manufacturing operator

manufacturing technician

material handler

maintenance technician

warehouse worker

Entegris

I worked here in Facilities in San Luis Obispo and was laid off in June. This review is based on my personal experience.

From day one, I felt I was treated differently by management. I was told I was “untrustworthy” very early on, while I watched other new employees receive much more patience and flexibility. Over time, that label seemed to follow me. My concerns were often dismissed, and I felt like I was treated as the “problem” employee instead of being given a fair chance.

One of my earliest experiences there set the tone. I was new and still learning the job when someone came up to me aggressively complaining that his coffee was not ready and comparing me to the previous custodian. When I brought it to my manager, I felt blamed for the interaction instead of supported. That pattern continued throughout my time there.

In my experience, this workplace had a strong “good old boy” culture. The people who seemed to do best were the ones who kept their head down, agreed with management, and did not question anything. If you were seen as easy to manage or willing to go along with everything, you seemed more likely to keep your standing. If you asked for clarity, pushed back, or tried to protect yourself, it felt like you were viewed as difficult.

I eventually went to HR because the hostility and pressure had become too much. Even there, I was told they had initially viewed me as the troublemaker based on what management had said. That confirmed for me how quickly labels can stick in this environment. I went to HR in April, and by June I was laid off.

What made the experience especially hard was how constant the stress was. I cannot point to a single day there that felt genuinely good or stable. It felt like employees were quick to report each other, favor with management mattered too much, and the atmosphere stayed tense. Even after leaving, it affected the way I view workplaces because I got so used to feeling watched, judged, and unsupported.

One example that stuck with me was being told I could not even say goodbye to the one friend I had there while leaving. I was told to leave quietly. That moment summed up the tone of the place for me.

This was my experience, and other people may have had a different one. But if you are someone who values support, fairness, and being able to raise concerns without being labeled a problem, I would think carefully before working here

Positives:  

My co-workers were all smart and experienced and really cared about the business and making improvements.  They also achieved a lot even though they didn't get support or positive feedback from our operations manager for it.  Truly good people who were and are being unappreciated and professionally mistreated.  

Working conditions are pretty good since the plants are climate controlled and kept clean.    

Product is high tech and high quality. 

The pay and benefits are very good, but don't be fooled.  You pay for them with long hours and stress. You'd better respond to that email within minutes.  PTO sounds great at 5 weeks, but if you try to schedule much of it you will likely find that you are treated like a disloyal employee for even asking.  Some people don't get any because it is continually denied while others seem to never be at work.   

Big Negatives:

Poor morale on all levels including staff.

Performance management does not exist here.  The review period starts in January.  Annual goals are always very aggressive and don't come out until second quarter and then your personal goals get ram rodded through without any discussion.  Even so, when the goals are met, we still received "less than competent" ratings and the salary increases were pitiful.  This diminishes morale and motivation.    

On the other side of the coin, unprofessional behavior is tolerated.  Favoritism and discrimination are typical and have become the culture even with plenty of employee diversity.  Operators who continually cause problems keep their jobs.  A lot of inappropriate jokes/info about co-workers get shared by managers outside the management circle.  If you report them (PACE value) you are putting yourself out there as a troublemaker and it is likely that your complaint will get back to the person whose behavior you complained about.  Despite what they may tell you, you cannot rely on confidentiality.  This causes distrust throughout the organization.

With respect to performance, the plant is like a start-up... problems that should have been put to bed years ago continue to happen despite rules and regulations being in place.  People just are not held accountable yet leadership continues to ask why we have these problems and why morale is so bad.    

I've seen a lot of feedback on this company on-line and these problems go back over 5 years. I really liked the CEO, but don't know what hope to have for change.

There are a lot of pressures in this company in the specialy coatings division (ESC).  Pressure for on time deliveries, pressure to get new projects going, and engineering projects that don't go as planned quite often.  

For all the pressure to make deadlines it seems that it done so at times to the risk of a product.  This leads to new revisions of the product when it could have been done right the first time with a little more attention to detail or time to complete.

Then their is the management.  Overall the management wants to do a good job and get the products out the door.  They try hard to do so, but get handcuffed by different issues either with design, manufacturers, or in the build processes.  With this division being run by a group out of Texas, it makes things more difficult.  Texas isn't around all the time to see all the different issues that exist or to deal with the consequences.  They make quick decisions w/o having all the cards in hand at times just to make the profit.  Isn't quality more important?

Then you have production which is mostly run by a family of individuals.  They pretty much control management and not the other way around.  There have people that could have been and should have been fired at times, but because they are part of this family it will never happen.  This is one of the largest downfalls in the entire branch of this organization.  When a product needs to be made it's though production.  If you don't have their cooperation or the expertise the project can suffer or be made improperly.  This happens all to often and is one of the largest road blocks this division will ever have with growth and stability with new product development.

Machines - there aren't enough of them to do the work between engineering and production.  This also leads to bottle necks and log jams for production and engineering job completion.

Summary - Entegris can be a good place to work for overall if you are not working for this division.  They are moving into a new facility so all is under one roof instead of 3 buildings across the street from each other.  Yet, with lack of machinery and production management they might not ever do better than they are doing now.  Thank Texas for that.

Gather samples for analysis. Discuss unique requirements with the Senior Synthetic Chemists and Production Supervisor. Prioritize the work load  and run and record the tests, then communicate and discuss the test results with the Senior Synthetic Chemists, and/or the Production Supervisor.

I learned that extra effort and welcoming difficult discussions often resulted in optimizing Chemical Processes and Work Flows. Once this is understood by the team, then discussions will become easier and troubleshooting more productive. Your daily efforts result in greater profitability and company stability.

Management is empowering and supportive with continuous training and pay advances. This is a win-win. They are collaborative and transparent. Innovation is fostered through collaboration and communication 

Workplace Culture was collaborative and transparent. Risk is usually rewarded.

The hardest part of the job was working long hours to support production and make shipment timelines.

The most enjoyable part of the job was helping to streamline processes; reduce reaction time, reduce waste, increase yields; in a repeatable manner.



Everything is so mundane and boring, even senior/principle staff spend all day doing unskilled monotonous tasks that an intern could do, despite having 15+ years of experience. The company does no interesting work, and I've met exactly zero people with interesting jobs. Because the work is so simple, sometimes it can get overanalyzed and micromanaged.

If you're an engineer wanting to get no satisfaction from your job while your brain turns to mush doing brainless tasks that teach no skills, this is the place for you. Another reason for no job satisfaction is management makes zero effort to brief you on the details of projects. So not only is your job boring, but you have no idea why you're doing it.

You'll be expected to work 9-10+ hours a day, on top of unpaid lunch. Some will come in on weekends too, if tasks run overnight and need to be changed. Similarly, engineers are expected to be immediately responsive at all times and carry their phone around to receive text messages. 

Most employees are very young (some middle aged and very few senior). So there's a very high turnover rate.

The company has done well in the current economy, meaning target bonuses have paid out well, l and the overall compensation is adequate, but not competitive to the geographic area. "Flexible PTO" isn't really flexible, its dependent on supervisor approval, and it's limited to 3 weeks starting. Standards are different depending on who you are in regard to leniency with leave during the workday for personal matters, and it seems that the time of some individuals is more valuable than others. Overall, management is poor at optimizing employee time and getting the best out of employees. Most of the experiments and reactions being run could have been done by someone with far less experience and expertise. I was told at hiring that there would be room for research and development in my role, but when I was afforded that, every move was scrutinized, second guessed, and held to unrealistic timeline.

Would not recommend working here if you have any desire to advance or grow as a Scientist. 

● Work-life balance
Work-life balance for the rotating 12 hour shift was very good

● Pay & benefits
Accruing vacation package. Time is added bi-weekly on paydays. 401 contribution is average

● Job security and advancement
Many companies in the industry are painfully desperate for set up technicians, Entegris is no exception to this

● Management
It's a manufacturing company. Management is more transparent then most (in my experience) you have to know how to ask questions in ways that opens the management team up to a readable response

● Culture
The company seems to be moving into a top heavy management style environment. With this, the culture of the company locally, and at large, may shift towards prioritizing product volume opposed to generating quality products and employee wellbeing.

● Overall
Great pay if you're willing to put in the work. Be prepared to make a lot of extra efforts. Potential top heavy management team in the future. Shift leads and supervisors are top notch, all other managers and executives serve little purpose.

The pay is probably the number one issue at Entegris, and that is the only thing anyone who works here can agree on. No one in general production actually makes enough to live off of if you're a single income household. The drama here is so incredibly overwhelming with little to no help from upper management. It always seems to favor the party causing all of the issues and many good quality employees leave because of it. The job itself is not hard, and you need little to no experience to actually start. Things would just be so much better if the pay was adjusted for the level of skill, training and expectation they hold you to or even to similar jobs in the industry. The problem with advancement is that when a job becomes available, its not posted for equal opportunity for qualified employees to apply and interview for it. Upper management picks someone, most of the time a brand new hire, to fill the position and makes those qualified old- timers train them.

They claim to have "PACE" values, but the reality is they treat their people like commodities.  Most managers are very insecure and do not like to be challenged.  They have been talking about fixing the same problems for years, but nothing ever changes because they have the same managers making the same poor/fearful decisions.

There is absolutely no employee development.  They do not offer any kind of training, their onboarding is a joke, and many new people have to wait a week or more before they even get a PC.  It is like this because these things are not viewed as a priority.  Regardless of what they say about the great culture, people are not on the top of the priority list.

If you are looking for a job this is an OK place to work.  If you are looking for a career I would run in the other direction!

If you’ve had a lot of very challenging jobs, this job has a more relaxed environment with team building approach. A lot of people there get along, even if they’re a little shady. Worked here for almost 2 years and people leave stuff around and it doesn’t get stolen ( from what I’ve seen). Good place to work, but because it’s good I’d recommend you have a plan to get up in the world cause if you don’t good turns into comfortable and you might end up staying longer than planned. But if you like it you should stay, they give raises to smart workers. Keyword smart. There’s yearly bonuses & pay raises and solid stock investments and 401k. A lot of holiday get togethers. But every job has its pitfalls, work is work and you gotta deal with some bad characters from time to time. Hardest part about the work environment for me was dealing with co-workers who don’t do their fair share , but you learn to let go of what you can’t control.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Manufacturing operator 12 salaries reported	$24.08 per hour
Manufacturing technician 13 salaries reported	$23.15 per hour
Material handler 8 salaries reported	$23.00 per hour
Maintenance technician 10 salaries reported	$33.16 per hour
Warehouse worker 1 salary reported	$19.00 per hour

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