I see some frustration with Qualcomm "Old Timers" percolating in some posts on this board. I've been with the company for about 19 years, I guess you can put me in the "Old Timer" category. I do not want to go into a back-and-forth discussion who's right or wrong, I just want to better understand what "Old Timer" behaviors frustrate folks that are considering themselves to be "Old Timers". Again, I am not trolling and I am not trying to disrespect anyone, I just want to better understand the perception. Thank you!
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To be fair there are members in QCT to that country club.Let me tell you the story of this guy, let's call him LZ, that struck gold during the 90s acquisition of globalstart. LZ obviously made a lot of money and bought his house at la jolla. Since the year 2000,LZ religiously hits the door at 3 PM and believe me LZ is not at all a superstar or overachiever, his more like layback and like party at work.LZ reputation is very low. LZ wont't spare a chance to tell you how he plans to continue "milking the cow" to put it on its own words. So how such bad employee manage to stay milking Qualcomm for so long? People behold ....its the buddy system. Guess who's LZ buddy? Steve.
The above individual is a manager at Qualcomm and layoffs happened this past week and my guess is this is a disgruntled employee lashing out directly at this individual. While folks do appreciate the information that can be gleaned from your site, unfortunately it has gotten pretty brutal. I know from reading your site that some racial bashing got pulled off in previous weeks. I believe that it is a good thing to have sites like these but like the issues seen in Yik Yak, you all have to deal with a fine line of interesting info/gossip to a forum for ppl to maliciously lash out without any repercussions.
I carry a samurai sword just like that chick on The Walking Dead just in case we all turn into zombies.
@Anonymous55757 By the time you unlock the drawer, may be you will be dead.
HAHAH WTF Ted Nugent. Now the involuntary searches start.
HAHAH WTF Ted Nugent. Now the involuntary searches start.
@Anonymous55757 Haha just one more frustrated American. You are an idiot.
@55362, that's why i pack my heat in the office. I keep my 45 magnum and desert eagle in a locked drawer in my office (6th floor Bldg N); it's considered one of the most secure storage areas and I don't need to worry about kids getting to them. Best thing is I'll be ready if any sh** goes down at work with any disgruntled, laid off employees coming back to pop a cap in the VP who laid him/her off. Can't believe HR is allowing people full access after laying them off
I totally forgot about the fight. I was busy taking a vacation day!
Nuke the old timers cablers turned vp with high school education. What tha?
Did this fight ever go down? Should i be packing some heat when i come in to work on Monday?
When will the fight start? I'm in front of building N now. I abandoned my family on Christmas morning to see this..it better be good!
That's because nobody cares what the company is selling, everyone just cares what they're getting back in compensation. Despite the fact that ATHR sold commodity products, ATHR was compensating us much better than QC ever has.
Amazing to read such complains here from old Atheros folks. You guys sell 50 cents commodity product. Whereas at QC, our core business sells licensed intellectual property in the price range of $50 a piece. Of course you had to fly coach and share rooms... I am not endorsing the ill-managed leadership of Q, but if you didnt understand by now that we are in two distinctively different busineses, there is some serious issue here on our 'employee' part... Best to those of you who are moving on.
this escalated quickly. will the fight feature precision choreography and excessive finger snapping a la west side story? patent sharks vs executive jets.
How about y'all fight in front of building N on Christmas day. Winner can bash the loser's head on the patent wall...i'd fly down to SD to see that fight
I'll guess Craig Barrett no longer shares a room when away... at Google.
Anonymous54889.. still here bitch.. just don't let me find out who you are.. be a man and meet me ..
Anonymous54741, I'll meet you in the lobby of building M tomorrow.
Oh wait, that's right. You can't get in anymore. Hahaha!
@54532: See 54527's comment (not mine but I was also around during the ATHR days). NOBODY had a problem flying coach and sharing rooms and doing everything possible to cut costs during the ATHR days because the CEO/CFO were leading BY EXAMPLE.
Anonymous54532: who the f you called bitches? You wanna get beat up, fface! Let's meet up.. location and time.. bitch!
Also take a look at the Intel forum and you will see there are a bunch of whiners there too. It's a layoff site, what do you expect.
That was my reply and I'm nowhere close to a VP level.
Well, that pretty much sums how Qualcomm VP’s view complains from engineers, just a bunch of whining bitches. No wonder there is morale problem.
Sounds like a bunch of bitches whining. Go become an executive so you can fly that corporate jet or go run your own company. Waah! Life isn't fair. Just because you're not smart enough to climb that ladder doesn't mean everyone has to suffer like you.
Well if they're asking people to not fly business class to save money, why haven't I seen a story about Qualcomm selling off the corporate jets? Why haven't I heard the board members and executives tell everyone that they're only flying coach from now on?
Flying business is another excess that's funded by the licensing scam...it just doesn't make sense and it's a complete waste of money
When ATHR folks went on business trips to attend events like sales conferences and trade shows (CES, mobile world congress), everyone booked economy flights and shared hotel rooms; the CEO (Craig Barratt) and CFO (Jack Lazar) also shared hotel rooms like everyone else. If you didn't want to share a room, there was the option to pay the difference out of your own pocket. Hence, everyone felt like they could do their part to cut costs and help squeeze out that last $0.01 in EPS to help with the value of their RSUs. At the Q, it's totally different. On the one hand, you have a VP telling people they need to keep airfare costs low, which nowadays means flying business class one way and economy the other, while you have the exec team traveling like royalty. Well guess what, if they do that, then i'll do my part to run up costs as well. Why should i take one for the team?? I will always use the black taxis in Korea so i can bill the company more and get more credit card rewards points out of it. In general, the more expensive i can make something cost on my trips, the better because it means more credit card points. Back in the atheros days, I traveled like i was spending my own money because i knew that the higher ups were doing the same.
ATHR was generating plenty of profits before QCOM bought it and f**ked everything up. ATHR had a great product with stable software and was VERY good at keeping costs down. QCOM had a bloated wifi product with really crappy software, courtesy of Airgo's design that was maintained by QCOM's pre-ATHR acquisition engineers. The hardware was ready for prime time, the software was not. Why do you think LG/Google dumped us after the Nexus 4 project? Hint: it wasn't because of an ATHR wifi product, it was because the WCN had so many crashes that even though we tried to force it down their throat by integrating the baseband into our chips, LG and Google both said "no thanks".
Just wonder how much profit margin has ATHR acquisition brought to QCOM? ZERO! The best selling WiFi product is still developed by the REAL QCOM not-so-old timers from Airgo and an older acquisition. And look at the disastrous SoC product! It would be truly disgusting if ATHR folks still receive any RSU. They deserve 0. I'd say good jobs Murthy the Fatty!
54480: Possibly. But the only reason to need to "normalize" is if the acquiring company was insulting all of its employees before the acquisition anyway. FYI: situation has NOT improved, despite the fact that all of my ATHR RSU have vested. Screw this company, it's time to leave.
I have heard (anecdotal) that in the glory years of the mid-90s even low level engineers would get a few thousand options every year, which split adjusted (16:1) would be tens of thousands per year of potentially deep in the money options. Assuming they didn't panic sell them all, then climbing the corporate ladder is rather optional. One can easily afford getting a RSTNVST vanity plate on their M6
so then the grant would be 90% of salary, vested over 3 years. . maybe the "insulting" grants are to normalize with the typical compensation package of the acquiring company. HR is as transparent as a black hole, so who knows.
Isn't a Director also an executive? I mean you get an executive package in terms of health benefits eventhough it means nothing now that they've removed the no copay benefit. That was a good incentive for "executives", now taking it away, the benefits of being a director and above is gone till they hit VP, if they ever get that far.
It was 30% of annual salary granted at ATHR EVERY year, with a vesting schedule of 3-4 years, so once the pipeline was full, you'd have RSUs worth 90-120% of annual salary at any given time. Qualcomm then started granting only about 5-10% of annual salary every year, which was an insult, when you consider that it had to be taking in at least as much if not more per employee than ATHR. No reason to stick around in this place.
At time of grant, it was ~30% of annual salary, on top of an annual bonus that was 15% of annual salary. This is from first hand experience with a sr engineer title. After the acquisition, the retention RSUs were woth 80% of annual salary at time of grant. Hence many atheros old timers complained about the paltry RSUs that the Q grants. For any atheros old timers who were laid off, the timing could have been better since the rention package (finished vesting 5/20/2014) and the last of the atheros grants finished vesting 11/20/2014.
Was the Q better than this in the good times? My understanding is that smaller companies are much more generous with stock due to fewer employees having to share the pile
5-7x at the time of grant?
Silicon valley routinely gives RSU bonuses of 100% or more of salary? Sounds costly from an accounting point of view
I was part of the atheros aquisition, and have been part of the "rest and vest" group. The atheros RSU vales are easily 5-7x the value, per year, of the RSUs that the Q grants. They simply do not know how to retain good people in Silicon Valley. Unlike in SD, we have a lot of options up here, and the RSU grants are really what differentiate a company, since base salary and bonuses are pretty similar across companies
A Director title isn't necessary for the "Rest N' Vest" program. All it takes is to have started at a time when it rained stock options every review cycle. There's probably a good number of Sr. Staffers coasting along
Old timers = People at a higher title just because of their time spent at Qualcomm and not because they deserve.
Look at how many Director/Sr Director/VP titled people are there at Qualcomm. Has our management realized that there needs to be some seriousness to these positions more than just a title?
Why are most of the execs (VP and above) chosen internally within Qualcomm instead of hiring from outside?
Because there are so many old timers at higher positions, they are of course very well connected to each other. There is this inner circle of politics inside of Qualcomm which prevents new, young & deserving people to rise up in the organization.
A steady stream of "Old Timers" have been "Retiring" over the last few months at QCOM. So something is going on.