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

ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 136 posts

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#101

Post by skrebbel »

midasz wrote: post #89
nn3 wrote: post #3

Relevant HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 Apparently their software development processes are terrible.

There's not going to much meaningful pushback on this comment because any (ex-)ASML employee is going to be super hesitant to share anything. So feel free to think what you want.

Are you sure? Every ASML person I know loves sharing these stories at parties. It’s not a secret or anything. Stock wont go down if people find out that the code is a mess, everybody who cares about this already knows it.

ASML is impressive because they managed to ship despite the code having been a mess. It’s a mad accomplishment of both engineering and organization (they solve the messy code problem by simply employing 10x the programmers than they might need if the code was better, and somehow that actually works! That’s impressive organization, cause conventional wisdom eg Mythical Man Month suggests you can’t do that)

I think it’s more that not many ASML people are on HN.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#103

Post by skrebbel »

ziddoap wrote: post #29
hcfman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that link is to a story with a lot of garbage in it.

Do you have other insight? A counterpoint? Anecdote that supports a different narrative? Anything, at all, that would contribute to the conversation and support your "garbage" comment?

Hcfman works at ASML and I (who wrote the comment back in 2018) don’t. Fair chance he knows what he’s talking about.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#104

Post by smooc »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #39
nn3 wrote: post #3

Relevant HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463181 Apparently their software development processes are terrible.

I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies, it's a place where processes are more important than actual code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzz…

I'm a hiring manager in the Netherlands. I would be happy that you ran away, because you would not have passed the bar.

The hiring process I like to have in place is:

1. HR Interview: see if there is a fit with the company 2. Skill check. Do you have the problem solving, hard skills and communication skills needed for the job. 3. Team fit. Do you like to drink a beer (or non alcoholic) with us and we with you. Can you hold a conversation about something else than work.

6 people are involved. 2 per step. Everyone has a veto. I as a manager do not have special power. I've had people fail most of the time on #3. E.g. a guy that did not talk the woman of the team. She veto-ed. We were really looking for his skills, but he was a jerk.

I don't think you would have passed #3 either. You can have l33t coding skills, but if you cannot make it work in a team it is basically useless for anything of size.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#105

Post by [deleted] »

leokennis wrote: post #85
yau8edq12i wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love these threads. Everyone will chime in about how they know better how to run the company, with suggestions on the processes that they don't know and so on. Meanwhile the story is "business is #1 and booming". Elegant software stacks aren't always the most important part of the business.

Exactly. ASML made a profit of about $2,050,000,000,- in 2023. I doubt they are very interested in complaints about how some random dude expected more time to run his tests.

[deleted]

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#106

Post by hef19898 »

saiya-jin wrote: post #97
midasz wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to defend this method of hiring a little bit. To me, having at least a bachelor of IT already proves you have software engineering skills. The coding tests are just a quick check if you haven't lied or anything. The first month is trial basis anyway (both ways) so if the candidate is not on-par technically it's a quick goodbye. I don't care about parties either but if I'm going to have to work with you I ne…

Yeah this is typical junior code ninja opinion. Folks with 20+ years under our belts know damn too well how humane aspect is more important than literally anything in long term. My wife for example is a doctor. They have cabinets of 4 GP, 1 of them as we found out is a proper sociopath with very unstable personality when things are not perfect. He is driving whole cabinet which employs 10 people to the ground very ef…

Completely agree. And as someone who didn't fit culturally as often as I did fit, this is a two way street (ignoring the very extreme ends of the spectrum).

Having a brilliant misfit at the wrong position can tank a team.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#107

Post by midasz »

skrebbel wrote: post #101
midasz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not going to much meaningful pushback on this comment because any (ex-)ASML employee is going to be super hesitant to share anything. So feel free to think what you want.

Are you sure? Every ASML person I know loves sharing these stories at parties. It’s not a secret or anything. Stock wont go down if people find out that the code is a mess, everybody who cares about this already knows it. ASML is impressive because they managed to ship despite the code having been a mess. It’s a mad accomplishment of both engineering and organization (they solve the messy code problem by simply emplo…

No I'm not sure and maybe it's just me. Also but of a difference between a party and posts on the internet imo.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#108

Post by FirmwareBurner »

smooc wrote: post #104
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in NL for a while, few years, changed few companies, it's a place where processes are more important than actual code quality, where people stay in the same job for 10-15 years and everything below that is seen as a bad thing, people is hired for the culture primarily, having awareness of software principles is really worthless. I ran away as the last company I interviewed with, after solving a coding puzz…

I'm a hiring manager in the Netherlands. I would be happy that you ran away, because you would not have passed the bar. The hiring process I like to have in place is: 1. HR Interview: see if there is a fit with the company 2. Skill check. Do you have the problem solving, hard skills and communication skills needed for the job. 3. Team fit. Do you like to drink a beer (or non alcoholic) with us and we with you. Can yo…

> Do you like to drink a beer (or non alcoholic) with us and we with you.

Why is that relevant for work? Are you looking for labor, or for a date/drinking buddy?

Social and communication skills are important but I can be professionally communicative for work ralted topics, and still not want to have a beer with you after work, because it's my free time and I have other interests than you and other things to do.

Unless the company choses to have the beers/drinks during working time in which case by all means, if you pay me to drink on the clock I won't say NO.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#109

Post by hcfman »

skrebbel wrote: post #103
ziddoap wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have other insight? A counterpoint? Anecdote that supports a different narrative? Anything, at all, that would contribute to the conversation and support your "garbage" comment?

Hcfman works at ASML and I (who wrote the comment back in 2018) don’t. Fair chance he knows what he’s talking about.

Okay I'll bite. Usually with large and important companies like ASML one has to be very careful with what you say. Usually it's better to say nothing at all. This time I felt I had to jump in and defend ASML as it was painting rather a misrepresentational picture.

First, I'd like to say that skrebbel has reacted very gentlemanly to my comment considering how hard hitting it was, my complements to his balance in this. I can only assume he may possibly have been burnt on something he put a lot of effort into, I can relate to that. I've been there too.

But ASML is a very large company and parts of it that I have worked with have very impressive testing capability with a large farm of servers testing all code against regression and progression before any integration with release code. I'm happy to say that I've personally improved parts of this farm in both quality and performance of the testing environment (even though I wasn't part of that group).

The challenge is to be able to maintain and improve upon that when the software is so huge and growing. I poke and push at every opportunity I can. I'm sure that people in the company will recognise this :)

On a personal note and I think a lot of people here can relate to this, you can do a lot for quality simply by recognising the efforts of people correctly, the improvement in motivation translates to improvements in quality. In that area I think things are indeed changing since 2018. Just last week I was very pleasantly surprised to see in a group close to mine the announcement of a new program to do just that. To recognise the efforts of people that go the extra mile in both effort and innovation. Very nice to see.

Now it's best for me to shutup.

Re: ASML dethrones Applied Materials, becomes largest fab tool maker

#110

Post by Scarblac »

radiator wrote: post #84
Scarblac wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also that's what we do since WW2. We are a close ally of the US, use US weapons, usually follow them in foreign policy. So not very surprising imo.

This sounds more like a vassal than an ally. You "usually follow them in foreign policy"? Does that imply that sometimes the US follows you?

You're not the first to have that criticism, still our political class seems to think it's best to follow them.

I think we do have slightly more influence on the US than our size would merit.

Post reply on HN