Vantaggi
- had good benefits - good salary, but probably less than what of comparable companies - worked with nice people, at least in my group - depending on your group, you could have a good work/life balance.
Svantaggi
The work at Qualcomm is tedious and dull, not much unlike an assembly line. You will work on modifying legacy spaghetti code to add small new features. You will sit in front of a computer all day, answering never-ending emails and instant messages, in which people can't even properly write, saying things like "qq R U in". Your mind will turn to mush as you quote Q-acronyms all day, and multi-task endlessly. You will click many buttons with your mouse. Is this how you want to spend 9-10 hours per day, 5 days per week? Talent is not a prerequisite to work here, despite the propaganda stating otherwise. I believe this to be true for most "tech companies", particularly the large ones. You will be trained on Qualcomm's in-house tools and processes, and this will be the primary focus of your job. Anyone could work here. Qualcomm claims to be an American company but hires very few Americans. Easily >95% of the engineers there are H1B visa holders. Most of the Americans they do hire are contract employees who receive no benefits at all; no vacation, no health insurance, no sick leave, etc. Qualcomm benefits from the American corpitocracy , which is funded by American tax payers, yet provides very little in return to American in terms of jobs. Well, perhaps they indirectly provide more service industry jobs. Also, Qualcomm hides billions of dollars overseas so as to not pay American taxes. Additionally, an IEEE study (and other studies) show that there are plenty of American engineers, meaning very few H1B visas are needed. So, as American colleges spit out more "STEM" professionals, with massive amounts of debt, fewer of them will be able to find jobs because of companies like Qualcomm. Who benefits from all of this? The financial sector does. Know that if you work here, you are contributing to the worsening state of things in the world. You are contributing to the increasing wealth gap between the 1% and everyone else. For example, while bonuses for engineers decreased every review cycle I worked there (despite increasing review ratings), executive pay skyrocketed. Let's think about what these large corporations like Qualcomm do. They take priceless "commodities" (at least in the corporate mind) of human lives and natural resources (plants, animals, minerals), and convert them into pointless gadgets in exchange for worthless currency. This currency has value only because people agree it does. Additionally, corporations exist only because people agree they do. We spend our lives working for a fictitious entity that makes the world a worse place, in exchange for fictitious currency. It is silly. Don't do it. If you don't mind doing tedious mind-numbing work (updating XML and spreadsheets, spending <10% of your time writing code), because you get "fat" paycheck, then work here. If you don't mind knowing that you are trading your life away in order to make the rich richer, then you will like it here. I And, now Qualcomm is laying off 15% of its workforce, and bringing hedge fund members onto the Board. Is this really where you want to work? How about instead, you live an authentic life. Let's quit believing in imagined realities: the corporate people, the fiat currency. Instead, live locally and for each other. Our society worships corporations (imagined constructs) above what is real. Quit doing it, and make the world a better place. If we quit believing in them they will die, not unlike faeries, such as Tinkerbell.