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Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

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Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#221
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cue to pay your nanny more?

Not all jobs are worth the same amount. Nannying is quite important but it is low skill (meaning supply of labor is high) and thus will probably command lower wages than semiconductor manufacturing.

Nannying is only considered low skill because outcomes are very difficult to measure and so the job becomes “keep child alive” when society makes that mostly trivial for most children.

We can’t hope to distinguish the great nannies from the mediocre (or even harmful) until years or decades later. But we don’t even try.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#222
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As an outsider, it seems pretty clear that the rejection to the industry is more about the cultural mismatch than it is to the actual work needing to be executed. Look at Intel. It's a western company, but it famously fell behind its competitors due to offering comparatively shit pay and conditions to its staff, so the best people left. The problem is hardware company culture, not Asian company culture. Apple's M1 i…

Hot take, apparently: VHDL/Verilog developers should make 5x what JavaScript developers make, and not the other way around.

RTL development is a very interesting beast. On one hand, development is challenging, and there's a massive amount of global $$$ in integrated circuits. These guys should be the top paid, cream of the crop, right?

However, the tools suck more than the English language has good words to describe, so it's hard for an engineer to be productive. And the products are complex, so you need a lot of engineers. And you're manufacturing physical products, so most of that huge dollar amount in the industry is trapped in manufacturing, not design. So even if you were the cream of the crop engineer, it's hard to extract much of that value for yourself.

On the other hand, webdev has extremely low capital overhead, and improvements in tools can go directly into developer productivity, which can immediately be realized as value (which gives you resources to improve even more).

So even if Verilog developers made the same money as JS developers today, in ten years, I'd expect the JS developers to make more.

One lesson here is that if you want your designs to improve rapidly, decouple them from the manufacturing business as much as you can. And you'll probably be able to pay better and attract better talent in the proces, which is a not insignificant benefit. Perhaps the rise of fabless semiconductor companies is understood even better in this light?

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why "ran" in the past tense? The plant is still running. And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_U...

And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland? Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away. So 1) that's pretty understandable to conflate and 2) a lot of people from Newcastle probably commute there.

> Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away.

Are you American? That's a long way in terms of cultural differences in the UK.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#224
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't corroborate this at all. I come from a CS background. If you leave school and enter the workforce at SAS, you will be at a disadvantage insofar as you are looking for a workplace that you hope to learn something from or one that you hope reinforces good engineering practices. The semiconductor industry, from the vantage point of an experienced systems thinker, reinforces awful engineering practices. All the t…

You're right, we should encourage the new generation to all strive to become overpaid mediocre SWEs only in it for the quick cash, because the world doesn't have enough shitty food delivery apps. Hopefully I've painted this with a broad enough brush. There is more to a fulfilling career than money. In fact, an entire generation of SWEs who forgot the concepts of simplicity and efficiency, coding a never-ending avalan…

[deleted]

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#225

Excellent. My background is computer engineering who enrolled shit load of computer network classes, interned for a Cisco gold partner, but then switched to software development. At some points my network engineers friends (and hardware stuff engineers) turned into software development, mostly web development. I'd like to add one more factor here. It's transferable knowledge AND cheap cost of building your own busine…

starting a networking company (except consulting) is extremely hard. Building an ISP is even harder and requires insane amounts of money. Most of my friends in the network engineering field either work at companies that are large/complex enough to have challenging environments with proper networking hardware, or work as a freelance consultant for said companies. The problem with career growth in network engineering i…

> usually larger networks are require to get access to gear and systems that can pose a challenge

Exactly. Simulation program is not going to suffice. Sometimes one has to bring a firewall home to debug something. And there's going to be several vendors, not only Cisco. And it's going to need more certs, not just CCNP, CCIE.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#226
post #164
post #10

I worked at the Samsung A2/S2 lines in ATX with a bunch of young Americans back around 2011-2013. I would say they absolutely would. It's a very high-energy place with more going on than you can ever hope to keep track of. Even if the technology doesn't interest you, the cultural interactions should. You could have some days with Japanese, Koreans and Americans translating 3-ways in a conference room. Opportunities f…

I can't corroborate this at all. I come from a CS background. If you leave school and enter the workforce at SAS, you will be at a disadvantage insofar as you are looking for a workplace that you hope to learn something from or one that you hope reinforces good engineering practices. The semiconductor industry, from the vantage point of an experienced systems thinker, reinforces awful engineering practices. All the t…

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. If your other option is to be a FAANG software engineer, sure, do that instead.

For the vast swathes of the country where the available jobs are some mix of retail/warehouse low wage drudgery, long haul trucking, drug dealing / fraud / other crime, or welfare, working in semiconductors might be a welcome and attractive option.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland? Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away. So 1) that's pretty understandable to conflate and 2) a lot of people from Newcastle probably commute there.

The reason I noticed it is that the two cities, though very close geographically, have an intense and not entirely friendly rivalry that goes back hundreds of years and continues to this day. See for example the History section of [0]. Although it's understandable that someone not familiar with the area could confuse the two places, friends from Sunderland tell that they are pretty offended when they are mistaken for…

Having seen your edit: just wanted to chime in and thank you for the comment - I learned something I never would have otherwise.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#228
post #226
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't corroborate this at all. I come from a CS background. If you leave school and enter the workforce at SAS, you will be at a disadvantage insofar as you are looking for a workplace that you hope to learn something from or one that you hope reinforces good engineering practices. The semiconductor industry, from the vantage point of an experienced systems thinker, reinforces awful engineering practices. All the t…

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. If your other option is to be a FAANG software engineer, sure, do that instead. For the vast swathes of the country where the available jobs are some mix of retail/warehouse low wage drudgery, long haul trucking, drug dealing / fraud / other crime, or welfare, working in semiconductors might be a welcome and attractive option.

“Better than welfare or crime” doesn’t really sell me that it’s a great option

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why the reference to Geordies - natives of Newcastle - when the plant is in Sunderland? Google maps tells me those two places are only 14.3 miles away. So 1) that's pretty understandable to conflate and 2) a lot of people from Newcastle probably commute there.

The reason I noticed it is that the two cities, though very close geographically, have an intense and not entirely friendly rivalry that goes back hundreds of years and continues to this day. See for example the History section of [0]. Although it's understandable that someone not familiar with the area could confuse the two places, friends from Sunderland tell that they are pretty offended when they are mistaken for…

I appreciated the comment. This kind of tangential but interesting tidbit is one of the more attractive aspects of HN to me.

Re: Will young Americans want to work in semiconductor manufacturing? [video]

#230
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, they have plenty of plants, I just mean it sounds like NUMMI wasn't as successful as it could've been.

According to that story which I’ve listened to before, that partnership had a very specific set of goals, once those goals were achieved or deemed unachievable (as the case may be) the purpose of the plant no longer existed so they shut it down.

That plant is now the Tesla plant.
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