Pros
1. Good Pay (if you can last). 2. Rewarding at times in R&D if you can get past the politics and confused direction from management. 3. Located in California. 4. A lot of good history (but ended 7 years ago).
Cons
My "Con" list is mostly a results of poor direction from senior management and our current "leader." 1. Incredibly political. You need to be aligned with a manager who has been able to gain control by kissing up. 2. Management is surprisingly disconnected from the employees who actually do work. 3. In order the make good money you need to survive the layoffs and stay motivated to work very long hours and weekends. 4. Politics and confused leadership from top has driven out the best technologists and engineers. Remaining solid engineers and managers have been stripped of authority to make sure groups play follow the leader. 5. Management is outsourcing jobs quickly. "Leader" constantly denies jobs are being outsourced yet we continually open new facilities outside of U.S. while laying off here; engineering functions are going to China and India; modeling is in Russia; many IT functions are in India; etc, etc. 6. Product development is a lost art/science at AMAT. We've replaced it with "program management." 7. Constant change of direction caused by clueless management. 8. Constant fear of layoffs. 9. Morale is very, very low. In my 15 years at AMAT I've never seen it this bad. It's all because there is no faith in management.