Pros
Boise is a small and pretty city.
Cons
Summary: Very poor work-life balance - Less paid off time after new CEO toke office - Seriously week technical Leads and Managers - Vey cheap culture - extremely less career development and growth opportunities - Too political Recent Measures: • With new CEO, company turn over has increased hugely, and don't be too excited if you get an offer these days, as many kids are leaving. Ask for big pay, they have no choice, possibly they will accommodate you. • The new CEO has also came up with 7% layoff each year. If your manager wants to get rid of you, she/he will give you a low score, bing, you will need to go. Remember that there are no other opportunities in Boise other than Micron. For this reason, think really twice when you wana move to Idaho. Career Opportunities: • There are literally fewer opportunities to move up in the company. It's heavily depends on " like-ability" not on your experience and qualifications. Experience and good team members’ left/leaving the team after a Non-qualified team member was assigned as lead. Shocking ... I can see this behavior across the department. Compensations & Benefits: • The pay is less than industry average. Often said Boise is a cheap city, however it's not as cheap as said at all. Recent migration from other states to Idaho has made the cost of living pretty high, housing is pricy; off course cheaper than Bay Area. • The new CEO has cut the 6th month bonus from last year, though company has historic revenue last year. • From this year, 4 of paid off days are removed from your flexible off time. The CEO office emailed us saying that “ to improve work-life balance”. Can you believe it? • The new policy won’t allow you to accumulate your leave for long time, you are forced to use them, or they will expire. I have heard from our international kids that this policy is hurting them a lot as they need long leave to travel and visit their family abroad. Work/Life Balance: • Though you may carry R&D title, work in here is 24/7, you get Paged almost every night. You are expected to reply Pages within 2 hours; otherwise your Manager will be Paged. The new CEO has came up with the idea of 12 months cadence, meaning product cycle is decreased from 24 month to 12 months, without increasing team members numbers. Senior Management: • You will be shocked to see how poor the technical Leads and Managers are. They don't understand the technical details of your work, so won't appreciate it. Culture & Values: • If you are from top 50 US universities, you will be very alone here. Kids here are from schools you haven't heard of, or some cases with no formal education. I came across a former bar tender that was teaching Engineer kids about a semiconductor tool. • Company has a very poor and cheap culture. Engineers are treated like kids and often managers openly say that the main responsibility of an Engineer is to make lead/manager happy, that’s it, and you guess the rest. Since you are in Idaho, you are treated like you haven’t seen decent cities or never interacted with decent people. Recently we have couple of coffee machines installed across campus; we keep getting emails from managers on how great we are and how greatly we are celebrating our success. Dude, almost every village on this Planet has coffee machine.
