The structure of advanced cooling technologies is like mafia in Lancaster, PA running the company. Consequently, a lot of knowledgeable and competitive engineers have been constantly leaving here, due to lack of trust, mismanagement ..., and joining great and big companies more and more. If you’re onsite, I’d encourage you to take a look at the frames put up on the wall and count how many have still remained with ACT. The rate of turnover is incredibly high for such a tiny company. Every four months, we lose a full-time employee in a 20ish size RD group after only a couple of months of being with us, running the company fast with no official farewells and appreciation. The young international engineers fresh from academia unfortunately are the victims and have to deal with the incompetent engineers who are now our managers with the least knowledge, massive egos, and no familiarity with thermal management field. Some R&D managers are really insecure and knew Excel and Word, and are like drama queens. The environment is full of toxicity, jealousy, and all kinds of dramas that humans have so far witnessed due to winning the not that much novel and practical SBIR proposals are the main source of company’s income. R&D managers are always in the small kitchen or working from home while forcing the rest of the team to be onsite all the time 24/7. Ridiculous enough, they take all the credit at the end of the day without mentioning your name and role in the success. The pay for an engineer with 6 years of prior related experience is 72k but you must work like three engineers to get paid. When you submit proposal, you’ll get $10 rewards 😂. When you get a win on several hundred dollars, you’ll only get $75 rewards 😂😂. Since joining, never been trained a proper short course related to the state-of-the-art. The company has only heat pipes and that’s all. Leads were arguing in the interview process and was about to fight over my answer. It’s just crazy. Don’t come here as we’re all leaving too. Everyone knows that the president and the boards only think about money/profit and selling the company in a couple of years no matter what. Some VPs have left the company as a big internal merge is inevitable because of soon-to-be sold out. This would leave many hurt, unemployed, and deported.
