Things have gone so wrong at Qualcommthat you have almost no chance to thrive through skills, hard work, and dedication.
Pros
Still the wireless industry leader. Has enough cash to invest or waste. Competitive total compensation in San Diego although benefits have been cut down significantly recently. (Compensation per unit hour is bad).
Cons
Favoritism has become the norm starting from hiring to assigning project tasks, and of course to promotions. Technical skills and knowledge has little value now. If you are technically sound and hard working/executing, but without the skills of buttering your bosses up, you won't reap any rewards these days. Introducing bugs and fixing them elevates visibility and is much more rewarding than doing quality work with no bugs at all. Complete U-turn from the original naming of "Qualcomm" as it derived from "Quality Communications". Upper management is surrounded by cronies and they cronies sell mostly their own interests to them. They present others works as their own achievement. So, the engineers who are doing the actual job are rewarded very little or nothing compared to how much hard work and sacrifice they make. The upper management is out of touch from recent technologies and not motivated either. This is killing innovation and ingenuity here. Their and cronies narrow views have become the views of the company overlooking any other options/ides. There are too many VPs and senior directors who do not contribute, but draws huge salary and benefits at the cost of salary/benefits to young and mid-level engineers. Career advancement is almost saturated. Engineers are over worked days, nights, and weekends while the benefits go to others. Considering the long hours and weekend works, the compensation is not good at all.
