WD Engineer reviews

Work hour policy for executive level is supposed to be flexible, but some conditions to it are still strict. Much due to the nature of being a manufacturing plant. Work-life imbalance due to the required working hours and production schedules. Lacks good facility planning, often seen by the constant relocation of departments and offices within current premise. Not much corporate responsibility activities which involves employees in the past few years, compared to US and Thailand sites. Doesn't encourage much interaction between employees outside the context of work. Work ethics are a bit too strong sometimes, creating a tense working environment. Coming into the plant feels like being cut off from the outside world, due to the lack of easy access to various media.

WD's mid-2008 acquisition of ST-Longmount (see WD's website for public press-release) hit the Lake Forest team like a surprise earthquake. Such a merger takes massive co-ordination between the senior levels of both parties, yet the direct manager of Lake Forest's ASIC group was given no advanced warning?!? Why would senior management do that? The result? Some initial overlap/redundancy of personnel between Lake Forest ASIC and the (acquired) Longmount ASIC team (not to worry, there's plenty of work to go around), but more seriously, a loss of focus by both sides. The 'training exercise' was rendered pretty much redundant (tossed aside in favor of Longmount's imported material), though thankfully the trained skill-set is directly re-usable on the imported database. Things will settle down as everyone finds their role in the big machine. location - Lake Forest, in the middle of nowhere...(10 minutes from 5 freeway.)