This review is for Amphenol RF in Danbury, CT. I can only speak for my own experience. To me, overall it was a very unpleasant company to work for. Some details:
When I joined the company, management stated that entrepreneurs do well at RF. But they appear to not know the word’s meaning. They enforce the rulebook (very old school mentality), and do not promote or invest in innovation. Because manufacturing was moved almost entirely overseas, you mostly spend time dealing with the overseas factory that make the connectors, who are flaky and disinterested in the collaboration. When the company has success that you helped build, I don’t think they appropriately compensate you for it. It took record setting and truly enormous profit to get a small bonus, pizza/cupcakes and little gift bag things with cheap Amphenol branded items.
Employee morale is low, and some are pretty vocal about it. Many, many program managers have left. Nearly entire teams left including the full engineering team over 2 years, including a majority of the most senior members. Some positions at the company are revolving doors.
Largest grievances:
1. Facilities and Employee Treatment
RF is in a terrible, ugly, outdated facility. The office and machine shop are side by side, causing many problems. Due to the very odorous shop oils getting into the ventilation, even office workers leave work smelling of oil. It saturates clothes, hair, and car interiors. Your nose will become acclimated so that you can’t smell it anymore. Until you are jolted when you return on Monday AM, or your partner tells you to take a shower. How does it pass inspection, good management, or common sense? There was an air filter in the lunch room but it disappeared. One day a former employee visited and noted that you can never forget that smell. There is a lackluster EH&S culture at RF, starkly in contrast to other CT engineering/manufacturing companies.
The office is often too cold, even in the summer. The thermostat is under lock and key, only accessible by one person. People wear sweaters but have cold hands and bring in space heaters (but not too many allowed because that could blow the circuit). Upper management have heated offices. Cleanings are rare so it’s a dusty office. There is lots of junk lying around, and a dead mouse was found lying in a corner. Want a new keyboard? Might take a while.
2. Management
Management is very old school and policies are not in line with the times. It has cost the company. A big source of conflict was the WFH policy during the pandemic, even before vaccines arrived. Most workers could do 100% of their job from home, and business did not suffer (quite the opposite), but at some point WFH was canceled for everyone. Everyone in the office, every day. For employees, if a babysitter can’t come or your partner needs to use your car one day, tough luck, you have to burn PTO. Some presentations put on by management have been so self-centered and absurd that they caused much chatter amongst employees. Some of this was self-pitying, some observed the near perfect fit for the show “The Office.”
Eventually, things like this caused attrition. One very good and respected employee got a job offer elsewhere and tried negotiating with RF to allow him more WFH time. Despite his good service and record, management was unwilling to negotiate, and the employee left, bitterly disappointed. Apparently one employee put in their two weeks notice, but was simply told to leave the same day. Presumably due to the attrition, the WFH rule was updated to allow 1 day of WFH per week. But your chosen day could not include Monday or Friday!
