Company being driven off the rails by a CEO who is afraid of technology - Senior Technical Writer ASM Employee Review

ASM is not for everyone. And I do not mean it in either positive or negative way. It is just the way it is. We believe in the semiconductor business outlook fueled by AI demand. We believe in keeping the talent density to drive progress. We believe in hard work and at times you have to go above and beyond. We believe in excellence. And we are fanatic about it. And this is what I have seen during my long tenure here. I have seen great progress where ASM breaks through silos and as one cohesive team working together to deliver for our customers. And this progress will not happen with small and incremental changes. It requires bold transformation driven by our C-level leaders. And with every transformation there are challenges and there are opportunities, there are supporters and there are those who would like to keep status quo. I have seen great opportunities given to people who believe in our cause and deserve it. I am not saying that we did all the right things. I believe we made many good decisions, and we did make mistakes as a human does. But without change there is no progress and without progress there is no success. And we respect those who decides to join and stay with us in this transformation journey as we respect those who decide that this is not their usual cup of tea and withdraw. This is us. This is ASM as I know it. And I am enjoying every single bit of it.

For sure there are things to improve.

Used to be great, we are still holding hope the board will boot Hicham, however unlikely.

The change once Hicham took over was dramatic. He was a competent CTO but as a CEO he is clueless and terrible. He is holding on to an overinflated stock price while stuffing upper management with his like minded buddies (look at the top management...zero diversity). Long term this will ruin the company, he will just sell it off and blame everyone but himself like he always does. Every week there is yet another horror story about the way he treated someone at a meeting and employees are getting squeezed from all directions...I mean downgrading travel to basic economy and slashing per diem while the stock is high is great! What will you cut once the stock tumble? Perks are gone, STI and LTI have decreased unless you are one of his dudes. He is the smartest CEO ever, wanted to hire a bunch of H1B holders for low pay (nothing wrong with H1B holders, he just wanted to take advantage. I would have bounced to a higher paying job the moment I got my green card, taking my know-how with me). It is so so sad to see how a decent company is completely ruined by ONE PERSON