I’ve been working at the San Diego office doing PMIC validation for over two years now. My day to day is mostly testing the PMIC chips, screening for defects, and putting together reports and slides. Honestly, once you figure out what to look for, the work is incredibly easy. You definitely don’t need a degree to do it, yet management keeps hiring people with Master's degrees and PhDs. It feels like a massive waste of talent.
The worst part is that you’re heavily judged here not by the actual quality of your work, but by how the tech leads perceive your social skills. From talking to people in other departments, it seems like Qualcomm in general has this issue, but it feels way worse in PMIC. Maybe because the work is so simple that a test monkey could do it, so managers focus on politics instead? I’ve barely learned anything here and honestly feel like my technical skills are rotting.
I tried casually talking to a few coworkers about how easy the work is and how unfair and rude the leads can be, but they got super defensive right away, so I stopped bringing it up.
For anyone who has worked here or in similar teams: is PMIC validation in San Diego known for being super low on the technical side, or did I just land in a bad group?