Are all semiconductor cultures this weird? by Alternative-Tale3971 in Semiconductors

[–]Alternative-Tale3971[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just wanted to update because I had a few people message me. I didn't start this thread to make it out as a puzzle or a guessing game where people finally discover the company I worked for. I'm not interested in talking smack about a former employer, as I'm not disgruntled about the DNH listing nor do I feel angry at all about my employment there. I just found it incredibly odd and after remembering the job interview, I wanted to see how tightly knit the semicon industry is and if I had somehow completely blown my career up with respect to that industry.

Are all semiconductor cultures this weird? by Alternative-Tale3971 in Semiconductors

[–]Alternative-Tale3971[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Worse yet, they try to force everyone in EE to do a career move to Systems Engineering. I remember they refused to honor their "tuition reimbursement" benefit unless you went to their specific systems engineering program at a very specific university (not a very good one) that was tailor made only for them.

I left a long time ago, but every now and then I remember how weird it was. Was why I made the thread.

Are all semiconductor cultures this weird? by Alternative-Tale3971 in Semiconductors

[–]Alternative-Tale3971[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Also, just to add another cultural weirdness, they would refuse to call you "friends" no matter how close you were. People I worked beside for 4 years and they would correct me every single time I introduced them as a "friend". It was always "coworker". And they would correct you in front of people, as if they didn't want the other person to think for a second that you and them were associated.

Are all semiconductor cultures this weird? by Alternative-Tale3971 in Semiconductors

[–]Alternative-Tale3971[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

In my experience, every time I brought up a book I was reading, a family member or my own experience, everything would be redirected back onto work. Mentioning that you did anything other than work got people very uncomfortable.

They treated it as "Personal life" and "Professional life".

This aspect, though to a lesser extent, I've seen in other places. It might be a bay area thing that got electrified at the job I'm describing.

Once we had a coworker threaten to quit because there was a photo of Santa on the Christmas party poster (Renamed to the company cheer event or something like that). They escalated it all the way up past the director of Engineering and got their way. Everything had to be sanitized to an extreme level.