Applied materials (Kalispell: employment, transfer, contractor)

[bigbatteries]

Can anyone shed light on Applied Material's salaries for the office personnel?

[ElkHunter]

Are you talking about Applied Materials out of Austin Texas?

[bigbatteries]

Company headquarters is probably based out of Texas. I'm asking about the branch in Kalispell, MT, formerly known as Semitool.

[ElkHunter]

I can't tell you about the branch in Kalispell, but I can tell you about the company, Applied Materials and their practices. Doesn't make much difference which branch, the company itself has some pretty nasty practices. Employee's are constantly on edge because they have no idea if employment lasts past payday.

Several times I saw them create new departments, move select people to that department, and once the department was fully staffed, they closed the department and layed off every person. It was so bad that people were jumpy when being transfered because they didn't know if they were going to a true department, or if they were being herded into a department for slaughter.

I was a contractor that did some work for Applied Materials. I designed harness for their robotics, and then made those harness's. In a 4 year period, I seldom dealt with the same person twice. They rotated people around that quickly and that often. Of course, I was only on site to their location, a couple times a month.

[cumminszhere]

Elk, the Applied Materials in question is headquartered in Santa Clara, Ca. Huge company. I have worked there as a contractor from time to time over my career.

OP, I have know idea what AM is paying at the old semi-tool facility in Kalispell. Let us know if you find out.

[bigbatteries]

When I was in college, I had access to salary reports that alumni turned in to the university recruiting department, and was able to see what the alumni were being paid at many different employers. At the time, the reported pay by alumni at Semitool was absolutely terrible. Not sure if that was bad data or representative data.

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by cumminszhere

Elk, the Applied Materials in question is headquartered in Santa Clara, Ca. Huge company. I have worked there as a contractor from time to time over my career.

OP, I have know idea what AM is paying at the old semi-tool facility in Kalispell. Let us know if you find out.

My mistake. However, it's the same company. Applied in Austin employs approximately 15,000 employee's, so I was thinking that was the headquarters, but you are right, it's Santa Clara. It is still the same company. I was out of Grand Prairie (Dallas/Ft Worth) and had to drive down to Austin quite often. Their major setup there was producing clean room chip manufacturing chambers. We did all the harnessing, wiring, and some chamber design for them.

Very demanding company that wants in all the vendors pockets. We absolutely did not like them, but when they did $30 mil a year with my small plant of 109 people, we tolerated them.

[historyfan]

Daily Inter Lake: Northwest Montana's source for news, sports and weather

Read past issues of the local paper.
Applied is as EH said, looking to cut 10% employees and close non-performing sites. Bottom line of article is long term lack of employment security in that local biz.