KLA reviews

Projects tend to change very fast as the company is extremely reactive to market conditions. If the market opportunity is not clearly defined, or changes during development, then the whole project is canned which can sometimes be frustrating for the development and engineering crew. But most employees would agree that it's better if prevents us to go into a dead end or a commoditized market. Another downside is that the company's benefits are rapidly shrinking in this increasingly competitive environment and one would worry about retention. For most employees, the company seems to not care too much about retention, which sometimes lead to expensive loses of talent or even competition from ex-employees starting their own businesses or joining competitors.

The company got large enough that the inputs from bean counters became significant. It seems that once the founders hand over control of a company to others, the goals shift. Rick Wallace's goals are to maximize his personal ROI, no matter what happens to the company. I believe Mr. Wallace's goals are to make KLA-Tencor a good acquisition target ... perhaps for ASML or AMAT.