OK first job out of grad school, don't stick around - Process Engineer Lam Research Employee Review

3.0
May 18, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The job is a reasonable transition between grad school and industry. Solid health insurance options and generally good people working there. If your manager likes you, you can move up very quickly, but this isn't guaranteed

Cons

Your job happiness is going to depend largely on customer happiness and your relationship with that customer. If you are fortunate enough to have a US customer, your hours can be reasonable, but if not, good luck. There's a weird culture that emphasizes putting in hours, regardless of output. Coupled to the fact that many people are dependent on this job for their visas, the work culture can be unpleasant. In my time there, there were so many discussions of improving WLB through smarter experiments, automation, etc. I never saw any of this come to fruition, and as we all know, talk is cheap. Get some experience working with high tech equipment and if you aren't promoted in a year or 2, look elsewhere, ideally away from the OEM industry, because this isn't going to get easier. I saw people there for years who worked 12h per day and still didn't get promoted. Fortunately in the early stages of your career, a lot of these skills are translatable within the Bay Area.

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5.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lead business and overview of business

Cons

Too many travelling to international

2.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay is market rate or slightly higher. Smart new fresh grads join every year. They work hard.

Cons

Avoid Dielectric Etch Org as much as you can. Both product and process engineering. Constant Pressure, extreme long work hours, You are working 7/8 AM to 9/10PM, need to work on weekends because of lack of tool times. High level management yelling, screaming in meetings for anything trivial. If CVP wakes up not happy that day, someone will get yelled at in either large or small meetings for small things. THIS IS Dielectric Etch Culture at Lam. This place is a cesspool of nepotism. Even director levels are being yelled at constantly in meetings for various reasons, if he or she is not favored by the CVP. If a mediocre engineer or director who is liked by CVP, he will have much easy time cruising through with minimal effort and knowledge. ... If you are fresh PhD from top or mid tier schools, expect 80hr work weeks, and if you are not lucky, wait for 4 years to be promoted from lvl 3 to 4 level and stuck with no options to move around because you are stuck in Semiconductor equipment industry and other orgs in Lam won't take you. There are many junior engineers with excellent work ethic stuck doing the same things for half a decade without a move in their career. But if you are good at lip service, your life will be easier. Do not trust the general statement of Lam has good culture, it is very very dependent on which Org inside Lam.

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