Incredibly great and incredibly terrible - Anonymous employee Lam Research Employee Review

3.0
Feb 22, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Compressed schedule is great for work/life balance, coworkers are usually helpful and informative. Great experience for the tech sector.

Cons

You need to suck up to the right people here because favoritism is rampant. The supervisors will believe whoever their friends are and no one else if an issue arises. The managers are disconnected from what is happening on the floor so they are about as helpful as a football bat. The manufacturing instructions provided can be quite vague, which seems out of sync for a company that puts emphasis on the quality of their products. There are way too many stories about sexism in this company, but hopefully they are being addressed now that the CEO is gone.

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5.0
Jun 11, 2026
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Pros

Lead business and overview of business

Cons

Too many travelling to international

2.0
Jun 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Pay is market rate or slightly higher. Smart new fresh grads join every year. They work hard.

Cons

Avoid Dielectric Etch Org as much as you can. Both product and process engineering. Constant Pressure, extreme long work hours, You are working 7/8 AM to 9/10PM, need to work on weekends because of lack of tool times. High level management yelling, screaming in meetings for anything trivial. If CVP wakes up not happy that day, someone will get yelled at in either large or small meetings for small things. THIS IS Dielectric Etch Culture at Lam. This place is a cesspool of nepotism. Even director levels are being yelled at constantly in meetings for various reasons, if he or she is not favored by the CVP. If a mediocre engineer or director who is liked by CVP, he will have much easy time cruising through with minimal effort and knowledge. ... If you are fresh PhD from top or mid tier schools, expect 80hr work weeks, and if you are not lucky, wait for 4 years to be promoted from lvl 3 to 4 level and stuck with no options to move around because you are stuck in Semiconductor equipment industry and other orgs in Lam won't take you. There are many junior engineers with excellent work ethic stuck doing the same things for half a decade without a move in their career. But if you are good at lip service, your life will be easier. Do not trust the general statement of Lam has good culture, it is very very dependent on which Org inside Lam.

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