Agilent Technologies (Bayan Lepas)

Website: www.home.agilent.com
Industry: Test and Measurement
Address: Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone, Phase 3 - Penang 11900 Penang

Agilent Technologies was borned after HP (Hewlett Packard) decided to split it's business. It is an American Multi National Company (MNC). The main business is manufacturing industrial measuring instruments such as signal analyser,  power instruments, frequency analyzer, voltmeter ... etc. The customers are mainly from the aerospace industries, military and handphone manufacturers.

It has a huge area with several buldings (8 in total) and it has a huge car park, which I think a lot bigger than any hypermarket car park that I've even been to. Walking from one point to another is quite  tiring. It has a sport complex which houses squash court, badminton, takraw and gymnasium. It also has a football field next to the sport complex. I would say, it has a very good facilites for it's employee.



Agilent Bayan Lepas has around 3000 employees including the operators, technician, engineers/executive staff (HR, Finance .. etc) and managers. For all executive staff, you will be having you own cubicle with your own PCs (nowadays most are given a HP laptop). The main business model is still a manufacturing plant with a minor involvement in R&D development. Most R&D are still being held by US.

The engineering fresh graduate salary vary from RM 2700 (for 1st class degree holder) and RM 2500 (for below 1st class holder). It offers a contractual 1 month bonus, profit sharing (sharing of profit based on company profit, twice a year), an IPB (Individual Performance Bonus) - if you produce an excellent performance, an RSU (Restricted Stock Unit) - again, for top performers. The benefits are not that bad, you will have a clinical coverage for the whole family, and it offers a very cheap insurance for whole family hospitalization package. It also has allowances for dentist and optical.

Talking about career advancement. Well, there are 2 paths that you can choose from. Climbing the technical ladder or the management ladder. By the way, in my opinion, Agilent has wayyyyyyy too many managers, most of them are not technical savvy, seems like Agilent only values people managers instead of technical managers, hence most of them are dummies ( ppl with sound technical knowledge can senang-senang ranjau them ... if you know what i mean). Back to topic....

If you are gonna go for the technical path, for a fresh grads, you'll start from "Entry" level. Once you had a good 2/3 years of intensive labor ( by being bullied to do unwanted jobs - the job that other ppl don't want to do, then you might be promoted to "Careers-intermediate". This time, less bully, but still there is always shit-cleaning jobs that you need to do. If you are really good, the next promotion is "Career-Advance". By this time, you should have a very good knowledge of the product or processes there is in Agilent and with several good projects, you have a good chance to be promoted to "Experts". But before that, you need to write and present 1 technical paper on any subject that you are very good with. As an experts, you served like a consultants and mentor to other lower level rank "balachi'. You are expected to write technical paper once in a while. The next step is "Master" and then "Fellow". At this 2 level, you are sitting at a very high technical ladder and high expectation are on your shoulder.

Going through the management path, the first level is called "Operation Manager 1" or called OM1. As an OM1, you'll responsible to handle several product lines with supervisors reporting to you. Do a job well done, you'll then be promoted to OM2. One level higher then OM1. The scope is still the same. The next level then is "Integrating Manager 1" or IM1. As an IM, you'll have OMs reporting to you. If you performed well as an IM1, then you'll be IM2. Apart from an increased in salary, as an IM2 you'll get your own car park, fuel allowance and car allowance. If you got promoted after that, you'll be Senior Managers. This is when you'll need to have a very good political skills in order to proceed further in the management career path up until CEO or President.

The work culture is a good one for me. Not a very stressful company to work with. No punch card system. More or less a kind of flexi working hours. The pressure only will come once in a while, if there are any quality issues or before an audit. Agilent is an ISO certified company, hence there are many documentations that need to be maintained by the employees (so be prepared to spend 60% to 70% of your time for admin work).

As for community, I would separate in 4 tiers. The management, executives (engineers, finance, HR etc), technician and operators. For the management and the executives, most are Chinese with a mix minor percentage of Malays and Indians. For the technician and operator level, most a Malays.

In my opinion, Agilent has a good values to work with. Not one of the best, but a good working environment for employees that I can live with. My rating 7/10.