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How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

economist.com

211–220 of 257 posts

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works for sites that set a cookie to limit how many free articles you can see without logging in, or sites that let search engine scrapers bypass the paywall to read the full content. I would say it's a little more ethically questionable than ad blocking. Ad blocking is like buying a paper from a newsstand and duct taping over the ads - totally fine, it's my paper and I'll do whatever I want with it. This extensio…

Yeah, it feels vaguely more grey-area than ad blocking. Although that’s just a gut read, not very reliable. I’m very much ideological about being in the camp: you can send me whatever you want, and I’ll render it however I want, and anyone who has a problem that is the problem. I’m not sure how I feel about impersonating a scraper or switching around my cookies so that the site sends me something else. Actually, this…

I think it's clearly dishonest, but fairly limited potential to harm the business. It's on the same moral level as going to a chain restaurant every week and telling them it's your birthday every time so they give you a free dessert. It's definitely lying but you're not going to put them out of business. If everyone started doing this, they'd just get rid of the free dessert/free article policy and probably be fine.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it feels vaguely more grey-area than ad blocking. Although that’s just a gut read, not very reliable. I’m very much ideological about being in the camp: you can send me whatever you want, and I’ll render it however I want, and anyone who has a problem that is the problem. I’m not sure how I feel about impersonating a scraper or switching around my cookies so that the site sends me something else. Actually, this…

I think it's clearly dishonest, but fairly limited potential to harm the business. It's on the same moral level as going to a chain restaurant every week and telling them it's your birthday every time so they give you a free dessert. It's definitely lying but you're not going to put them out of business. If everyone started doing this, they'd just get rid of the free dessert/free article policy and probably be fine.

One thing that gives me a little pause is, these sites, they treat search engine scrapers preferably to humans, right? And the scraper’s job is to categorize sites and recommend them to people.

So, IMO, it is more like: if most restaurants gave reviewers preferential treatment and tended to comp their meals, and this was very well known, and you went around telling everybody you were a reviewer. Which also seems dishonest, but it isn’t like you are exploiting some nice little cute good-faith thing like free dessert on your birthday, you are exploiting the restaurant’s attempt to get a better review. Seems, like, dishonest but fair play.

And, I’d love if search engines would stop giving me paywalled sites, haha. So maybe it would be nice if everyone would exploit this loophole, they could close it, and the whole system would get a little more honest. (I’m not doing it unilaterally though).

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#213

My question: As an American, why should I work in IC fabrication? I'm competing with low-cost Asians who set a cap on my salary. Work conditions, income, and everything else is worse than SWE. I switched away from electronics early in my career, and it seems like a strict win. As much as I believe in on-shoring, I'm not sure those issues can, will, or should be fixed.

You're right. Why should any American ever work in any job that doesn't favorably compare to SWE salary and working conditions? Everyone should quit their jobs and become a SWE. It's just that simple, right? /s

The issue is that there is a high level of overlap between the skill sets/aptitudes necessary to work in the chip industry and on the software side, and in some subsets, its substantially easier on the SWE side. Why work harder for less if the general aptitude for jobs is about equal?

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't talk of a conflict with China as inevitable. Competition is fine but no one in their right mind should wish for military conflict with China, it would be a tragedy for humanity.

wish for and expect are two different things. I wish the war in Ukraine would end tomorrow, I don't expect it will though. while China invading Taiwan is not a guarantee, it is certainly highly probable. this risk should be taken into account by the us government

Why do you think it’s highly probable?

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those jobs don't pay well either. You'll see salaries of around $70-110k in very expensive metros like the Bay, Portland, Dallas, Austin, etc. Salaries just haven't kept up in the EE space.

I'll tell that to all my friends in the EE space who live very comfortably that they're clearly not paid well. They'll probably have a laugh while they're out boating.

Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade.

I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE salaries where either you work at an Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which pays competitively and others which pay subpar wages.

Maybe this is heavily dependent on the subset of EE as well (eg. I'd assume the profit margins for a fabless GPU company like Nvidia are much higher than a company building/desigining ASICs for Telcom usecases like KLA).

That said, you seem to be from North Texas/DFW and EE wages and cost of living seem much more managable compared to those offered in the Bay Area and Portland.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell that to all my friends in the EE space who live very comfortably that they're clearly not paid well. They'll probably have a laugh while they're out boating.

Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade. I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE salaries where either you work at an Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which p…

Median home price in Milpitas: $1.3M

Median home price in Richardson: $478K

Median home price in Garland: $301k

Median home price in Sherman: $308k

Median home price in The Colony: $411k

Median home price in Plano: $520k

Which places are you more likely to be able to own your home with ~$100k/yr income?

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade. I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE salaries where either you work at an Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which p…

Median home price in Milpitas: $1.3M Median home price in Richardson: $478K Median home price in Garland: $301k Median home price in Sherman: $308k Median home price in The Colony: $411k Median home price in Plano: $520k Which places are you more likely to be able to own your home with ~$100k/yr income?

No shit sherlock.

I'm just pointing out that EE salaries within the US are depressed due to the (relatively) low wages within DFW (which by DFW levels are competitive).

At the end of the day, you guys are definetly being underpaid compared to SWEs as well as certain specialities of EE (take a look at Nvidia's mid-level TC in the Bay verus TI's in DFW).

DFW has always been a major EE hub in the US, but SV and Portland are similarly sized EE industry hubs and their wages have been depressed.

Since DFW represents around 30-40% of the EE industry within the US, it's a major portion but plenty of industry share is still stuck in higher CoL areas, which incentivizes talent to either switch to SWE or outsource jobs to SK, Taiwan, PRC, India, and Israel where such salaries are more competitive

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#219
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is explicitly why Boise State University, an otherwise middle-to-low-tier research university boasts such a high-quality materials engineering department. BSU actually hold some of their intro-to-materials-science courses at the Boise Micron fab so Micron employees can work towards said degrees without missing as much work to commute between the two locations. Edit to add: I've met a few people who are aware of…

Current analysis projects US semi to face shortage of ~80k talent in next few years, ~300k+ in by decades end. This is reality pretty much in every semi producer countries, SKR and TW both have 50k-100k+ shortage with pretty developed talent pipeline. From everything I've read, current US+co short/medium term talent production won't be enough fill all the new fabs being proposed. Unviable due to operating costs which…

> Unviable due to operating costs which can always be subsidized, unviable due to lack of talent is much harder to address.

Or, gee, let's throw this out there: perhaps if the pay wasn't shit, people would go into the field.

You know, just like computer science over the past couple of decades.

Re: How real is America’s chipmaking renaissance?

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why's that surprising?

Because the Bushs are a family of oil types

They actually started off in the New York City publishing industry.

McGraw Hill was founded by the Bush family before they decamped for Dallas in the 1920s.

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