Synopsys reviews

Slow growth, bureaucratic engineering decision making, almost no layoffs

Limited advancement opportunities - I once asked a mid-level manager how one could get a promotion and he looked me in the eye and said "know somebody". Sadly, my subsequent experience at the company seems to bear that out. Annual raises tend to be rather small and there are few opportunities to learn new skills. Management can make some rather "Dilbert-esque" decisions. It often seems that the product release schedule is dictated by the usually-irrational promises made by the marketing and/or sales departments rather than logic, resulting in fairly frequent crunch-time scenarios. This in turn leads to product quality suffering and unnecessary levels of stress. The food in the on-campus cafeterias, while good, is not free, nor is it particularly cheap. The engineers work in drab grey cubicles under cheap fluorescent lights.