SanDisk Employee Reviews about "management"

Pros

Challenging – never a dull day Compensation - in line with other companies in valley Bonus - excellent when they were handed out

Cons

Good Old Boys Club - top management all about themselves and if you are not in the club you have no say Change Management - non-existent Waste Money and Time - useless projects and products that never say the light of day or when they did they were late an unimpressive Company Direction – none from upper management, lots of smoke and mirrors Promotions – non-existent for the right people (idiots promoted) Slash and Burn – no sense of vision or stabilization with budget being cut to the bone and then some (stupid decisions) Sweatshop – many departments work you like a slave and continue to ask for more, unrealistic work loads

Pros

If everything works out well, the rotation program helps you maximize skillset building (mostly in Operations/Supply Chain/Analytical/Project Management). SanDisk, as a company, holds best-in-class talent and technology in the industry. (You should keep in mind that in terms of talent of its employees, a top company in Semiconductor is not comparable to a one in other emerging tech areas.) There are a few good people managers that you may be able to work for/with.

Cons

Company: - Culture: highly political and impersonal. The company only cares about cost/performance, rather than building the right company culture or promoting company values. A significant portion of people decisions were very poorly made, usually driven by political powers. - Irresponsible and weak Executive team: When Management makes wrong decisions, employees usually become the scapegoats. - Amazingly poor HR management: HR influence and control are almost non-existent. The company is highly hierarchical, which only encourages politics and slows down the decision-making process. The immigration team treats alien employees in the most unrespectful way. There are no truly functioning feedback loops within the company. - Diversity: SanDisk's understanding of diversity is very immature - it basically thinks that promoting diversity is equivalent to promoting its employees' home cultures. Black and Hispanic presences (esp. in mid to senior management) are extremely limited in the company. Different ethical groups are segregated rather than collaborative. Also, my perception is that the company does not care about LGBT diversity at all. Rotation Program: The rotation program openings are highly concentrated in the Planning organization, driven by business needs and cost considerations, rather than participants' growth opportunities. The rotation cycles are redundantly long. If your primary focus in your career is to grow, this may not be the best program to start with. Also, the promotion process within the program is broken, which has caused high turn-over historically.

Pros

The people here are great to work with.

Cons

Too many meetings and too much input from upper management on how to do your job.

Pros

The work culture is extremely good people working here are very smart and professional

Cons

Management wok in silos and not very involved in knowing personal goals of individuals in team

Pros

-Great pay for an intern -Lots of independence in choosing hours and work route -Management is not looking over your shoulder 24/7; you are given a task and expected to complete it timely and competently

Cons

-Not enough direction in assigning tasks -Very little training given to interns -Little to no feedback on job performance makes it difficult to improve and grow professionally

Pros

The atmosphere they are trying to create is a google experience, unfortunately it falls far short. Gym w/awesome personal trainers, onsite events, offsite events, cafeteria, juice bar, free coffee & espresso machines, Friday's are free fruit, bagel and muffin days, volleyball & basketball courts international festival. There are pockets of good people. The hard working service people in facilities and IT onsite help desk are a god send as they are at most companies. Clean facilities at all times!

Cons

Brazen disrespect from FTE's to contractors, the lack of respect shown is quite astonishing. Ethics are not relevant at this company and many stories of the CIO Ravi Naik are flat out ridiculous. The man has been known to verbally belittle people in front of there peers, this man has no temper control. This behavior is an indicative of how he manages his teams and the direction he takes the company. He's a petty short sided individual with a bad vision and a inappropriate short temper. Lack of diversity in almost every area. You can not claim to be diverse if 95 percent of your workforce are primarily two races. The CIO has pretty much imported half of India to be on his team, not a joke there is literally 90% Indians working in the IT department. Fails to meet the Google culture because they are all style and no substance. This place is packed with middle management and no one is really able to make a decision. Those management salaries are sky high and basically the money is not evenly spread around. Too much back stabbing, complete and utter disoriginizaton, politics, one upsmenship , chaos, lack of leadership, lack of focus, lack of diversity, and trying to be something it simply is not. Therefore it will never be Google or crack the top 50. This place is basically a romper room, I have heard and witnessed several stories of people taking advantage of company time. People come and go as they please and more then half the work force can be seen walking around, taking smoke breaks or completely disengaged from work all together. People outside the facility and in the parking lot smoking marijuana Tons of money is wasted on trips that can easily be solved with video chats. Monumentally bad decisions like this made on a daily basis, several bad decisions lead to high turnover and horrible moral. Constant reduction in force causes people to be I. Fear for there jobs. All the politics and constant one upsmenship breed insecurity among the work force. It's a manufacturing company struggling to be something it's not, a young hip free spirited work environment. That's just not how manufacturing companies run. Or maybe these are all just growing pains on a path to something bigger for SD, seeing as how they keep consuming other companies. Overall this place is corrupt morally and ethically, wouldn't recommend ceo or anyone or a thing about this place. I am grossly under compensated and being a contractor I am not allowed to advocate my case to the 'customer' for a raise and proper job tittle on my own behalf. It can be seen as a bad thing I'm told by my HR department. I'm a technical project manager 2 getting paid under 60k and classified as a 'it technician'. Without being able to plead my case directly to my director I am stuck. Or painted in a corner I should say, this is a common practice at SD and has surely cost it several thousand employees. Despicable.

Pros

It's a job and you get paid. If you are good at politics and not the most talented, you can get paid for a very long time.

Cons

It's incredibly political. Many managers (there are some good ones) are ego driven and narsisitic. They hold on to their jobs only because they know how carfully craft lies to customers and upper management. Very destructive situation that has resulted in poor decisions which ultimately drove product quality low and customers away.

Pros

cash rich. hiring. if you keep your head down and make your manager look good, you can keep your job forever. some excellent technologists who manage to get stuff done in spite of many management levels. Huge potential for advantage in very hot market (SSD).

Cons

a huge, empire building, hierarchical bloated bureaucracy, with senior management who behaves as though they can treat employees however they like. May fail to capitalize on huge advantages because the empires can't work together. Hugely difficult to advance from within; management controls by refusing promotion without outside job offers.

Pros

Used to have good benefits and culture. Can be a good learning career if the employee is active and aggressive. Working environment is well maintained, plus employer sponsored free cell phone. Good exposure to both engineering R&D and mass production systems.

Cons

What made SanDisk great is starting to fade away and SanDisk is becoming more average. People are very conservative and everyone is rather protecting the status quo than taking a risk of making real changes for the benefits of being more efficient. SanDisk typically follows a 3 year up/down cycle and right now it is in the down phase. One year of free dinner every evening can be followed by another without a single one. Not sure if there will be another up phase since it is being acquired by WD. Management is rigid with lots of politics. The management team is not adapted to technology changes and the business model isn't working out any more.

Pros

May (I must repeat MAY) get to work on cutting-edge technology for Memory/System Design and FW Eng, nothing for rest. Talented people.

Cons

Favoritism, lack of effective execution, lack of vision, mediocre middle management lacking motivation and lack of talent-respect are top on the list. and one of worst place to work for S/W engineers. Favoritism is other name for the SanDisk Culture, and more so top management has a very different definition for it. Lot of other problems are because of it alone. Wrong people at wrong places make it even worse day by day. Top management is happy making plans after plans but fall short of execution and have new plans to start again. Hardly there is root-cause analysis, and if there is any no learning from it. Frequent shifting priority of projects, internal resistance over getting the priority for similar projects. No learning sharing platform. Too many bad acquisition over last few years, wasting big piles of cash. It survived till now just because it is in ever expanding Storage market and because of few amazing engineer who worked so hard over the years there. Middle management is mediocre, is a praise. They lack the ability to bring the best of engineers like enthusiasm and motivation, forget about innovation. Survival is all is in their attitude, action and words, which flows down throughout. Not much for talent retention, variable pay, and lack of plan for personal/professional growth. A lot of HR gimmicks but fall short in serving the results. Too many layoffs in last few years, being profitable and riding high displays most of stated above. No work life balance, as for some 'too much work' and for some 'too much life'.