Pros
Lam is well respected with its customers. There is a strong drive for the very best performance of processing equipment. Lam has a good strategy with respect to Wall Street. Lam has also had a much lower layoff rate in comparison to the average in the industry. The salaries are respectable and so are the average bonuses. The upper management strives to develop a forward thinking strategy for the future to ensure corporate growth.
Cons
Lam has a motto "A place where successful people want to work." That is only true for upper management. I overheard a senior director tell a PhD engineer that Lam does not want smart people just people willing to take orders and work hard. The work-life balance is poor: Multi-tasking means that weekends and nights are perfectly acceptable additions to a 60 hour week. Upper management fails to review managers from the perspective of the managed, rather many directors are promoted on their self-aggrandizing eloquence rather than actual performance and competence. One senior vice president tells his minions to "over communicate" - this edict results in endless meetings filled with constant and irrelevant questions and interruptions. Excessive meetings bite into lab time. And lab time is hectic. The labs are crowded with equipment. Equipment is resourced tightly, such that missing one's slot on a tightly scheduled tool, by just a few minutes, meant a full days delay, followed by yelling from management. Lam is a high-tech high-complexity business; things will go wrong. Yet, too often panic ensues when something goes wrong. Meetings go on for hours with Chicken Little scenarios. The future of the semiconductor industry is expected to be uncertain since Moore's law is reaching an end. Will Lam be prepared for a major paradigm shift? The company has not introduced a "new" etch technology since the late 1990's. They have focuses, with reasonable justification, on improving and perfecting the technologies that were introduced about 20 years ago.