Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 349 posts

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

#241

Post by dijonman2 »

kazen44 wrote: post #207
dijonman2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last thing I would want is to live on a corporate campus. Lose my job and evicted at the same time? No thanks, plus I want privacy.

what about a company building housing for its employees. This is something that happened a lot in the netherlands in the city of eindhoven. Phillips had its major manufacturing located in the city, and build massive housing projects to house its workers relatively close to the plant.

No, this is exactly what I want to avoid. If I choose to change jobs then I need to find new housing.

I want a social life outside of work, and privacy is essential. As an example I generally do not want my colleagues to know who I am dating, or if I am dating more than one person.

People should only know what I choose to share. Separation between work and my personal life is essential.

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

#242

Post by sillystuff »

bob1029 wrote: 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…

Many years ago, I interviewed at a company that manufactured equipment used by fabs. My impression was of a very stressful environment.

Their latest equipment had some issues that were only showing up on production lines, so they wanted engineers to babysit the equipment at the fabs, and write patches on the spot for any issues observed. They repeatedly stressed how much money their customers lost for any downtime, and how there must not be downtime.

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

#243

Post by throwaway5959 »

cxr wrote: post #209
verall wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every semicon is SAS, I've heard similar things as what your friend has said about them though. No offense but your post comes off as someone who has spent their whole life in software and has no experience in semicon.

Maybe I didn't succeed at getting it across, but my anecdotes about SAS are not only by proxy. (I.e. my friend's experience and that alone.) I worked there.

So you’re critical of others for working at a place you have worked at? How does that work?

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

#244

Post by jprd »

I think the first thing everyone here needs to recognize, is that this is primarily a MANUFACTURING / FACTORY jerb.

99% of humans in the semi-conductor field are not designing masks and worrying about etching time or whatever nonsense marketing NANOMETER terminology is in place.

They are building "don't fuck this up" teams that are focused on quality manufacturing and how many PPI in the air, highly caustic chemicals, and FUPs not failing. The same stuff everyone with an assembly line deals with turned up to 11.

Then there are the IT folks who have to ensure that all these proprietary ASML or similar monstrosities are not compromised by some field tech with a compromised USB stick.

The nightmares I've had about that, multi-million dollar machines controlled by Windows X and never patched and yet somehow allowed to talk to a network that also has access to the Internet and rando field techs with "updates" on a stick.

Its almost as scary as how much international business relies on some random Excel file updated by humans.

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

#245

Post by Aunche »

logicchains wrote: post #109
JimmieMcnulty wrote: post #14

Honestly, based on the content of this video and the replies from the prior HN thread, it seems like folks are locked into the belief that the current manufacturing... "experience" (for lack of a better term) for the workers involved will be lifted from Asia and dropped into the US, but that doesn't actually make any sense to me. Sure, that's how the world knows how to make chips now, but given the varying laws betwe…

>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…

Is the M1's design really that technically impressive? The product itself is revolutionary, but my impression was that its main technical advantages is that ARM is more efficient and they had a monopoly on TSMC's 5 nm process.

I think general mismanagement explains Intel's decline more than money or working conditions. TSMC pays embarrassing low, which is why a lot of engineers end up being poached by China.

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

#246

Post by vegetablepotpie »

polishdude20 wrote: post #16
bmismyname wrote: post #6

Will there be low wages with huge bonuses for the CEOs while the workers have to struggle to pay rent? Young people know the future is not bright, and I encourage them to enjoy their lives while they still can.

This world view seems like a potential death spiral. As world views become bleak, is encouraging people to say "fuck it" and maximize for enjoyment really the best move? Whatever happened to working hard to build a future for oneself? Yes, I understand there are higher powers that be and people with much more powers than you and I that are ruining the future but is the answer really to lay down and be engulfed in the…

I just finished reading a book called The Dictators Handbook, which is a tounge-and-cheek title for a book about a political science topic called selectorate theory.

It said that corporations have a similar political makeup to communist dictatorships because the number of key supporters (shareholders) a CEO needs to stay in power represents a relatively small proportion of people in the company.

As a result, the CEOs only need to keep the largest shareholders happy. Smaller shareholders and workers merely accept the direction of the company. Their opinions don’t matter.

This is why we see CEOs have massive pay and generous severance packages, while workers struggle to pay rents and qualify for government benefits.

There was a saying in factories in the Soviet Union “they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”. We see this same sentiment with workers today with “quiet quitting”. Putting in more work provides no added benefits. Incentives are misaligned, and this leads to inefficiencies that will lead to our downfall.

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

#247

Post by erik_seaberg »

splistud wrote: post #103
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #31

A substantial perk would be subsidized housing. A modern fab can cost ~$20B (maybe more in the US) and obviously the planning and permit process is likely also a couple order of magnitudes more difficult than normal real estate development. Spending ~$100M on employee housing would make the compensation a lot more competitive since software salaries are high but tend to be located in HCOL areas. Spend another ~$100M…

Pay people, don't try to fit some other benefit on all employees

There have been times I would have liked to live on campus, and it’s often not possible to get that for any amount of money.

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

#248

Post by sillystuff »

nmstoker wrote: post #202
marginalia_nu wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with the British is they frequently have stark rival differences in cultural identity based on which part of which city they live.

Not exclusively a British idiosyncrasy, given gangs and tribal habits elsewhere, but you're quite right that we Brits do take to various ways of distinguishing ourselves on sometimes questionable grounds! Location, education level, schools, universities, colleges within universities, accents, vocabulary, class, sports affiliations, it's endless!

Not nearly to the same extent as the UK, but in the US, people judge you based on regional accent and vocabulary as well. An English teacher at my high school threw out the curriculum she should have been teaching, and just had us practice vocabulary and (remedial) grammar. She said that we will be consigned to the ghetto as long as we sound like that is where we belong.

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

#249

Post by sudosysgen »

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #189
cxr wrote: 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…

It's not really about quick cash. The truth is just that additional SWEs are right now more useful than additional fab engineers, in the US. It sucks to hear but it's true. There just aren't that many fab engineers necessary. Even TSMC employs a large part of SWE and IC designers, probably close to or more than process engineers.

Fab engineers in the US are fairly disposable because their existence isn't based on market needs but really as a hedge by the US to be independent. That's going to suck for you because TSMC isn't going to value you that much because you're not really business critical, you're just there to get government subsidies. In Taiwan it's another story and it's almost competitive with good SWE jobs.

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

#250

Post by BostonEnginerd »

jpgvm wrote: post #200
coredog64 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ignores the fact that there’s a number of companies that currently fab semiconductors in the United States. Phoenix/Mesa is one epicenter, but there’s also some high tech fabs in Oregon and New York.

Yes, just the fabs. Where do they import the bulk of the chemicals and other inputs from?

Many of the chemicals are made domestically as shipping large quantities of pyrophoric chemicals like silane over oceans is challenging.

Air Liquide, Air Products, Versum Materials, Brewer Science are all companies with significant US presence.

Post reply on HN