Pros
Great benefits, great time off, good pay, and a good name to work for. The engineers that work for the company are actually very intelligent not only on the machines serviced, but very smart overall in electronics, and electronic troubleshooting. Attention to detail is something everyone shared. That was and still is a good advantage that Applied Materials has over other competitors.
Cons
Room for growth is hard to come by unless you fit in a certain group. It really is a networking style of friendship. Its who you know that gets you there. Layoffs have happened but does not seem fair as the little guy gets shoved off while the top fellas are making millions and the company still reaps millions. Tech support is in India which (no offense at all) is very hard to communicate with the folks over there and in turn causes more downtime on our end trying to get problems solved. Honestly, the good old days of great raises, company cars, etc.. are all gone and never coming back for the simple reason of pleasing stock holders and not the employees.