Arrived at Seagate via Sandforce->LSI->Avago acquisition, and got screwed in the process.
Pros
Great work life balance at the moment, as management can not decide on projects to work on. We will soon have daily trips out of Silicon Valley to a Fremont facility that will allow us to experience startup like conditions in a big company.
Cons
This review is mainly specific to circumstances relating to arriving at Seagate via an acquisition (not a good thing). Seagate recently acquired the Flash Components Division of Avago Technologies, which previously acquired LSi, which previously acquired Sandforce. Many of the original Sandforce folks worked really hard to realize a technology and were still vesting a significant amount of the startup equity and mostly this vesting would have completed by late 2015. This equity had been maintained through the acquisition by LSI and Avago. Unfortunately Seagate chose not to recognize existing vesting schedules and came up with a retention scheme that basically screwed the longstanding creators of the technology. A gun was held to our heads in taking the deal to leave Avago and sign up with Seagate in which Avago threatened to withhold bonuses that would have been paid. Avago is basically a technology corporate raider that acquires companies and sells of pieces as it sees fit. This has now lead to a very negative work environment in which the main topic of discussion is how badly treated people were and what other opportunities are available outside of Seagate. A number of people have already left, and It seems like the team is on the verge of complete disintegration, and Seagate will have purchased technology assets that are worthless without the creators of the technology. This seems so stupid as $450m was paid for the acquisition and the amount that engineers were screwed out of was probably in the $10m range. I think it is already too late to save the Sandforce team, so posting this here for others that may end up in a similar situation. Get organized as a group early and protect yourself.
