It is likely your friend was paid better because they were assigned higher grade. Just for being PhD I think you are automatically bumped to something like senior engineer or higher.

Intel has grading system which you can try to google. You are paid according to your grade (+ benefits based on performance, etc.) Also, you are evaluated against your grade and you can gain or loose a grade based on performance (but more likely than loosing a grade is that you will be let go).

I have been given a grade that was over my head at the time and would require me to technically advise and coordinate multiple projects, have outside presence (ie present at tech conferences, take part in opensource projects, etc.) and basically work at a level that I have not been ready for. And yet I was not able to make ends meet.

I guess when I was hired I got absolutely excited about what I am going to work on and plans for bright future, that I have completely ignored the possibility that I may be over my head and that I may not be able to advance so quickly.

I've known people from towns with one or even two big industries, grew up in several, and the town always gets weird after a while. One in particular I'm thinking of that was almost healthy had a state and an art university pulling in money, and people who lived in the school districts but commuted to heavy industry in an exurb of the next big town. Someone tried building a factory on the edge of town to poach those people but it didn't stick. But that one company still overshadowed everything.

Your one company gentrifies the hell out of some things, not everything, and ultimately all fates are tied to their fortunes. They do a layoff, hiring freeze or even a salary squeeze and eight months later a few restaurants and one of your favorite stores shut down. You find out they've been late on payments to people and vendors for the past 6 months.

I recall the first time I heard someone interviewing at Intel and I asked why they were, 'in the middle of nowhere in Oregon' and nobody had a good answer to that.

What I've learned about manufacturing since then makes me think, "lax environmental rules and watchdogs".

Intel's Hillsboro campus is located "in the middle of nowhere in Oregon" in almost exactly the same sense that Microsoft's Redmond campus sits "in the middle of nowhere in Washington"; each one is located at the edge of a suburb of the largest city in the state, right next to a highway which leads straight downtown, less than fifteen miles away.

Intel in Oregon is probably like an hour from downtown Portland, and there are a ton of apartment complexes about halfway between the two (and there's nice public transit to Portland, so you don't have to deal with the drivers). Nike also has a big building nearby.

Also, I imagine Intel would gain very little from being located in, for example, the Bay Area or NYC. It isn't like they are some little startup that needs to go out to bars to find new developers or whatever.

Intel employs 5,900 people in Santa Clara county and that is their corporate headquarters so obviously they think they gain something from a large Bay Area footprint. The idea that Bay Area hiring is primarily "little startups that need to go out to bars" is also very odd.

Intel's footprint in Santa Clara is comparatively small. They have 21K in the Portland metro area, and 12K in the Phoenix region. They have about 15K in California, split between Folsom and Santa Clara.

Tektronix was there and Oregon State was a source of cheap engineers.

Probably you were hired at grade 9 or 10?