Great Company Values, Questionable Management Decisions - Manufacturing Engineer I Lam Research Employee Review

3.0
Feb 24, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Management strongly encourages personnel to follow Core Values. Lots of teamwork opportunities alongside independent workloads. Low end on the base salary, but good overall benefits package as a full-time employee. Supervisors are generally easy to get along with. Lots of great teammates across the org. Workdays are never boring, always lots of problems to solve and lots of work to complete with infinite opportunities for innovation, creativity, changes, and projects. Management typically cares about your work-life balance and encourages time off.

Cons

Not everyone follows the culture and Core Values, which becomes obvious when it starts impacting you and you see the hypocrisy. People who complain a lot or those who don't really do much of the actual work but talk about it as if they led everything are the ones that get promoted. Sell your work to your manager and complain about being overwhelmed to get noticed, otherwise you may be the one laid off during a down-turn. Management makes random questionable decisions not based on pure facts. BEWARE: In a down-turn, management may choose to keep questionable personnel that don't do much except complain over legit, hard-working, ethical individuals who are actually dedicated to their job. Sometimes management lies to your face to keep you motivated enough to stay while doing other things behind your back, so be careful around management promising full-time positions while you're a contractor and don't wait for promises to come true, apply for anything that becomes available asap. My advice: look for opportunities outside the dry manufacturing department. The business is currently in a significant down-ramp, given the situation with the semiconductor industry relations with China.

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5.0
Jun 11, 2026
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Pros

Lead business and overview of business

Cons

Too many travelling to international

2.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay is market rate or slightly higher. Smart new fresh grads join every year. They work hard.

Cons

Avoid Dielectric Etch Org as much as you can. Both product and process engineering. Constant Pressure, extreme long work hours, You are working 7/8 AM to 9/10PM, need to work on weekends because of lack of tool times. High level management yelling, screaming in meetings for anything trivial. If CVP wakes up not happy that day, someone will get yelled at in either large or small meetings for small things. THIS IS Dielectric Etch Culture at Lam. This place is a cesspool of nepotism. Even director levels are being yelled at constantly in meetings for various reasons, if he or she is not favored by the CVP. If a mediocre engineer or director who is liked by CVP, he will have much easy time cruising through with minimal effort and knowledge. ... If you are fresh PhD from top or mid tier schools, expect 80hr work weeks, and if you are not lucky, wait for 4 years to be promoted from lvl 3 to 4 level and stuck with no options to move around because you are stuck in Semiconductor equipment industry and other orgs in Lam won't take you. There are many junior engineers with excellent work ethic stuck doing the same things for half a decade without a move in their career. But if you are good at lip service, your life will be easier. Do not trust the general statement of Lam has good culture, it is very very dependent on which Org inside Lam.

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