Pros
Benefits are better than most U.S. manufacturing employees Manufacturing is full of very experienced technicians with 4+ years of experience and mostly excellent work ethic. Lam is truly blessed with their employees. Starting pay is just high enough to compete with Intel Profit sharing plan 50% matching 401k (although starting in 2015 there is now a $10/month fee for current employees and $16/month fee for former employees to keep this plan. Nice subtle way to screw your employees of some extra dimes)
Cons
Long hours, almost no work-life balance due to working every weekend Holidays are non-existent - do not expect to take a break until Thanksgiving and Christmas Management routinely inquires how they can improve quality of life every 2-3 months, then promptly ignore 100% of all suggestions. This is done to keep you hoping. Managers offer ZERO structured training. Instead, that responsibility is placed on the employee. You are basically playing a game of lottery and hope whoever is assigned to "train" you speaks semi-fluent English and actually cares about training you - and who can blame them, they are not compensated any extra for their effort. The company routinely posts about "great growth" and "profit" yet does not believe everyone on the manufacturing floor deserves to be an actual employee - a large portion of manufacturing (including engineers) are temps with absolutely no benefits. Employees go 6+ months in temporary status without healthcare or vacation - and take a significant pay cut during holiday season while the CEO boasts about profits. The men and women that make this kind of profit possible get the shaft in the end. Constant pressure to work overtime, even during times when the overtime is not actually needed - this is done to keep the managers happy and create an illusion of more techs = faster progress. What actually happens is people routinely work 60+ hours with few days off and inevitably make mistakes, costing manufacturing process a fortune. The management is blind and/or absent (you only see them if something is wrong) so they turn a blind eye to this fact. Pilot department gets paid $5 more despite having the exact same job and responsibilities. This is because their job title is different. Career advancement is a joke. The pay raises are $0.50 at a time at best - you can start as a temp, work for 3 years and get 7 pay raises and still make less than a permanent new hire. If you want a real raise - start applying for other jobs. Most deserving technicians inevitably leave a few months after being hired because they realize what they are worth