Western Digital Reviews

Pros

dynamic work environment. salary with bonuses and espp and stock options is quite competitive.

Cons

productive people pushed around by non-productive finger pointers.

Advice to Senior Management

push down culture of seeking out technically productive/creative people/groups and giving full support needed.

Pros

The company is making money. Depending on what you do, you may not get trapped in multiple meetings all day. Decent bonus during good years.

Cons

A very ad hoc approach to development. Chaotic day-to-day life: things appear, disappear and reappear at random. A reasonable fraction of employees are finger- pointy and borderline in ethics matters. PTO is eaten up (by edict) on a quarterly basis, which makes reasonable accrual difficult.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to make talented employees look forward to coming to work.

Pros

Company is doing well and it is well managed
Good compensation package
Good involvement in the community

Cons

You are a drone, just crank it out.
Lack of innovation. The only thing this company does is figure out what the next disk drive should be.
Lack of team cohesiveness. I don't think the company even knows what that is.
Consequence of above: poor communication within the work force.

Advice to Senior Management

Figure out why too many people don't like working there.

Pros

Market grows at huge pace and competitors continue to falter. Lots of money to be made in this business even if the company can't execute to product plans.

Cons

Lacking in any planning and strategy, therefore all projects are "best effort" and always viewed as failures. Hard to feel good about accomplishments.

Advice to Senior Management

Create realistic plans that actually support the product roadmap and execute them. Have a vision that is farther than a few days out.

Pros

Interesting work, very good pay

Cons

Poor communication, poor middle management

Advice to Senior Management

Do a better job of planning.

Pros

Data storage is a relatively stable market for now. WD pays higher-end salaries. Engineering staff in Colorado is top-notch, and generally free of politics and petty "people issues" .

Cons

Benefits are pretty bad, with 2 1/2 weeks of vacation for the first 5 years. No pay raises, so make sure you have negotiated up front. The main campus is southern California, and with the So Cal culture comes the high stress and lots of finger pointing. Engineering work is not well thought out, since schedules are mostly unrealistic, but there seems to be ample time to fix it.

Training of new employees leaves a lot to be desired. Many new people feel pretty useless for several months since they lack good mentoring and instruction on procedures.

Advice to Senior Management

Work on better training and mentoring.

Pros

Though expansive, OC is a nice place for living. Location is convenient. People are friendly in general. Working environment is OK.

Cons

Salary is below average if taking living cost into consideration. Benefits are not attractive compared with other IT companies. Communication between departments can get mixed-up. Cannot accure long vacations.

Advice to Senior Management

Raising the morale by paying more attention to the employees.

Pros

Salary is good. When profitable, they share the wealth with a nice bonus. Stock purchase plan and options too.

They pay well. They have to because there is virtually no other reason to work for them.

Cons

Middle management is the worst I've ever seen. With the quality of PMs, it's startling that they are able to ship anything. Scheduling is very weak and unrealistic. Lack of any planning discipline.

There are very entrenched political rivalries and the blame game is their favorite sporting event. Behavior is often very unproductive and unprofessional with those who yell the loudest winning the day, regardless of technical merit.

They are good integrators and optimizers of the manufacturing process. Their capacity to develop new technologies is very weak as it is a different methodology than the integrate-test-ship cycle repeated every four months. I imagine more than half of their actual development budget is completely wasted through a lack of proper requirements, poor architecture, inefficient execution, cancelled projects, etc. All projects have a very definite time-horizon of a few months. Any longer term development devolves into chaos.

Vacation policy is annoying with mandatory furloughs, a low maximum accrual, and nagging to keep your balance low.

Advice to Senior Management

Middle management needs a brutal purge. It will probably not hurt any schedules. Once the rejoicing subsides, productivity will spike.

Erect fire-walls around your new acquisition, Hitachi, or else risk devaluing it with your poisonous culture.

Pros

Solid and financially driven company( as any good company should be). ESPP plan attractive and shares the wealth in that regard. Talented people in the trenches. Quality products and innovative thinking leads to good product and roadmaps.

Cons

Workforce is comprised of those that have been there for years and are in the click or those that are there for a short time and looking to frankly move on for management treats employees with little respect and unprofessionally behavior.

Advice to Senior Management

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Treat people with respect, reward a job well done and praise those that do so... By doing so, morale would improve and people would enjoy their jobs and be more productive.

Pros

decent salary given to employee

Cons

employyes are treated without any respect

Advice to Senior Management

Need to respect employee and less politics