Novellus Reviews

I have been working at Novellus full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Opportunity - Novellus runs lean; you are expected to produce.

Cons – Too political - powerful leaders get away with everything.

Advice to Senior Management – Make people responsible for mistakes pay for those mistakes. Some management is great; others are liars.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Novellus

Pros – Engineers do not have to deal with business issues

Cons – Company is highly dependent on chip maker's forecast and job security is weak

I worked at Novellus full-time for less than a year

Pros – It's a job. There are a handful of helpful people there. The rest just keep their head down and don't go too far out of their way to help others.

Cons – Company culture is bland and the products are not very inspiring - or reliable for that matter. The management staff seems to be out of touch with any of the people that actually do the work.

Advice to Senior Management – Find out what your people are doing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Novellus full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Overall good company, promoted within, had a solid product base.

Cons – CEO's management of the company focused on selling the company in recent years, which held back proper staffing and investments. Good news is it was sold to LAM recently to address this.

Advice to Senior Management – Proper balance of investments are necessary to keep competitive edge.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Novellus full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Novellus offers good pay and an outstanding benefits package. You spend the majority of your time working alone, but when you get stuck, they have a great tech support system in place to help you out. The people there are among some of the best I've ever worked with.

Cons – There is very little room for advancement. You work in close quarters with people from other companies who may not be the easiest to deal with. Also, the politics among the upper management can get pretty hairy.

I worked at Novellus full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Good career development and training when one becomes management. Pay well with stocks option bonus, but not everyone gets into the program.

Cons – Poor balance between family and work. Long hours at work and work arounf the clock. Business is cyclical, expect lay-off when it is downturn.

Advice to Senior Management – None

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Novellus full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good coworkers with little politics

Cons – tight budgets, stretched resources, no raises

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Novellus

Pros – Management is not overwhelmingly involved.

Cons – Communication throughout the company could be better.

I have been working at Novellus

Pros – -Compressed work week can be great if overtime is avoided.
-Co-workers can be great and fun to be around (only some of them though)

Cons – -There is a lot of "Mandatory" overtime that makes it very difficult to see the benefits of a compressed work week.
-Management seemingly has no clue what is done on a daily basis unless something is done wrong, in which case they jump all over you.
-We write our own performance reviews so that the management team can see, for the first time, what we have done that is good. Then they sign off on it as if they wrote it and hand it in to HR.
-Advancement is difficult and blamed on the bureaucracy by saying that "we are only allowed to promote one person this year."

Advice to Senior Management – It seems like management is always busy doing something, but what that something is can be difficult to ascertain from the FSE point of view, so more transparency would be valuable. It is also hard to work a lot of overtime when the reward is only extra money. The company make me feel like a prostitute, paid to work and not appreciated. When the management asks for more work, they think that the extra pay will satisfy the extra work (and loss to personal life).

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Novellus

Pros – Interesting work
Good benefits and pay
Professional peers

Cons – Long hours
Unpredictable and/or cyclical industry
Siloed organizations

Advice to Senior Management – Decisions are obvioulsy made with the bottom line in mind...maybe make it not so evident to the employees who feel like second fiddle

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend