance to travel quite a bit, which I love. I've been to maybe 10 countries through work.

Cons

Difficult to move around, so people become stagnant. Management does not communicate strategy, and there are a lot of politics. There is a lot of infighting in my group, so it makes the work environment uncomfortable.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more opportunities to move to other jobs to keep things fresh, with lateral moves.

Pros

Stability, growth position in the EDA industry. Has shown ability to development new products within rather than just acquire which is unusual within big companies.

Cons

Big company, not generous with stock options or profit sharing. Quite a bit of out sourcing is occurring to India, Egypt, Eastern Europe, Pakistan, China

Advice to Senior Management

Must be willing to challenge your viewpoints and take risks. Innovation doesn't happen without it and without innovation you'll be left buying start ups and not truly increasing the companies net worth and therefore it's stock..

Pros

There are a wide range of EDA products to work on. There are many chances to work and socialize with great minds; some groups have weekly social gatherings. The campus in Wilsonville is very nice, with a gym, cafeteria, ponds, etc.

Cons

The learning curve to come up to speed on topics regarding the industry can be quite steep. If you come from a Computer Science background, don't expect to understand everything within a few months!

Advice to Senior Management

None.

Pros

Stable company, lots of opportunities to investigate new projects and plan your own work.
Communication between product teams is minimal, but is very good within a team. Most people have an open door and are willing to help when you ask questions. However, not but much of the procedures or code is documented so you have to go talk to people to pry out the 'tribal knowledge' to find out how things work.

Great campus and it's really nice to have your own office. Time off and working from home is quite common and you can actually get away for the weekends.

Cons

Some teams are much more political then others. Senior management tends to hire more senior people to do more managing which doesn't leave too many people to do the actual work. New college grads are rarely hired.
EDA tools are based on some pretty old software methodologies so any software knowledge learned isn't very transferable to the real world.
Processes to control quality and to well document and test new features seem to get thrown out the window by marketing when we reach the end of the release window.
Salary is slightly slower than average, but benefits are great and it's a stable environment to work in. Many people have been here for 15+ years.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire younger people