Last I heard it was Micron. Not too sure what X got into. He was definitely a genius though.

If X works in something low level like device physics then there are a limited number of companies doing cutting edge fab stuff like that. Intel, TSMC, Samsung. The small number of companies limits your salary potential.

It's the same with being a maintenance technician for a piece of ASML 3nm semiconductor manufacturing equipment. You may be highly skilled but if there are only 3 companies in the world that will hire you then your salary potential is limited.

I know about 30 people developing hardware at Apple (writing Verilog, custom analog serdes design) and you can see that their software and hardware salaries are similar. In some cases hardware is higher although I suspect that is because of the limited sample size of salary data at the ICT6 level.

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/software-eng...

https://www.levels.fyi/companies/apple/salaries/hardware-eng...

There is more to life than money but people who care about money need to look into the companies and salaries before they commit themselves to 4 to 10 years of college.

Yeah you're right. It probably really comes down to a lack of potential employers. Hopefully this push by the US can change that.

Other branches of engineering: mechanical engineering, material science, chemical engineering, certainly civil engineering tend to pay at a lower level overall as well. And the purer sciences often require advanced degrees to get "real" jobs at all.

When I worked for a computer systems company after school, my impression was that the various types of engineers at the company were on fairly similar pay scales. What I think you've seen the past couple of decades is that out-sized salaries at some mostly software-related West Coast companies have really driven up compensation for specific types of jobs. It seems more likely that will settle down to levels with comparable jobs over time than the other way around as a lot of people who are late to the game try to jump in.

That's an interesting angle I'd never considered. If the government simply creates a lot of potential employers via funding, the labor market becomes competitive, which improves working conditions, compensation, and ultimately attracts talent that would not have otherwise considered the industry. The most interesting part is that outcome is almost a certainty if the government focuses on creating that competitive labor market through their investments; it doesn't require moonshots, breakthroughs, or wild successes to work, yet it can produce them, and can become self-sustaining.

> If X works in something low level like device physics then there are a limited number of companies doing cutting edge fab stuff like that. Intel, TSMC, Samsung. The small number of companies limits your salary potential.

You should be very careful about comparing raw salary numbers: a much better metric to compare is "'salary' minus 'cost of living at the job location'".

If you're pulling in 400k USD per year, it actually doesn't matter what the cost of living is. You tie up 40% of your income in a 1-2 million dollar house and still save $50-$100k a year while buying everything you want on a daily basis, then retire after 20 years and live like a king

Not possible if you have a family and 2 kids, and the best private schools in the area are charging $50-75k USD per kid per year. And the spouse insists on sending the kids to the best school and also wants a big house in a nice neighbourhood.

Unlikely you save anything significant on $400k under a relatively common scenario, and plus there's maybe only a few hundred locales on Earth with jobs that pay that much.

I think maybe in Taiwan and China semiconductor engineers are earning a good salary, especially China when government is dumping insane amount of $$ into it. But there is a lot of hype though.

Software salaries in both places are also a lot lower.

Yeah but for companies as Ali and Tencent you can have lucrative salaries.

If you end up working for Chinese companies for semiconductor activities (or other sensitive areas), you'll probably get blacklisted by western companies and never be able to work in the west again, which has way higher salaries. They'll think you are trying to steal sensitive tech, like the recent theft from Chinese employees against Apple and ASML.

Also, with the US tech sanctions getting tighter and tighter around China, tons of failures are occurring. Oppo just shut down their chip design unit. Alibaba has had 20,000 layoffs. Massive semiconductor scams in China have recently brought into light, such as china's champion HSMC. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/36Kr-KrASIA/Semiconductor-f.... China has basically had no luck in semiconductor progress, while it's economy is collapsing.

And really, at this point, you would be willingly working for a dictatorship that seeks to destroy the democratic countries and enslave its own Chinese citizens. Very few immoral engineers would sign up for that.

> while it's economy is collapsing.

Huh? Funny how 1/5 of the world economy can collapse and it's not even noticable.

According to the office for national statistics in China, for jan/feb of 2023 http://www.ce.cn/xwzx/gnsz/gdxw/202303/27/t20230327_38464161..., car manufacturing profits is down 41%. non-metal products manufacturing profits is down 39%. chemicals manufacturing profits is down 56%. electronics manufacturing profits is down 71%!! In fact, all businesses have dropped 22% in profit. Not to mention the 1M+ SMB that failed in the last 2 years.

1 in 5 Young Chinese Is Jobless, and Millions More Are About to Graduate https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/19/business/china-youth-unem...

China’s shipping containers pile up at overcrowded port as overseas orders dwindle https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3210870/c...

China to raise retirement age to deal with aging population https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-raise-retirement-a...

Guizhou Province may become the first provincial government to go bankrupt in China. https://twitter.com/tankman2002/status/1646905359184044032?l...

Didn't profits boom during Covid? They have to come down as things normalize. Also, profit down 50% still means you're profitable so I wouldn't call that "collapse". The Chinese GDP is expected to grow by >5% this year.

The global economy is strained. But especially in Europe because of the shock of the Ukraine war.

Intel's profit is down 100+%

US government is set to default on their debt.

US banks are failing left and right.

If you just take sensationalist headlines at face value you'd conclude that the US economy has already collapsed.