Excellent Workplace, Cutting-Edge Tech
Pros
The software org that I was in had excellent culture and allowed for healthy work-life balance. The leaders allowed us the freedom to take care of the work as we best see fit. Other employees take time to help you. Everyone was great to work with, and I genuinely enjoyed coming to work on Monday. Work on cutting-edge technology reaching many millions of people. Flexible PTO is better than many other large tech companies and allows for more flexibility and peace of mind. On-campus benefits such as gym, cafeterias and coffee shops are great. 401 (k) match, ESPP program and donation matching are good. Vesting schedule is 3 years instead of the usual 4. San Diego is a great place to be and vastly better quality of life than the Bay Area and LA. Once pandemic remote work ends in April, they plan to allow a hybrid work approach where you only need to come in two days per week. Depending on your team, this might be even more flexible. This is a much better policy than Apple's. The business outlook for Qualcomm is bright. They are the inventors of 5G and are expanding into strong new markets such as auto. The acquisition of Nuvia will lead to chips that beat Intel and AMD. Work with very smart and diverse people. There is so much going on at Qualcomm that you can always find a different team doing something that interests you. The CEO is an industry genius and gives candid Q&As during quarterly all hands. Dev environments are usually Unix-based.
Cons
As with any large company, culture can vary between groups and teams. You can't generalize for a company of this size. Being a chip company means that most teams will not formally allow fully remote work once the pandemic ends. They expect you to report to an office because your work will likely involve interfacing with hardware of some kind. A minority of especially entitled employees suffer from "we aren't Google" syndrome and choose to complain and moan that the (already great) benefits and compensation aren't as stratospherically high as one or two other tech companies. Ironically, expect to hear these same employees also complain about "morale." Employees outside of the San Diego HQ miss out on some of the benefits that come with being at a main campus. The annual review process is time consuming and basically shuts down the company for one week.
