In the Austin area for Samsung, there is an order of magnitude more staff dedicated to verification and validation as part of the manufacturing process than chip design. My perception was that the chip design folks (SARC) are like the golden children of the ecosystem. Their salaries reflect that it's obviously a more competitive, demanding environment. I don't know how hard it would be for a fab engineer to transfer positions from SAS to SARC, but I do remember that it was not a common occurrence.

how could a new grad be qualified to design a new intel chip?

seems like those are necessary stepping stones to learn all the real world issues that would be involved in actually designing a chip.

> how could a new grad be qualified to design a new intel chip?

How could a new grad be qualified to design a new Google tool?

By being an apprentice (intern) at Google who is initially only responsible for a small bit of code (not "the tool" nor "the chip" - just a piece), and whose contributions are thoroughly reviewed and tested before pushing to production.

This comment isn't very constructive.

If they're talented and knowledgeable enough to contribute. Top tier students can do it. They don't need to start in validation.

There are two validation engineers for every design engineer in the semiconductor industry. There are even fewer design architects. But they all need a computer engineering background. Design verification is just what’s in demand.