Vantaggi
Handheld and mobile computing business is an interesting market to play in. Good engineers with great ideas. An ongoing commitment to improve the product development cycle with regard to quality and time to market. It's great seeing our products being adopted by key customers, and even better to have those customers return to us for their next generation product needs. Great cross-collaboration between same-site project teams. A good mix of disciplines and career backgrounds provides well rounded development teams. Employees are encouraged to ask tough questions and demand honest answers, and management generally does its best to provide those answers. Remarkably little corporate B.S. as compared to other companies I have worked at.
Svantaggi
Santa Clara is a newcomer in a business that the Austin (ex-Intel) site has plenty of experience, but Santa Clara often downplays or outright ignores the expertise and experience of the Austin site. Too much micromanagement, starting at the top. Before we make an offer to hire someone, the offer must first be personally approved by the CEO. This is fine in a small startup, but is a questionable practice in a company employing over 5000 people. I see some of my peers working insane overtime, which again might make sense in a pre-IPO startup, but given the stock performance level, I just don't understand the benefit of making such sacrifices.