Pros
If you're a recently graduated engineer with an interest in electrical power systems, Vicor could be a good place to learn and begin your career.
Cons
It all starts at the top. The CEO, while a gifted engineer and scientist, is lacking in many other disciplines. He truly believes that he is the smartest person in the room on all subjects and over the years this has led to a troubling arrogance. It doesn’t matter how good your are in a particular field or how much experience you have, he will consider your skills to be inferior and will be treated as such. Upper management - consumed with petty politics and not wanting to be subjected to a public tirade from the CEO for ideas, regardless of merit, that run contrary to his (sarcastically referred to as an ‘idiot lesson’) - never challenge decisions, concepts, or strategy. In addition, there is no accountability, so when mistakes are inevitably made, large or small, they are always someone else's fault...and you don’t want to be that someone else. All of this creates a toxic culture and feedback loop that ultimately affects all employees, over and above the standard work stress and challenges that you’ll find at any company. There are other issues - loss of customer focus, minimal advancement opportunities, lack of corporate governance (Vicor is public company in name only - many, if not most, CEO shares have massively outsized voting rights), unwillingness to foster creativity...I could go on, but you get the picture. Someday Vicor will make for a very interesting case study - but it would probably be better read about it than be a part of it.
