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Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#51

Post by klyrs »

Chris2048 wrote: post #46
blkhp19 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I definitely don’t think it was your intention to send a “this is a male’s job” message, but some readers might interpret it that way (even subconsciously) if we use language like “software guys” instead of software developers. There are definitely women working in all of these areas, and hopefully many more in the future!

According to Oxford Dictionary: "guys [plural] (informal) a group of people of either sex e.g 'Come on, you guys, let's get going!'" -- https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ... This is also my (local) experience of the word usage: that it's used for groups of any sex.

So if I ask a straight man "how many guys have you slept with," how do you expect him to answer?

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#52

Post by phlipski »

JoachimS wrote: post #34
phlipski wrote: post #4

This is like asking, "How do I get into the medical industry?" It's overly broad. There are lots of different jobs in the chip industry. 1. Device engineer - want to build transistors? Grab a physics/chemistry masters and /or PHD. Go to work at a foundry house like TSMC, Samsung, Intel, SMIC or Global Foundries. 2. Analog circuit design - grab a masters in EE (w/ circuit design specialty). 3. Layout - the person who…

11. EDA tool developers. The EDA vendors are huge employers of developers, and esp for backend tools you need not only to be able to deal with algo scalability issues (the datasets are enormous), but also understand more and more of the actual physics, electrical engineering aspects. Very interesting combination. But also, most customers also develop their own tools, scripts, automation of toolchains etc. And the HW…

This is a good point I forgot to expand upon. The EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry is a hugely import symbiotic relationship to the chip industry at this point. The two sort of go back and forth driving each other forward.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#53

Post by formercoder »

twalla wrote: post #31
chestervonwinch wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone raised in the north US, living the last ~8 years between Florida and Texas has helped break the “you guys” habit. However, I admit that I still feel like an imposter whenever I use “y’all”.

Y’all is a single syllable, rolls off the tongue and is gender neutral. By the power vested in me by the State of Texas, I hereby grant the reader (herein referred to as “all y’all”) permission to use “y’all” in perpetuity.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#54

Post by Chris2048 »

klyrs wrote: post #51
Chris2048 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Oxford Dictionary: "guys [plural] (informal) a group of people of either sex e.g 'Come on, you guys, let's get going!'" -- https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/americ... This is also my (local) experience of the word usage: that it's used for groups of any sex.

So if I ask a straight man "how many guys have you slept with," how do you expect him to answer?

English is an idiomatic language, there is no straight logical mapping between semantics of individual words and ultimate meaning.

Add in purposeful ambiguity, innuendo and pragmatism, and the situation is more complex than either "guys always mean men", or "guys always means a group of any sex" - However, I'm not sure dictionaries aim to pin down every aspect of usage, rather than summarise the semantic.

My own experience:

"guys" referring to a specific group e.g. "those guys" can refer to mixed groups.

"guys" with no clear target can be used abstractly as a more casual way to refer to men in general, but I rarely see men themselves use this (but usage may vary). Women, and women's magazines use it quite a bit.

"How many guys have you slept with" is tainted as an indicator of general semantics b/c it is a partly idiomatic; as an example "What can I do you for?" is a common phrase / idiom, but would be considered poorly constructed English otherwise. The use of "literally" in non-literal contexts a poor indicator of what the word (supposedly) means, and probably a result of differing usage, or possibly lingual style. Any kind of innuendo has a pragmatic meaning, and whole words and phrases have metaphorical meaning - to the degree that they are no longer understood as metaphors. Finally, choice of words pragmatically communicate information too, e.g "those people" or "you people" can have a stigma attached despite being semantically neutral.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#55

Post by david-gpu »

jumbie wrote: post #6

Relative to the software industry, the chip industry has a vast number of highly-obfuscated dependencies, nearly-infinite supply chains, and zero margin for error. Robust profitability, let alone innovation, is very difficult to achieve without monstrous scale. The majority of recent semiconductor industry gains have come only through consolidation, giving chip suppliers more bargaining power while letting them cut s…

I have 15 years of experience as a driver developer and computer architect. This comment is spot-on. As an employee you will have very few potential employers in the semiconductor industry and it's very unlikely that we will see a significant change.

In the software world not only you have much more variety of work and potential employers, but it's much more likely that new exciting startups/unicorns will succeed in the next few years.

While I enjoy my current job and I have a great boss, if I could go back to my college years, I would steer my career in a different direction.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#56

Post by person_of_color »

jiveturkey wrote: post #40
dbancajas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how much is pay in SaaS/AIML? HW can pay 150K+ range with RSUs with PhD EE <5 years YOE. Graduated in "low tech" school. Job security is pretty good because barrier is high, literally you can't get a high school grad to do our job. AI maybe is higher paying but I also see on linked hundreds of people getting laid off during the pandemic becausue they were the first to get cut.

srsly not to be rude but what rock have you been under? PhD 5 YOE $150k???? That's starting salary only (not TC) anywhere in SaaS, 0 YOE fresh BS degree from tier 3 school.

I dont agree new grad salaries get 150 as a base, certainly TC.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#57

Post by klyrs »

Chris2048 wrote: post #54
klyrs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I ask a straight man "how many guys have you slept with," how do you expect him to answer?

English is an idiomatic language, there is no straight logical mapping between semantics of individual words and ultimate meaning. Add in purposeful ambiguity, innuendo and pragmatism, and the situation is more complex than either "guys always mean men", or "guys always means a group of any sex" - However, I'm not sure dictionaries aim to pin down every aspect of usage, rather than summarise the semantic. My own expe…

Right. The point is, the definition you posted is one of several, and doesn't really address the issue at hand. You can't pretend that "guys" is gender neutral; that's one of many "tainted" contexts that invalidates the claim.

When folks say "software guys", does "software" similarly taint the meaning because our society has decided that programming is "men's work?" In my experience, as a woman who talks to other women about this precise nuance of our language, it does feel othering to many if not most of us.

Furthermore, when I overhear a coworker talking about a need to hire "a packaging guy", and then refer to this hypothetical person (comprising zero actual candidates for an ad which hasn't even been written) with he/him pronouns exclusively, am I then expected to believe that this use of "guy" is gender neutral?

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#58

Post by seg_lol »

I have no context into your background knowledge, but I'll assume you know how to write some software.

Coming from a software background, my recommendation would be to come from above and work down towards the chips. The perfect route to take is to work with a soft RISC-V cpu running on an FPGA with a totally open toolchain. By utilizing open tools, you have the agency to both modify the tools for your own use, gaining knowledge into how the tools work as well as participating in the technology graph. As soon as you add even a minor feature to the tooling, you then have the ability to add features for other people. This makes you valuable and will open other opportunities.

Get a Lattice FPGA supported by Yosys [1] and learn Chisel [2] and Verilog [3] while working through Nand To Tetris [4]

Once you understand the hardware enough, those soft designs can start to be turned into hard designs using the Skywalker PDK [5] and get your Open Source designs made for free.

[1] http://www.clifford.at/yosys/

[2] https://www.chisel-lang.org/

[3] https://hackaday.io/project/160759-nand-to-tetris-in-verilog...

[4] https://www.nand2tetris.org/

[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/open_chip_hardware/ https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#59

Post by Chris2048 »

klyrs wrote: post #57
Chris2048 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is an idiomatic language, there is no straight logical mapping between semantics of individual words and ultimate meaning. Add in purposeful ambiguity, innuendo and pragmatism, and the situation is more complex than either "guys always mean men", or "guys always means a group of any sex" - However, I'm not sure dictionaries aim to pin down every aspect of usage, rather than summarise the semantic. My own expe…

Right. The point is, the definition you posted is one of several, and doesn't really address the issue at hand. You can't pretend that "guys" is gender neutral; that's one of many "tainted" contexts that invalidates the claim. When folks say "software guys", does "software" similarly taint the meaning because our society has decided that programming is "men's work?" In my experience, as a woman who talks to other wom…

I said its used for groups of either sex, which it is. I didn't claim (or "pretend") it was gender neutral.

It's not as simple as having multiple definitions: it has different meaning for different contexts, but it otherwise consistent within those contexts.

A "tainted" context is one not generalisable because it is an idiom; much like proper nouns are not generalisable. Using "guys" to refer to mixed groups is generalisable to all situations with similar context - its not an idiom.

> a packaging guy

Is use of "guy" as plural, which I've never seen refer to mixed groups, hence is not the same context.

Re: Ask HN: How to get into the chip industry?

#60

Post by Chris2048 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #59
klyrs wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The point is, the definition you posted is one of several, and doesn't really address the issue at hand. You can't pretend that "guys" is gender neutral; that's one of many "tainted" contexts that invalidates the claim. When folks say "software guys", does "software" similarly taint the meaning because our society has decided that programming is "men's work?" In my experience, as a woman who talks to other wom…

I said its used for groups of either sex, which it is. I didn't claim (or "pretend") it was gender neutral. It's not as simple as having multiple definitions: it has different meaning for different contexts, but it otherwise consistent within those contexts. A "tainted" context is one not generalisable because it is an idiom; much like proper nouns are not generalisable. Using "guys" to refer to mixed groups is gener…

I meant "singular", not plural.
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