Everything you're seeing in the comments is true.
Compensation is not that bad. Clearly, it'll not pay SW salaries - no engineering does. But if you're a fab person, you'll work long hours, be on call often (and you will get woken up often), and eventually will own a tool that you'll be responsible for, even when not on call.
Lots of abusive and pathological behavior, as well. And they often block internal transfers so you're basically trapped.
People with other skills (e.g. SW) get out. The rest are stuck, because they have, for example, a chemistry PhD and no other company will pay more.
See this thread from a while ago:
For some reason, I assumed that in order to be a chip designer you had to be as good at programming as a developer. Then I became friends with two intel chip designers/engineers and was surprised that neither knew much of anything about programming, despite both having multiple PhDs in their fields. That's when I began realizing that engineering and programming are 2 entirely different fields that have little overlap.
Folks who work on Chromium think little of those who wrangle wordpress themes
Things you can build and see and have immediate feedback.
That just doesn’t happen with chip design. Not that it can’t, and I’m sure there are examples (Woz’s paper and pencil circuit design come to mind) but it’s far from common, compared to coding.
I remember in 5th grade being asked to help another student write a choose-your-own-adventure style game in basic on an apple //e back in the “one per classroom if you are lucky” days.
I figured I was going to be a programmer as a profession but college came around and it was a coin toss for me between computer engineering and computer science. At the time, engineers made more money so I went with that. Doubled as an EE/CE. I was ok at the typical EE stuff, better at the little bit of programming we were exposed to (in pascal). I did very well in semiconductor physics, but I didn’t really get sucked into it. Got to a digital design class, and that hit the spot for me. I didn’t like plugging wires in on breadboards because it was entirely too frustrating trying to figure out which wire you got wrong, plus I’m colorblind and the shades of red and green insulation on wires are perfectly impossible for me to tell apart except under very very bright light. But I loved designing the synchronous digital logic.
It’s just not something you are super likely to randomly pick up on your own at an early age. And to be honest, even if I had been exposed to digital design back in grade school, I doubt it would have resonated. I could easily understand things like “GOTO 10.” Understanding clocked logic, or binary arithmetic probably wasn’t within my reach back then.
Nearly all of the EEs in my class had never programmed anything before the 2 classes in our curriculum. All the people that knew how to program went into CS (except for a few like me). So the few logic designers that come out of an EE program don’t seem very likely to be good at programming. Just different interests.
Both require deep domain knowledge that doesn't always overlap - but being able to do both makes you more valuable
Trust me, I've tried to talk them out of it and never succeeded.
I worked for a supplier for AMAT/Intel/Samsung etc. and was basically on-call 24/7. I had to carry two laptops with me at all times (my personal one and a work one).
I didn't care because I was young, and well compensated, but they decided that they'd cut my pay by a third by converting me to a salaried employee. The unpaid overtime (previously paid as a contractor) lost its luster quickly. Once I realized I was subsidizing bad management because I was filling the gaps left by often intentional shortcuts taken-- for free, I bailed. That took... two months I think.
Every person I interacted with in the semiconductor space was either an academic who was stuck in a lab 12+ hours a day or some line manager for Intel/IBM/TSMC/etc. that was on-call 24/7 if something went wrong. Both of those sounded terrible to me regardless of the pay.
So yeah I do software now.
Ended up as a power systems engineer, which is the complete opposite in terms of scale from semiconductors!
Terrible pay and terrible hours and long school and hard work is just irredeemable.
That was until I did an internship following a grad student doing work on solar cells. Every day was sitting 8+ hours in one room doing CVD then XRD. It was soul crushing. I realized the program was more of a PhD-prep program and most people I know who graduated and didn’t go for a PhD either 1) went into software or 2) work as some menial process engineer working the “assembly line” with no meaningful upwards mobility.
I know a surprising amount of people who came out of CNSE (without following up with grad school) and are now landscapers, waiters, or similar. The skillset is so specialized as to be almost worthless unless you can find the right role imo. Also the program there CNSE/SUNY Poly is absolute hot garbage, I advise active looking at this field to go into conventional EE, ChemE, or Materials.
In any commercial organization, there are tremendous pressures in high-investment, super high-risk projects and anyone can trivially find things that are wrong with the current system. The much more difficult challenge is showing an alternate path that is superior - based on the results it achieves. The times when you see the ugly behavior of people are times of desperation. Online commenters expend a lot of effort point out how to improve things by "proving" it by linking to random studies - but the more persuasive argument is by implementing those changes in the real world. "Talk is cheap, show me the code." ;)
This code is working great!
A mentor of mine hit his breaking point when they split/bankrupt/acquired his team to discharge pension obligations. Real nasty stuff. He said everyone was retiring, "good luck with the next node" (10nm) -- which I discounted as sour grapes on account of Intel appearing invincible at the time, but wow have the years cast that story in a different light.
Was that a joke? What's the point of doing two PhDs in the same field? That's like 12 years wasted. 1/8th of your life.
(Worked at Intel and along with fab/process folks for a bunch of years).
https://www.cgw.com/Press-Center/News/2014/Studios-Accused-o...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/04/apple-googl...
How about instead of idolizing people like this we charge them with felonies and put them in prison?
Pay was not so great as judged by the cars. The other thing was that the workforce was split - you were either old or young.
If you want to make money in semiconductors, find a place they are building fabs and become a plumber or electrician. Those are the folks who make money, and often there’s security clearance requirements that adds job security.
Is a foundry the only employer?
Last time I had close contact with the industry, digital design indeed was a bit more competitive and correspondingly it was the only one considered to have good career prospects -- but the offers were still between shabby and embarrassing next to entry level SWE, even outside the bay area.
This could have changed.
Then you have to manufacture. There is a significant cost for custom chips. Though once you get going the per chip cost is pretty low, thus the business lends itself to a few large players.
Points they told:
1. A mandatory PhD just to get at internship
2. Few years of unpaid internship needed to get a coffee porter job, before you are let anywhere close to the process
3. A postdoc is required to get a real R&D cred
4. 7-10 years in R&D sweatshop before any real promotion
5. Get very lucky
6. In 20-30 years of career, you can get to a VP level, where you can hold the company by the balls with critical knowledge. Then... and only then, you will look up to a 7 digit salary.
Perhaps this has changed, given that we're in a semiconductor boom cycle now, but I have my doubts. When SMIC started trying to poach TSMC talent, the response was not to make pay competitive (or even half decent), let alone in line with the massive geopolitically-relevant value being created. No, the response was a mask-off legislative crackdown to keep the nerds in line. In the US, there were only two big employers, and they were definitely paying what they could get away with.
Anyone who is considering this career -- any career, but this one especially -- before you jump, please get the perspective of someone in industry who isn't trying to sell you a career.