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Applied Optoelectronics

Engaged Employer

Applied Optoelectronics reviews

1.9

18% would recommend to a friend

(113 total reviews)
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Thompson Lin

3% approve of CEO

22% positive business outlook

Applied Optoelectronics has an employee rating of 1.9 out of 5 stars, based on 113 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a poor working experience there. The Applied Optoelectronics employee rating is 45% below average for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

113 reviews
1.0
Jul 21, 2018

It can be so much more

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good job security. They wont fire you even you do absolutely NOTHING. Benefits are actually good.

Cons

This will be a long list: Shady performance review and promotion system. Engineers with different job descriptions are compared with each other. By that logic, you should be comparing that guy that cleans CEOs car with cleaning ladies. And this "normalization algorithm" is just shady as *. Now they are even implementing a special performance grade just for R&D. If base salary for RD is already higher than other engineers, why do you need a special grade? Getting a promotion does not guarantee a raise(like, seriously?) Cronyism. Bunch of people does not know anything but playing politics. Terrible training system. Some departments not carrying their weight (looking at you, facilities and QC). Upper managements setting unrealistic goals with no extra resources. Incompetent lower managements. This is however somewhat due to upper managements like to micro manage everything. Low base salary. I heard new hires are getting better offers these days, but it is nowhere near to being competitive. Overall poor planning and slow decision making. Dead weights that handles crucial and time sensitive tasks not delivering even once, but never called out nor corrected. Meanwhile people that have been performing extremely well is asked to work even more overtime. Just to name a few from the top of my head.

3.0
Aug 7, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I learned how to use advanced high-end test equipments for testing.

Cons

Instead of designing and developing products through my PhD expertise as a R&D engineer should have contributed to the company, my main daily job is testing modules like a operator assigned directly by the manager. I tested the same modules for several months or a year more , and no one cares. Work over-time is very often and not paid.

1.0
Jun 30, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Only good thing here is, people are nice.

Cons

Company never rewards people as they should have. Company underpays a lot for most of the positions and I know lots of people here never got promotions after they worked more than five years for the company. Someone got a promotion on the title but nothing in terms of salary. There is a joke inside the company, "Fulltime job, parttime salary" When economy was down, the company cut 10% of the salary for all engineers and above and asked their employees to work 2 hrs overtime in force without paying any extra even if there was actually no work out there. So people ended up sitting in front of their computers, doing nothing but staring at their monitors. In 2009, they laid off 50% of the people and when they rehired some of them back, they only gave 70% of their prior salary. Company also tried to save cost by cutting benefits, not only the deductable is now incredibly higher, but employees even had to pay for their own insurance. If you have family with two kids, you need to pay at least 600 USD a month for the insurance. Company has very serious discriminations against people who don't speak and read English very well. If you are not good at English, company won't go with a standard procedure to make you pass probation simply because they don't want to give you a raise at all. However, for those who were born here or know how to complain, it will a totally different story. The workload is heavy and very stressful to meet the deadline. On average, an engineer needs to stay one more hour everyday and sometimes work on the weekend as well, of course, without anything extra. But, no matter how hard you worked, how many contributions you made, you won't get any bonus, nothing, not a penny. I've already got out of this ugly place whereas I am sorry for my friends who still work there, especially those who were treated unfairly. For those who are going to be here, please stay out of this company whatever there is another choice.

Viewing 10 - 12 of 113 Reviews

Glassdoor has 119 Applied Optoelectronics reviews submitted anonymously by Applied Optoelectronics employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Applied Optoelectronics is right for you.