Pros
Lam has some of the hardest working and intelligent front line employees (manufacturers, material handlers, and field service engineers) in the WFE industry. Unfortunately, these truly brilliant, stellar performers are the minority (10-15%) at this company; and they are Vastly Outnumbered by lazy, inexperienced, or outright unintelligent members of the 'professional' Product Group, Engineering, and Account Team divisions.
Cons
Account Team and Product Group lack of planning (and lack of communication) in the front end design phase, very often results in configuration errors which aren't captured by engineers, schedulers, and program/production managers... most often until the equipment is about to, or has already shipped. This last minute 'churn' results in tools being shipped with too many parts, too few parts, loss of revenue, and customer trust. Greater care/intelligence in the front-end portion of design/slotting, would result in much less 'churn' for front-line employees, and higher level product shipped to consumers.