Yay for Pay... but that's about it. - Product Structure Engineer Applied Materials Employee Review

2.0
Feb 24, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The pay was absolutely great until the downturn forced pay cuts. The benefits were always great. There were a lot of intelligent people with great ideas about how to improve products and processes.

Cons

While the pay was great, employees were forced to take a 5% pay cut. Upper Management took a 10% pay cut, but because the company made it to their profitability goal, all the VPs and such got HUGE bonuses compared to their pay cut. Employees got shafted on that one. While there were a lot of intelligent people with great ideas, management rarely listened to them (until they hired a consultant who told them the same thing). If you did good work, you got pigeonholed doing it and they kept piling more work on fromt he folks who were laid-off. So eventually people got burned out because they were doing 3X the work (or more) than they were getting paid for. Sadly, their heroic efforts were rewarded with "Well, you got a job."

Explore other reviews about Applied Materials

5.0
May 27, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good company , benefits , lots of room for growth

Cons

Slow changes , tech related software on the IT side are very old.

4.0
Jun 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Strong place to start your career. If you do the Fusion Program you will learn a lot. Good training and benefits. Amazing Employee Stock Purchase Plan. Coworkers are smart and grounded people.

Cons

Stingy with salary, raises, and promotions. The engineer roles are broken up into Jr and Senior so the title progression goes Engineer I, I Sr, II, II Sr, etc which slows career progression and pay. Only the CA office gets extra pay due to the expense of living there, even if the MA office is expensive.

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