Pros
- Pay and perks are great! Bonuses and awards spread out throughout the financial year - Collaborative culture, even across offices and countries - Plenty of volunteering opportunities - Relaxed office culture with a casual dress code and games in the office (In Cambridge: Xbox, shuffleboard, table football) - Opportunity to work with different teams, international secondments and internal transfers are common
Cons
Arm senior leadership means well and are very supportive (especially during a crisis like COVID-19) but the culture at Arm just does not promote excellence. If you are mildly ambitious and looking for a cushy job that will give you a fantastic work-life balance and sense of security, Arm is just the place for you. For ambitious and driven people, working at Arm can be draining and staying too long can make you feel like you’ve hit a dead end. This feeling mainly stems from poor middle management and seeing people you wouldn’t consider particularly good at their jobs consistently be promoted. Making noise with no substance is often (unintentionally) heralded at Arm. That said, Arm is recognised in the industry as a breeding ground for young talent and serves as a springboard to industry giants like Intel and Apple. Arm does have it’s share of mavericks who manage to shrewdly avoid internal politics and ignore the general lack of quality. These rare gems manage to carve their own path and become successful in the true sense of the word. The graduates Arm hires often have a lot of potential and a fire in their eyes but too many of them have the flames doused by the time they hit their one-year anniversary at the company. Arm can and should do better to improve quality standards and their definition of the core value ‘be your brilliant self’.
