GlobalFoundries reviews

3.6

65% would recommend to a friend

(2,416 total reviews)
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Tim Breen

70% approve of CEO

42% positive business outlook

GlobalFoundries has an employee rating of 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 2,416 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The GlobalFoundries employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Manufacturing industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

2K reviews
1.0
Jan 1, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

A great starter company for those who are eager to get their hands dirty. If you can survive here for a year, you're a veteran. Initial compensation is surprisingly decent and is higher than many similar positions. However, GloFo's review system prevents everyone from receiving the bonuses they deserve post-hire. Malta is equidistant to happier places - Boston, NYC, Montreal to name a few. Saratoga Springs is also 20 minutes away on the Northway.

Cons

The primary cause of grief comes directly from top-down. GloFo Malta is a 3 year old site trying to compete with the big boys. As a result, we're operating at a faster speed than we can handle. There is an inherent false sense of urgency that comes with corporate projects. The engineers are very well aware that we cannot develop the next technology with the allocated time, yet are nevertheless forced to work towards an impossible goal. Consequently, work/life balance is skewed. Most engineers are thus forced to work seven days a week and be "on-call" for the remainder. Given the youth of the company, many of the mid level managers are former employees of another company within the industry. A great deal too many will hold firm to his or her own past workings and believe only in self-judgment. almost outright refusing to accept current facts from their engineers. Higher management refuses to take responsibility for failures to the end-customer and rather prefers to play the blame game against their own employees. Overall, it leads to one big, collective, political mess. Upper management claims to be results and data driven yet ignores the data engineers put in front of them. There is a great waste of engineering talent. Much of the output of the part of the job that requires any means of engineering is often not utilized, either due to negative results (management only reports the half-truth to customers) or irrelevancy (because the situation has changed since). Following the above point, because the company "prioritizes" everything simultaneously, the integrated process changes daily. There is no sense of norm or control. It is not possible for the engineers to try to resolve a problem if the very circumstances of which the problem resides is subjected to constant change.

2.0
Oct 13, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Many different cultures under one roof, brand new offices (half vacant, ghost town), some of the most advanced technology in the world, top notch engineers/scientists/tech's in the industry (yet high attrition rates), pretty good salaries, slowly improving work culture, management is pretty understanding about personal life, strong position with "Apple vs Samsung" battle, and backed by oil-wealthy investors.

Cons

Not only is the management extremely chaotic, but the chain of command is backwards too: The techs have ideas for how this place can really improve, the engineers are beyond busy in meetings all day long, the middle managements job is to hassle engineers about down tools, and we only hear from a VP if you are caught walking on the grass or if you're not inside the fab. There is way too much micromanagement. It seems every few weeks, direction changes causing wasted time on certain tasks. Mostly, this place is about conveying to outsiders a world class image by quickly cleaning/wiping tools prior to big guests arriving... engineers are used like janitors too often, big waste of time. GF went with mature processes and Brand New work force, but they didn't ever consider actually training this Brand New work force: No Training, No Mentorship, No Guidance, but plenty of yelling, public humiliation during pass downs, long hours, burning-out (unnecessarily done), and all the phone calls you could ask for at 3am and the stress that comes with it. As soon as he/she gets another offer, they leave this place! But we all get the sense that attrition has also plagued the levels of top management from the conception of this company; perhaps too much shady business deals between ATIC/Abu-Dhabi and NYS caused this chaos?? On top of this, the singapore-style management doesn't seem to actually help-out, and only adds fuel to the stressful environment (seriously, what you did in your failed fab isn't going to eventually work elsewhere). The singapore-trained personnel (any person trained in Singapore, regardless of ethnic background) will argue and fight for the entire hour of a meeting, only to come to the same conclusion as the rest of us came to in the first 5 minutes (not all from the Singapore site, but too many of them). This entire formula of a work culture promotes self destruction; the simplest tasks are a nightmare to accomplish, and many people just sweep issues under the rug to avoid asian-style public humiliation, arguments, and even more micromanaging. Employee morale is very low, and the only employees that have a high opinion of this Fab are those that have never actually been inside the Fab! There is a recognition that this place needs to drastically change, but you'd better not be the guy who speaks out... managers who have spoken out have been demoted, and people who speak out at Town Hall meetings have been seriously reprimanded by their boss. There is a culture at this place of "Just keep your mouth shut" and you can keep your job! Not really a shocker considering the value of human life in Abu-Dhabi. It took many many voices to finally get VP/management to recognize our need for tool-time vs cycle time to fix particle issues (although at the same time Upper Management complains about engineers not raising the yield enough).

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