Got offer from WD ! Is it good time to join ?
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Don't do it. No loyalty, horrible company getting run into the ground by Steve Milligan and his stooges.
Hopefully you get a job in a web 2.0 company. WDC was the company of choice in 1980s-90s :)
If you are young you might think of looking for a company that has a pension plan. They are getting scarce but you better learn to save and manage your money otherwise. Getting laid off when you are are near retirement age leaves you in a s---y position of using your savings to survive. Who knew those ranger/police/military jobs were the way to go. I've met countless now with multiple sources of retirement income. Luckily I found another job - but must work rather than travel etc. like these others.
I've been with the company ten years and I heard the same crap then as I hear now. "Stay away, HDD is dead!", "you'll need a new job in six months", "WD management doesn't know what they are doing." I took the job anyway. It was my first job and I felt the learning and development opportunities that WD offered balanced out the risks. I haven't regretted the decision, in fact I've enjoyed working here. I'm still waiting for the promised demise to occur. However, each situation and department is different. No one should expect to retire in data storage, but you should make sure you will enjoy your work, manager, and co-workers and that the job will enable opportunities in the future .
Manufacturing was offshored a decade ago. However, in the last 3-4 years, we are heavily training engineers in the manufacturing sites to do the design and development as well. So heavy-duty formal training classes have been happening to bring manufacturing site engineers to handle heavy development as well. So yes hardware engineering will get obsolete in America in no more than 8-10 years is my prediction.
@M9xXdWX-2psq I'm afraid I don't quite follow. SSD (and other hardware) manufacturing was off-shored a long time ago. Are you saying that SSD R&D will become a commodity as well?
SSD might be a growth technology, but it is just a matter of a few years before hardware is made into a commodity from Asia. The minute that plateau happens, the engineers are left dry and in search of the next big thing. While there is always that next big thing happening - the jobs in that big thing are given only to younger engineers.
So if you have other options, try get a job in software, where the skills are atleast portable from one technology to another
The SSD business will grow fast. HDD is unknown.
I know from HGST (a WD company) who are under 35 left
The ones who are over 35 want to leave too but the Amazons and the Apples of the world are heavily biased towards hiring the younger ones!
First, congratulations on at least being made an offer; however, like others have suggested here, be cautious. You definitely want to get into the SSD side of the business. HDD is pretty much dead (for desktop/laptop market). I don't know how well the WD HDD division is doing as far as enterprise/data center business.
Almost all friends I know from HGST (a WD company) who are under 35 left the company in the past three years. They were still able to find good jobs in Apple, Amazon, Adobe, Xilinx or some startups in the Bay Area. It is consensus among them that HDD is not a good business for young engineers anymore.
If you are a New grad, never join wd hdd business. Lots of people are leaving. In addition to that, at least two layoffs every year. There is no any future in hdd business. You can join wd hdd only if you want to work for a short period of time such as three months or six months. If you want to join wd, try to get a job in SanDisk. That is ssd business.
Which department? It highly depends on what you work on.