Pros
The scope of Applied Material's product offerings in semiconductor, solar, flat-panel, lighting, and other areas provide an environment in which technically adept engineers and scientists can find any number of intellectually challenging roles. Applied has an abundance of extremely sharp people in process engineering and product engineering. Applied also does a good job of promoting and celebrating technical excellence.
Cons
The culture is highly politicized. Organizations devolve into warring camps in which giving ground on a issue (technical, operational, financial) is seen as a losing power. Business unit leaders and their direct staff seem to spend more time competing with other internal divisions than with Applied's competitors. Key operations decisions are superficially fact-based but in reality depend more on who is currently in or out of favor with key operations executives. Applied has and continues to make a huge investment in the solar business but in my estimate has neither the the technology nor the business model to be successful. It will be interesting to see how many solar factory contracts are landed in the new capital market environment. Probably not many.