This review is only for SIG - i had very good experience when i collaborated with Etch and Dep groups.
I started as a mid level engineer in SIG hardware engineering. Toxicity is rampant. you will be paid peanuts. This group simply does not want to collaborate with other groups - not only any new ideas you bring in will be trampled and you would be discouraged from giving your inputs or opinion. The direction is based on whims and fancies of 2 Sr Directors - 1 from Process and 1 from engineering. The expectation is that you would have to simply nod and be yes-man to everything. You would be told day in and day out how lucky you are to be a part of this organization, that you dont bring in any value, that you are getting paid to learn - never understood this last bit - why hire if you want to pay someone with the assumption that you are providing wages for them to learn ?. The group sits on 3-4 legacy tools and everyday job is to break something and pretend to fix it for 4-5 months till people forget that problem arose in the first place.
You would have to be in constant fear of reprimand or mood swings of the Directors. No visibility whatsoever. 14 people quit in 2 years in this group - no one including HR cared as to why there was such a big turnover rate.
Any attempt to go above and beyond your job responsibilities and learn about the semiconductor tool would be discouraged.
You would have to forget any basic hardware knowledge and say yes to any vivid imagination that the Directors have about how the semicondcutor tool is functioning and then conduct lots of tests and collect data and present what their idea of problem statement and hypothesis is and the solution that they would have come up with based on their imagination of the problem statement.
Any attempt to solve the problem in an efficient and elegant using theory backed solution would be immediately termed " short cut". Any tests that is conducted on tool showing that their vivid imagination is wrong will be criticized saying that the engineer does not have the right understanding or "it cannot be" ! I was astounded and quit pretty much immediately.
