Vantaggi
For the most part the engineers are trying to do the best they can. As others have said, and continue to say, there is incredible potential there. There are areas of success and large amounts of support for the company in the industry and customer base. Everyone wants GF to succeed.
Svantaggi
Malta, New York is in the middle of nowhere. The winters are brutal and the cultural activities in the area are limited when compared to other east cost cities with semiconductor sites like NYC, DC, Boston. There are a couple of decent Indian and Thai places but nothing spectacular. And if you enjoy museums or zoo's, just forget it. The taxes in New York are some of the highest in the country, as is the cost of living, so what seems like a pretty good pay check doesn't go as far as you would expect here. With respect to the company itself, there is a complete lack of data based decision making at every level of the Malta site. The management and senior engineering leadership all work from "experience" and shoot from the hip on decisions rather than working from data and thorough analysis. This is a little puzzling since the technology nodes at Malta are bleeding edge... How is it possible to work from experience on a brand new technology? This has lead to spectacular screw-ups at every level. The overall mentality of the organization at Malta is that we have plenty of time to do something incorrectly two or three times, but no time to do it right once. The engineers and managers that disagree with this mentality have started leaving in frustration and there is a significant brain drain in the site. This has lead to overworked and stressed junior engineers and overall low moral.