software engineer

engineer

senior engineer

staff engineer

senior software engineer

Qualcomm

I was in mid-level management in a product/engineering group. Q leadership is focused on all the wrong things; execs nit-pick technical details and cater to major customers instead of fixing the organization and focusing on strategy and vision. Technical teams have unofficial pocket-veto on projects by simply not staffing them. Product Marketing only talks to manufacturers; the company has almost no insight into consumer behaviors or the future of how humans use the devices that pay Qualcomm's bills, because they laid off all of those people. Engineering teams might be awesome or grumpy, depending on the group and the location. Everyone is overworked. Program managers are often way out of their technical depth, and the processes and tools they have to use are nightmarish. FocalPoint is an absolute disaster and actively makes the products worse and take longer to make. Process owners usually build processes to serve "the core business" of handsets, and force all of the other businesses (IoT, connectivity, automotive, audio, etc) to use processes that don't fit their products or customers and just cause more problems that they solve. "Product Strategy" is usually a massive presentation full of TAMs and SAMs, basically stating how much money they could make in each market segment. No analysis of what is the right product to build to make that money, or why anyone would want the products they were making. They're 98% focused on cellular and handsets, and in spite of all of their efforts to diversify, they squander their acquisitions by forcing unsuitable processes and decision-making on them, always seeing the world through Snapdragon-tinted or 4G/5G-tinted glasses.

Lots of interactions devolved into incredibly deep technical arguments, with several people who hadn't done the detail work on a problem arguing with those who had. This, in the middle of stage gate approval meetings that should have been about "is this a good business idea or not." Lots of talking over each other and interrupting people on conference calls. Non-technical people belong to a lower class of employees in the Q culture.

Executives are constantly fighting over territory and empire-building, with the most powerful people being those who have been in San Diego the longest. They had an SVP destroying a business unit (sales tanking), had no idea what he was doing, was actively telling his marketing people to poach customers from other business units, told his product people not to cooperate on joint developments with other business units, would erupt into profanity and abuse in meetings, would walk into meetings completely unprepared to discuss the topic at hand and would instead insist that the team talk about something else (even if they weren't the ones assigned to that project)...and it took nearly 2 years in the role for that guy to leave the company, possibly voluntarily. He was literally the worst leader I've ever seen in my 20 year career, and he had been there more than a decade and was a total disaster in that SVP role for 2 years, and nobody above him appeared to do anything about it.

They changed their review process at one point to one major annual performance review with compensation changes, and one mid-year review for feedback only. Except that for VP and up, they would skip the mid-year feedback session. For VPs and up. What, people at that level don't need to do their job better? What kind of idiot thinks it's a good idea to not have the VPs work on doing their job better. Of all the great investments of time and energy, getting your VPs and up to do their job better, and identifying the poor performers at that level, is the MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU COULD BE DOING. Astounding.

They regularly suffer company-wide layoffs where they'll cut 50% of people from a team and then expect that team to continue on with all the same projects as if the workload were totally appropriate.

The only people who might enjoy working at Qualcomm are low-level engineers who can keep their heads down and just work on the projects they're assigned, or people in some of the auxiliary functions like HR where Qualcomm is probably not so different from many other companies. (Except for their bizarre and self-destructive policy where employees cannot receive raises or promotions when applying to other jobs internally -- all moves must be lateral, you can only ever be promoted from your current job up, by your current boss.) The pay is good, benefits are good, some of the people are good, but as far as I could tell lots of people don't actually like working there very much.

I'm a really positive person and I hated it there. I finally quit when I realized that nobody above me cared about fixing any of the problems I identified with the organization, its processes, and its products. I've got better things to do with my time and talents.

In the almost one year since I started here at Qualcomm, my coworkers have quickly transformed into family. I have never had the privilege to work with a better group of people! Qualcomm as a company is fabulous too, with wonderful fitness classes, festivals, and activities. A typical day for me begins early, to get the Candidate Care Center set up and ready to receive the large volume of on-site candidates that begin their day here. Each day, my self and one other collegue greet an average of 30 candidates per day. We give them their schedules and Qualcomm packets, go over the schedule with them, tell them briefly about Qualcomm and "Qlife," and answer any questions they may have. Our Center also displays all of Qualcomm's fabulous products, in a hands-on environment for the candidate's to explore. We deal with a lot of candidate issues, such as rental car, hotel, and luggage issues; also, inevitable there is an unexpected change in their schedules, and we help address them.

Besides my busy role in the CCC, I am also a Staffing Coordinator, supporting up to 6 Recruiters at one time. I've been scheduling around 150 phone interviews weekly. Again, inevitably, most need rescheduling, doubling the amount of interviews to be scheduled. This includes reaching out to the many, many candidates, matching their availability with the Interviewer's, and setting up and confirming the interview. I also assist the Interviewer's with inputting their comments, and updating the candidate's profiles.

I have become obsessively proficient in Outlook and Excel, and have become even more neurotically organized. Because of the high volume work load, I learned quickly to prioritize my actions, and strategically plan my work day. I also put in the time, sometimes working up to 55 hours per week in order to get things completed in a timely and organized manner.

The current position for which I am employed in a temporary position, with no chance of roll-over, As a self-motivator, I believe if you work as hard as you can, you will be rewarded, However, this position is unfortunately not one that offers anything but fabulous work relationships and networking opportunities

	Ran current drain test suit on different commercial devices like iPhone5, Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola Mini, LG Optimus etc as well as internal devices on GSM, WCDMA,LTE networks for optimization before launching in to the market and also to do competitive analysis with other commercial devices.
	Responsibilities include validating overall device features such as Stability, multimedia, and RIL with respect to their specifications.
	Manual and Automation testing of Qualcomm Chips. Executing Sanity test regularly with expertise in both Multimedia and RIL
	Worked on the automation scripts for power testing to make the complete current drain automation.
	Experience in test planning and expertise in finding software defects, doing initial log analysis and reporting those using tools like Prism and JIRA and following them to closure.
	Hands-on experience with tools like QPST, QXDM and QMI Test Pro
	Created detailed test plans and conducted test script walkthroughs to ensure that testing coverage is adequate and test scenarios specify the correct expected results if not raised a CR.
	Field testing to find how the device behaves power wise in regular day-to-day life.
•	Level based test plan to check different thermal functionalities like core control, different thermal drivers on different thermal algorithms like monitor and PID on different targets.
•	Short sanity on regular basis which includes basic functionalities of a device on different networks like WCDMA, LTE etc.
•	Ran different power and performance test cases to improve the cpu algorithm
•	Collected cpu stats for different test scenarios through which it is very easy to understand the cpu behavior of a chipset.
•	Ran different tests to understand the different low power modes and how the system should behave in these low power modes.
•	Breakdown measurement to get to the bottom of the issue to find out which part is causing high power consumption.
•	Ran overnight suspend/resume test on different targets to catch different stability issues.

Great location, facilities extremely nice. Used to have a lot of perks and benefits, e.g. JCC holiday parties etc. but these are going away with the budget cuts.

Management doesn't know how to run a large organization from director to C-level, no one has an MBA or any formal business experience. This is fine if you're running a startup, but extremely inefficient for a large company. Even in the engineering departments, every group is silo-ed leading to poor efficiency and pretty bad integration (e.g. snapdragon 810). Pretty much zero mentorship, which is OK for most people, but if you're someone who needs to be briefed or explained what to do for every task, you probably won't do very well. Most of groups are very focused on execution, very little innovation except maybe corporate R&D or the modem systems side.

One benefit is if you have some ideas you want to patent, its pretty easy to get patented, although most people are so focused on execution they don't file many.

Work place environment is pretty bad. I rarely ever see people say "hi" to eachother in the hallways, most of the buildings are closed door offices which are pretty isolating, but with the budget cuts they're moving to cubicles.

Looking ahead, most of the jobs will probably move offshore. Unless they can commercialize a new technology with the ubiquity of CDMA, they can't afford to keep the engineering here. Profit margins of the chip business are shrinking as the smartphone market saturates, royalties in china and rest of the world diminish, and there simply aren't enough people in the world to keep up with the supply to sustain the growth they've seen. Meanwhile, semiconductor NRE is exploding and current cmos technology is virtually ISO-performance with some die shrink reduction, and a little power improvement. They simply can't get the types of margins they could before. 
This "perfect-storm" can only be averted by cutting costs, diversifying the products (servers, rffe/pmic, iot). A lot of challenges ahead.

It has good benefits and fair pay, compared to many other places. The management (especially in QRC) is extremely inept. There is a lot of politics played on all levels and it is very difficult to move up and get promoted in the company, regardless of your skillsets or contributions. 

Some people without the right credentials are senior directors or vps, and are afraid of new people getting promoted.  Most "veteran" so called directors or vps have been with the company since the beginning and do absolutely nothing, except hindering advancement of lower level people.

Also all the management/staff are quite laid back compared to other places like skyworks or apple and don't feel like working. project delays in order of one year are common place here. The direction is totally unclear and gets lost in feud wars and territorials between groups. A lot of stuff being done have no technical/financial justification. Everybody with access hides whatever they can, and you won't get the right information for doing your job. 

I don't feel a seasoned engineer would learn anything in this company, the only up side (and mostly in mid-levels) is the fairly good income compared to few others places in socal.

I wouldn't recommend this place for any one who wants to have a challenge in work, be effective and move up in company. This advice is more related to QRC (QUALCOMM research center) but I hear similar things about other groups (even worse sometimes).

I joined Qualcomm in 1995 and remained with the company almost 20 years (if you don't count an interval when the business unit I was in was sold and its employees were expected to help the buyer get up to speed). Looking at Qualcomm today, it's hard to see traces of the features that made the company so special in its earlier days.

At one time there was an egalitarian spirit, a general mood of playfulness, and a sense that everyone was on the same team. Because of that, and of course because of what happened to QCOM stock (in which all employees had lots of options), it was a glamour company, the place where just about everybody in town wanted to work. Yes, we worked very hard. We sometimes worked very long hours. But that was fine. Working at Qualcomm was fun, and I was proud to be there.

Growth itself put a damper on some of that spirit, inevitably. For me at least, the work began to call for less creativity and more stamina. But the compensation and benefits remained superior. I continued to feel intense loyalty, and could not understand coworkers who left to work for competitors.

At present, management is worried that its most important customers are losing market share to a large number of small upstarts, who may end up not doing business with Qualcomm at all. Management is worried about looking good to shareholders and so is pruning its workforce--with a machete, not with clippers. This is not the same management that made the company great, and the changes being implemented are having a negative effect on productivity.

As of this point in my career, Qualcomm is by far the best employer I have known. But someone joining today may have a different experience.

Function: 	- Responsible for testing software and hardware performance of Qualcomm chipset integrated  handhelds that involves radio transmission between Mobile devices and Carriers Radio Access Network under criteria set by carriers
- Issue investigations in lab for solving performance related issues such as Inte-rat, antenna testing, Qualcomm chipset testing.
	- Writing test cases for Samsung, ALU and Ericsson RAN and other OEM handsets. 
	- Running Automation tool and analyzing the o/p before report the result to customer.
- Executing Handset IOT Test Cases at Nextel MSO in Mexico and Peru before release of devices in Market.
- Worked on integrating Qchat application on Kyocera Torque device which supports LTE, EHRPD, CDMA
- Worked on 8960 and 8926 Qualcomm Chipset
- Facing and resolving customer issues through Salesforce case creation. Interacted with customers like Sprint, Nextel (NII), Verizon, Blackberry, Samsung, Kyocera.
- Worked on integrating Qchat application on blackberry Patagonia 9620 WCDMA device which was launched in Mexico and Peru on Nextel.
- Debugging OS layer, Network and Java logs during Blackberry handhelds testing collected using QXDM and other Blackberry internal tools.
- Debugging App layer, Modem layer with Android handhelds testing collected using QXDM and other Blackberry internal tools.
- Demonstrated knowledge in WCDMA and LTE data call processing flows, signaling protocols, channel structure, air interface, multiple access, power control, modulation types, handoff.
- Demonstrated knowledge in push to talk technology, call flows, architecture

When I joined Qualcomm it was an incredible company for which to work.  Over the past couple of years, the culture has changed.  The company is now all about the shareholders and cutting costs at the expense of it's employees.  Employee benefits drastically changed to where you now have to spend thousands of your own money on deductibles before you see any real benefits.  We've had our bonus/raise structure cut from twice per year to once per year.  Plus bonuses and stock allotments are smaller than in previous years.  Private offices have given way to cubicles.  Then those cubicles were reduced to even smaller cubicles.  Each non-management employee now gets about 50sqft in which to work.  Company events such as summer picnics and Christmas parties are gone.  And countless other changes and cutbacks have been made over the years.

Not to mention the fact that we've experienced 3 different rounds of layoffs over the past 2 years which put a lot of people on edge.  Those that were not laid off  were still affected by the overall reduction in morale and increase in stress and workload caused by the cutbacks.

Qualcomm was the PREMIER place to work up until about 2 years ago.  Now it's just a place to work.  The pay is still above-average from what I have seen out on the market, but all of the extras that used to make it a top-10 place to work in IT are gone.

It's rather depressing because I really thought Qualcomm was a place I could see myself for the next 20 years.  Now, who knows what the future holds.

A typical day at Qualcomm would be receiving layout tasks from engineers with a schematic that is given to us.  We would floorplan, P/G routing, signal routing and run physical verification such as DRC or LVS.  As mask layout designers or analog mixed signal layout designers we would work collaboratively to achieve our goal in completing the sub layout or the IP block level.  

As responsible mask layout designers, we learned from one another about the difficult challenges.  For example, if there was an issue with our IP block at the chip-level; such as "via underneath" the bump issue.  This kind of issue we could not see at the IP block level.  So, we as a team decided to communicate with the chip-level engineers to find the correct area where the "via underneath" the bump density issue is detected.  Then we inserted more vias to correct this issue.

We learned a lot by working collaboratively and by communicating.  Also, constructive critisizm and working culture of contributing the success of Qualcomm.  

The hardest part of the job is to meet time constraint deadlines that almost seemed unrealistic.  Based on my experience, these schedules felt too rushed without any real research in the layout process tasks or developement.  

The most enjoyable part of the job is the people who I work with and formed friendships with.

Performing high quality staffing coordination activities requires attention to detail and diligent effort.  There is a lot of responsibility in ensuring that the candidates are treated well and have a positive experience going through the interviewing process. The job requires communicating with candidates, agency representatives, recruiters, and hiring teams in order to set up interviews in a quick and orderly fashion. In addition, there is a need for great organizational skills along with patience and perseverance particularly when dealing with the human factor. Creative problem solving is the key to meeting stakeholder’s needs and ensuring a positive interview experience for each and every candidate. I have successfully coordinated on average 370 interviews per month, approximately 90 candidates per week while supporting over 200 requisitions.  The company has recognized my abilities relying on me to take on more work load and supporting higher volume recruiters in their filling positions.  In addition I have also been responsible for tracking daily, weekly, and monthly numbers for the scheduling and sourcing teams using MS Excel for analytics.

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