No vision, no leadership, no resources
Pros
If it is important to you to get a job in San Antonio for personal reasons and are in semiconductors (or want to be), this is the only place to apply. The health insurance is pretty good. The trees on site are beautiful.
Cons
This site has a long history of being penny wise and pound foolish, going back to the Maxim days. Tower buying the fab just made it worse, which is really saying something. This leads to fundamental quality and operations problems that no amount of work or cleverness can fix along with a lot of wasted time. There is very little training, and what training there is often isn't usable. When you combine this with the willingness of the fab manager to tolerate any and all verbal conflict up to fights and abuse seemingly without any reaction, you get Lord of the Flies. Two directors hate each other and pit their employees against one another like they're on different teams. Different managers are building fiefdoms. Process and equipment have a super toxic relationship to the point of sabotage. One particular process engineering manager is downright mean and vindictive; he has metaphorically stabbed everyone who's wanted to leave his area in the back professionally and had almost 100% turnover since he was promoted. In case you're wondering, he's quite the golden child since he never says no to the dir of eng, so if you're interviewing make sure it's not under him. (It's likely to be.) His direct reports have what amount to emotional support groups with each other to deal with the gaslighting. Everyone who works for this manager wants out for good reasons, and those who find another job are congratulated even when they don't have another job lined up. The culture is a toxic mess in which no quality work can be done. Your only path to career success here is to be a yes man. Do what the director of engineering says whether it makes sense or not and you will be rewarded. If he wants a fountain in the fab, go put a fountain in the fab, and you will be top rank at review time. (Unless your base is too high, of course, then your performance won't matter.) This is a mental dead end, and for most, also a professional dead end. The technology is so old, you're not gaining much in terms of relevant experience for any 300mm fab. Unless your career plan is seriously to stick with old 6- and 8-in fabs for the rest of your career, you don't even get anything substantial in exchange for the toxicity - the compensation isn't that impressive, if you work for the super toxic process manager your work-life balance will be like Samsung or worse, and you're on your own for skills development. Don't take a job here unless you really need the money, and if you do keep looking.
