I’m currently on a six-month temporary assignment from my normal job as a program manager in
Compensation & Benefits to our HR Mergers & Acquisitions group. Remind me to blog about the kind of amazing
career development opportunities that Intel supports. I don’t know. Maybe my opening sentence tells you what you need to know for now.
I’ve been working on an acquisition for a couple months. It was all top secret in the early stages but it’s been
announced publicly now – it’s
Fulcrum Microsystems. They make these crazy clock-less switches for data centers. I’m no engineer, but the way I understand the technology, clock-less is like going from a traffic light to a traffic circle. Which do you think is faster to get through?
In any case, one thing that’s been really cool are the talks I’ve had with Fulcrum employees. As I describe the
pay, stock and benefits that Intel offers, I find myself saying “and” a lot. And as the conversation goes on, each time I say “and” the Fulcrum guys and gals pretty much say, “nice”.
For example, let’s talk
variable pay. Incentives. Cash bonuses. Moolah. Cheddar. Gumbo. We don’t just have one bonus. We have our Employee Bonus “and” our Employee Cash Bonus Program. Nice. And some business groups have incentive bonuses, like when they ramp up a factory or new manufacturing process. See? There’s that “and” again.
But it’s not just that we have multiple kinds of the similar things that show off the ands – though we have a truckload: an
Employee Stock Purchase Plan and stock grants to employees at annual performance review time, a
401(k) and a retirement contributionprogram, and
traditional health plans and consumer health plans, for a few examples.
No, there’s more about a legal plan and a
health for life program and an Employee Assistance Program and tuition reimbursement and dependent care assistance programs and travel accident insurance and long-term disability insurance and health flexible spending accounts and dental and vision and prescriptions and paid time off and – wait for it –
sabbatical.
That’s not the whole list, of course, but I’m starting to sound like one of those late-night TV commercials – “But wait - there’s more!” – so I’m going to button this up.
Except - I want to make one last point. It’s pretty difficult to assign a monetary value to the long list of stock and benefits Intel provides. Pay is much more straightforward to compare, of course. What I’m saying is that when you’re comparing offers, trying to decide where to work, do yourself a favor and compare more than just the obvious (base pay). Maybe just compare the length of the “and” lists, too.
P.S. My opinions are based on the U.S. programs.
