Teradyne Reviews

Pros

The individual contributors at Teradyne are generally fabulous. The people who actually develop products are intelligent, knowledgeable, capable, and hard working.

Cons

Management treats employees badly, but in insidious ways. They use the stock price and profit sharing incent people into working themselves sick. The real reasons that folks work hard are that they have pride in their work and are terrified of being laid off.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop managing the company with reference to 13-week windows. You've already made many short-sighted decisions that are going to catch up with you or your successors.

Pros

good place for my first job. l learn a lot. The engineering levels and growth are structured. Groups were segmented and goals were clear. Job descriptions were clear.

Cons

groups too aware or strict about boundaries of job functions. many people were hesitant to cross the line of normal duty for creativity/innovation/thinking out of the box. This works ok in a large company that is segmented, but it is no longer a large company and groups need to be consolidated.

Advice to Senior Management

Teradyne is no longer a large company and groups need to be consolidated.

Pros

There are decent fringe benefits. Employees are friendly in general. Some of the design works are challenging and in certain instances leading-edge.

Cons

Hours could be grueling depending on the type of positions. If you worked as an Application Engineer, beware of significant off and odd working hours. The pace of work for design is relatively smooth but the pace for delivery (product/applications) can be intense due to the highly cyclic nature of the business (boom & bust). Senior management is absolutely clueless hence increasing loss of market share.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't let a bean counter at the top like what you have currently. He does not understand the business nor will he enhance the business.

Pros

Good benefit package, Good people to work with

Cons

Lack of new products, Problems with sales and profits, consistant layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management

Develop new products, Quit buying companies and then laying off people. For example Genrad and Eagle Test. Little benefit to purchases

Pros

Fact based management style. Individual goals tightly linked to corporate strategy. Challenging industry with complex products and markets create business cycles that are exciting to manage.

Cons

Global recession created a brutal forced-distribution performance curve to help slash and burn through spending and headcount. Off-shoring and outsourcing accelerated a culture of downsizing that pervaded the entire organization. Despite this strategy, company stock price is 10% of what it was at its all time high.

Advice to Senior Management

Despite the fact that the company has had a few recent profitable quarters, investors show little confidence that the company has a favorable long-term trajectory. Average years of service for key senior managers at this company is off the charts. As a consequence, there is no real focus on innovation, which is needed for a company so entrenched in such narrow industry and markets.

Pros

One on one interactions with specific hardware, software, mechanical engineers. Some wonderful individuals in an overall negative, difficult, dispiriting environment.

Cons

The work environment includes many individuals who put in 100% without acknowledgment or reward. The ingredients to create a strong work environment are present in these people. But the preponderance of managers who have no regard for their employees prevents that.

Advice to Senior Management

Realize that the desire to succeed and to work and live productively and well is something that those who work for you aspire to.

Pros

Interesting technology that pushes the limits of the technology.
Surrounded by some very bright people with varied interests.
Nice campus
Great cafeteria!

Cons

layoffs nearly every quarter. Overstaffing in one area to get job accomplished quickly then "Skills rebalancing", translation we are done with you now and need to get rid of you to hire a different skill set.
Outsourcing of areas that should remain a core competancy.
Recrruiting the "best and brightest from key Universities and then not giving them any mentoring. Resulting in often bright innovative ideas, though poorly executed and greatly missed schedule

Advice to Senior Management

Hire the best and brightest but insure that they work under a senior person with experience in actually getting a product to market.

Pros

Great people and great challenges to solve. Get to work with on a variety of topics in an ever-changing industry. The engineers (of all types) are fantastic to work with, and everyone at this level feels real commitment and pride in what they make.

Cons

Too much office politics with upper management, which feeds down negatively to the actual work being done. This level is too focused on personal positioning instead of focusing on acknowledging reality and developing great products in less-than-ideal times. Currently the focus appears to be overly on the stock price with little care about the future of its employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend some time to prove to the company that our mission is still to develop high quality products. Be blunt about the fact that our target market is dynamic, and that it challenges a product development process, instead of massaging the metrics to make things look good.

Pros

Engineers are an asset to the company. Benefits package and vacation time are excellent. Middle order management is helpful and understanding.

Cons

No opportunities or training for growth. Not enough flexibility in switching different divisions. Engineers not sent to customer site to experience field work.

Advice to Senior Management

Take more risk towards investing outside of ATE business. Add training programs for engineers to grow into management or other areas like finance, etc.

Pros

People are very talented. Benefits are reasonable.

Cons

Industry very bad. People working very hard still getting laid off.
Not much training. Working hours very long. Total compensation so so.

Advice to Senior Management

Full time employees should not be expected to work 60+ hours a week for months w/o extra compensation.