This is a routine issue in the semiconductor industry. Payscales haven't keep up with software across that whole industry. The trade organizations are aware of this, but I haven't seen a lot of push to level the playing field. It's unfortunate, as there are lots of really fascinating problems to solve on the materials and integration side.

The industry trade organization did make a snazzy movie to try to attract young graduates into the industry.

https://yourewelcome.org/en/

Pay disparity is something that you’ve gotta fix early on. If you wait until the results of losing top level talent are finally being felt by everyone, then chances are your business might not have enough cash left to rectify the problem.

This is generally true however Intel still has and makes tons of cash, especially compared to AMD. It will take them some time to recover from this though, in this industry it can easily mean 5+ years.

When I was younger I was looking into getting into this industry but was put off by low salaries. Broadly in electronics space I noticed pay is very low which I find puzzling.

The pandemic advertising was prescient.

I worked for a tenant in an complex that was mostly populated by semiconductor manufacturing and research people.

You could use the parking lots as a proxy for employee prosperity. The chip guys drove better cars than the students, but the government and other corporate people had better cars on average. The chip bigshots made bank though. The chip people would also have crunch periods where they worked crazy hours.

The workers making bank were the tradesmen building the facilities that housed tools.

So did Apple just sashay in and poach half of the best people?

Yes. In PDX, Azure recently had a big hiring frenzy and there was a lot of attrition as well.

Only thing I can add to this is I had an Uber driver in SF area who was a computer engineer for Intel and wasn't doing Uber as a fun aside to meet people...

Is that different at AMD?

AMD is in SV, so naturally salaries must be higher than in Oregon.