Tokyo Electron Reviews

Pros

TEL has a lot of great people working in the US, both expats and US citizens. TEL pays bonuses twice a year, and the target is at least 20% total for the year (10% of your salary every six months). In a good year that's a great thing, in a great year they go higher. and in a nasty downturn they can disappear altogether. If you're a lucky and resourceful, you can do some meaningful research, publish, work with academic groups, etc. and earn a good salary working for TEL. Also, unlike US semiconductor companies, TEL very rarely lays off employees- that's a true Japanese cultural difference- they don't hire quickly in upturns and they rarely lay people off- though they do bring in temporary/contract workers that they can let go in a downturn without laying off an employee.

Cons

You are a gaijin working for a Japanese Company. If you want to be CEO one day, then better look elsewhwere, nobody on the board is non-Japanese. Senior US management is generally hired from outside, not within, TEL America, so there is very little upward mobility. And most of the US workforce is field service- so if you are in R&D and want to go into management, you might need to become a field service manager to do it. Middle management is entrenched, earning good salaries, and they've generally resigned themselves to the fact that they won't ever rise beyond Director level (with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions). There is a technical ladder- but for the past couple years it hasn't really functioned. So, eventually the glass ceiling will loom. It's up to you what direction you want to take.

Advice to Senior Management

If it were demonstably possible to become the head of a US business from within TEL, it would be easier to argue that people should be patient and stay the course. But I imagine that TEL US management has very little to say about it when the Japanese management wants to hire former customers to run the business (note: the reason they are former customers is because they somehow failed)