Texas Instruments reviews about "manager"

- Was difficult in my particular job sometimes to get up-to-date on the software and commands associated with the job because I was the only one to start this month and kind of fell between the cracks as far as orientation for new engineers goes. But they still made the best of it!

Managers will tell you they "pay for performance," but in reality the same top dogs always get the good raises. TI uses an odd performance evaluation formula. Employees are ranked against each other. The top 10% get the bulk of the raises, the bottom 10% get nothing and are put on administrative counseling, the remaining 80% splits the remaining budget. Sound reasonable until you realize, in a department full of awesome, outstanding technicians, someone is still in the bottom 10%. Positions in management require a bachelor degree. Many managers are engineers who have no people skills.

1. Bad office politics at senior level. 2. Employee performance review system is not very objective and depends on votes from whole lot of other manages who do not even know your work. 3. Arbitrary decisions at senior management level impacting productivity of employees (changing design tools, shifting focus too often, too much changes in management etc) 4. Not too impressed with sudden closing of large business lines just because there is too much competition or margins are low (still profitable). I believe this may impact long term where the company may not have the required IP to get into new strategic business.

Managers, Too Much Work Load, Deadlines difficult to meet (not always)

Lot of mismanagement, micromanagement. Many managers regurgitate what they hear from engineers under them. This makes you needing to do a lot of advertising oneself to climb the ladder, also get to be some manager's personal favorite. That's what helps. Very few cares about how technically capable you are.

Raises are terrible for individual contributors, not sure about those that make it to manager level. Will not see most young engineers sticking around long term unless they love the location, the work, flexible schedule, or the opportunity to move to different roles in the company. Lots of restructuring and bowing to the demands of wallstreet, lining the pockets of investors instead of employees. TI appreciates good engineers, but you are expendable. Layoffs come in big waves every couple of years.