GlobalFoundries reviews

I'm regretting leaving my previous position and coming to Malta and GLOBALFOUNDRIES. It pains me to admit how bad things are. At first I didn't believe the reviews I read of Glassdoor. I thought they were disgruntled employees who maybe didn't belong in the job they were in. Now I understand why turnover is so high. I have decades of experience in semiconductor manufacturing but have never seen such a mess. HR is dishonest and worse than that mostly clueless They touted the perks of a Long Term Incentive Program while wooing me to join even while they knew that the plan was not funded the previous year nor in the year when the offer was made to me. The plan didn't pay out in the year I started and they canceled it the next year. HR rarely gets anything done on time. Don't know if it is a poor HR function or HQ that keep changing things at the last minute. No matter, either way it effects employees and operations negatively. They are late with hiring plans, late with authorization to hire interns so we miss the best college applicants, late with getting the appraisal system open. Late with getting the salary tool open. And with all of this lateness it is never right the 1st time, changes get made and we have to do it all over again. The one thing they seemed to handle well was the layoffs. What should that tell you about their core competencies? The company isn't making money. Salary plans and bonus plans are slashed. No company has a great appraisal process but process at GLOBALFOUNDRIES is a joke. Way too much time and effort is put into setting goals, documenting results, gathering peer input, providing peer input and countless layers and layers of management reviews. In the end managers are disregard actual achievement and force fit everyone into a predetermined distribution with no wiggle room. I had great hopes that GLOBALFOUNDRIES could get a good start but we seem to stumble at every step.

And now the Cons: 1. Promotions are incredibly difficult to come by. I had several employees I wanted to promote based on work ethic, effort, knowledge, and experience. However, I was severely limited by budget, of course like many companies, but this place did seem to favor engineers over technicians for promotions. Unfortunately promotions are basically just done once a year in April. You might be able to promote somebody in the Oct.-Dec. time frame, but it's incredibly rare. I wouldn't bother asking your manager for one until Annual Review season (which would be now by the way). 2. Raises have been incredibly mediocre the last two years. The average was around 1% in April of 2017. That's not worth a whole lot, and that's certainly not going to help your attrition rate. 3. Speaking of attrition...before I left in September the attrition rate was reaching the same peak it had been before Tom Caufield took over mid-2014. Of course, 80% of the reasons for people leaving was "poor management". It's my own personal theory that while the front line managers (shift managers in particular) were getting the brunt of the blame, I would personally single out the senior leadership. Of course people are going to leave if they can't get promoted or get decent raises. Bonuses are nice (especially for Level 6 and above), but after federal and state taxes you're only taking home 56% of it. Also, let's think about it for a second: Caufield came in mid-2014. Let's say it takes him 6-12 months to get in the people he wants as part of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT). So 2015 was when most of the changes really started to come into focus. Experienced Engineering professionals still probably didn't want to come work here based on the toxicity of the workplace pre-Caufield so GF hired a bunch of New College Grads (NCG's). If those NCG's received relocation bonuses then they were locked in for two years. Also, they're most likely millennials who, if you believe the latest articles, get bored easily in their jobs and will be looking for something new to do after 2 years anyway. So two years later in 2017, you see a high rate of turnover as these "kids" decide they want to do something else or live somewhere else (upstate NY not the best place to live year round). Not saying that this is the only reason the attrition rate is high, but it's surely a contributing factor. Yes, it's up to the front line managers to keep these kids happy, but if they're hamstrung by upper management, there's not much anybody can do. 4. Location - Personally I didn't mind living in the Saratoga area. I liked to travel so being 3 hours from NYC, 3 hours from Boston, 4 hours from Buffalo, 4 hours from Philadelphia, and 2.5 hours from Hartford was a bonus for me. However, I can see how others would not like living there especially in the Winter. I mean, seriously, if you were in your 20's and had a choice between working at Samsung in Austin, TX or GF in Malta, NY, where would you live? Yes, Austin is hot, but it also has a lively film, music, and tech scene. 5. If you want to get your boss fired, don't bother talking with their boss, call the Ethics Hotline anonymously and see the fireworks begin.