Pros
Working at the Fab8/Malta location offers tremendous opportunities for young/inexperienced people to get into the semiconductor business. The capital investment has been made and the investors are being very patient, giving the local management team all the rope they could ever need. With the right customer partnership, the long-term sustainability is clearly possible and exciting.
Cons
Unfortunately for GF, the talent and experience pool in the area is shallow and the local culture seems to be as far away from one of accountability as one could be. The import of poor engineering and management talent from Charter has definitely hindered the success of Fab8 and is throttling innovative thinking while squashing accountability by both hiding real problems and out-right lying. This culture must be surgically removed from Fab8 for it to have any realistic chance of long term success. The utterly incompetent purchasing organization, one not being held accountable in any visible way, seems to be on a mission to kill the company, ignoring the dire need for them to do what is right and support the fab by using the right KPIs and incredible capabilities of systems already available to them. It is incredible anything gets done, a true testament of the fortitude of the good people in engineering and operations who remain on site and somehow manage to keep equipment running without the parts needed. As soon as the fab ramps, the glaring Achilles of Fab8 (procurement) will be clearly visible to even the most incompetent manager.