Pros
A few great people, technical competence, and a collegial atmosphere overall. I made some good friends during my tenure at Intevac. Central location, so more or less a convenient commute. Workload reasonable, but compensation sub-par relative to market.
Cons
A really down-trodden, depressing atmosphere. Very little recognition/appreciation from management. Middle management is mostly comprised of risk-averse career dead-enders that are playing safe and biding their time to retirement. Everyone lives in fear of HR; quick to resort to layoffs when the going gets rough, and turnover has at times been really high. The equipment side of the business serves a well-established, mature market (data storage), but it's mostly a "spares" business, and there really isn't much new tech in the pipeline. Photonics is a disorganized mess; the technology is ok, but they're not competent at manufacturing; I expect that they'll soon sell off this division to a larger company that can profitably manufacture the products. I miss working with many of my colleagues, but overall I'm very glad that I decided to move on to greener pastures.
