Broadcom reviews

3.3

50% would recommend to a friend

(6,354 total reviews)
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Hock E. Tan

61% approve of CEO

66% positive business outlook

Broadcom has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 6,354 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Broadcom employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Produktion industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

6K reviews
3.0
Jan 8, 2011
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Broadcom is a market leader in networking technology. Pretty everyone in the industry use their chips. Consequently, there is no threat to your job. They pay a good amount of money. Stock options and RSUs. Benefits are outrageously good.

Cons

The primary issue is that being a big organization that has to please everyone, jobs are extremely compartmentalized. Therefore, innovation is only within the boundaries of the job assigned to you. You will never get the big picture. In fact, it is not beneficial for the senior management to let everyone get the big picture. Job growth prospects are fairly limited. The ladder to the CEO has close to 15 steps from the bottom, making it difficult to make any real progress.

1.0
Dec 8, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Broadcom has vet solid top management and great engineering

Cons

Unfortunatly all levels of management below the C level are just overgrow kids. They have no management skill and are the least business mature team I've ever seen in a technology company. Pay is far below the industry norm and the culture expects you to work 70 hour weeks on top of it. Broadcom is a company that suffers from it's founder's cowboy, break the rules (and the law) attitude and will never be a good place to work. Avoid it if at all possible

4.0
Nov 18, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Everyone knows Broadcom is one of the L33T (that's pronounced 'ELITE') semiconductor companies in the area. YOU work with the best ... period. And so do they ... (assuming YOU made it through a straight on-site interview (not through some backdoor internal referral.) Once you've worked there in a technical role for a year or more (and assuming you don't get fired), then seek work elsewhere, Irvine employers KNOW just how L33T you are (again, assuming you have positive professional references to back it up.) I found the communication among the (engineering) technical staff was quite open. People were always madly busy, but would still put in a good effort to answer your questions (or point you in the proper direction.) I worked at other places where you need to "ask permission from the other manager", just to step into another guy's office (... I mean, like elementary school!) so this openess and flat-organization was great for getting occasional technical advice. Just about all IT/engineering assets available through VPN. (**COUGH** MARVELL **COUGH**) Every employee was issued a laptop to take to meetings/home, at least I got one and I wasn't even special.

Cons

Everyone said it -- long, long, LONG, dungeonmaster work hours. Marvell would be proud beyond reason! On really critical cornerstone projects, some managers dictate no vacation/time-off allowed during project tape-out (doesn't sound so bad until mangement tells you 'tape-out' period can start 4-5+ months ahead of final GDSII release, and too many projects designated 'critical') Just about all IT/engineering assets available through VPN -- now you have NO EXCUSE for not working past 10pm. When I was on a 'critical SoC project', about 1/3 of my emails arrived between 8pm and 2am (same timezone!) TO keep up, you pretty much have to match the other vampires, otherwise ye dungeonmaster may notice your emails are conspicuously absent during those normal workhours (8pm-2am) Although the technical excellence showed everywhere, unrealistic workload (and poor planning) interfered with execution. In some ways, Broadcom is a victim of its own success. In the early years, the frantic work-schedule (typical of silicon-valley startups) was the rule, and indeed, propelled Broadcom to success. But that should have just been a phase, with a transition to a more sustainable development-flow and strategy. Having every group run their employees into the ground (until they burnout) is not a sustainable management style.

Viewing 76 - 78 of 6,354 Reviews

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