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Novellus
2.7 of 5 79 reviews
www.novellus.com San Jose, CA 1000 to 5000 Employees

Novellus Reviews

Updated Apr 27, 2013
All Employees Current Employees Only

2.7 79 reviews

                             

31% Approve of the CEO

Novellus Chairman and CEO Rick Hill

Rick Hill

(61 ratings)

32% of employees recommend this company to a friend
79 Employee Reviews
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  • Work/Life Balance
         
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  • Disapproves of CEO

 

If you wan to do something, this is a good place for you...

Anonymous Employee (Current Employee)
San Jose, CA

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

ProsOpportunity - Novellus runs lean; you are expected to produce.

ConsToo political - powerful leaders get away with everything.

Advice to Senior ManagementMake 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

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Very inefficient resource and organization management

Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)

I worked at Novellus

ProsEngineers do not have to deal with business issues

ConsCompany is highly dependent on chip maker's forecast and job security is weak

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  • Work/Life Balance
         
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  • Disapproves of CEO

 

As the economy improves, look elsewhere.

Configuration Engineer (Former Employee)
Tualatin, OR

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

ProsIt'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.

ConsCompany 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 ManagementFind out what your people are doing.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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Career building

Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)
San Jose, CA

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

ProsOverall good company, promoted within, had a solid product base.

ConsCEO'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 ManagementProper balance of investments are necessary to keep competitive edge.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

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  • Work/Life Balance
         
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Loved the people, Hated the job

Field Service Engineer (Former Employee)
Chandler, AZ

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

ProsNovellus 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.

ConsThere 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.

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  • Work/Life Balance
         
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  • No Opinion of CEO

 

Good career development, many opportunities to be promoted, but long hours and hard works

Process Manager III (Former Employee)
San Jose, CA

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

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

ConsPoor 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 ManagementNone

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

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  • Work/Life Balance
         
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Good work environment

Key Account Technologist (Current Employee)
San Jose, CA

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

ProsGood coworkers with little politics

Constight budgets, stretched resources, no raises

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

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Decent place to work if you like compressed work weeks.

Field Service Engineer III (Current Employee)
Hillsboro, OR

I have been working at Novellus

ProsManagement is not overwhelmingly involved.

ConsCommunication throughout the company could be better.

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1 person found this helpful  

Work hard, expect to be ignored

Field Service Engineer (Current Employee)
Hillsboro, OR

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 ManagementIt 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

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Good company to work for...opportuities existed if you were willing

Business Analyst (Former Employee)
Tualatin, OR

I worked at Novellus

ProsInteresting work
Good benefits and pay
Professional peers

ConsLong hours
Unpredictable and/or cyclical industry
Siloed organizations

Advice to Senior ManagementDecisions 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

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