While the U.S. Software Companies continue to maintain their interest in the “Attention Economy” due to its high margins, low headcount to revenue, addictive nature, zero sum gains to the economy and lucrative salaries for the talent in their mid 20s who are setting up their careers and appetites for financial rewards for life, it will be very difficult for a silicon fabrication human capital pool to develop. This again is as economic structural problem not an industry specific micro problem.
The “Attention” Economy with its focus on gamification and dopamine based engineering outcomes is attractive to work on, pays well and emotionally is “fun” and continues to build at scale financially attractive cash flows.
Fix the dopamine addiction and maybe in 20 years people will seek missions and jobs in boring semiconductors. Self inflected problem by market dynamics.
Also remember Silicon Design and Fabrication is very much aligned with “waterfall” engineering process whereas software is aligned with agile models “ship crappy quickly and fix crappy, on the fly”.
The two styles are worlds apart in terms of culture, style, mission approach and outcome rewards. One is very high cadence that rewards speed while the other is a slower cadence that rewards perfection.
Having managed both types of engineering it is very hard to run a mixed culture and implement reward models.
Few companies can mix the cultures well and it is especially difficult to move people once they have developed their engineering style and cadence models.
Thanks Judy, I call it Dopamine Orientated Product Engineering aka “DOPE” and it’s very hard to compete with non-DOPE products or services to attract talent.
“That’s DOPE” is not just a pop culture word for what’s cool, it’s a HR cue for recruitment.
If your company is working on DOPE and paying well, then the talent will be knocking on the door.
So what are chip engineer salaries like? If there are these gigantic 2-4x gaps between supply and demand, "demand" is always demand at a specific price point - if there's a gigantic gap, that's literally the entirety of the problem.
If only 3% of US engineers go into chips, it's probably because the real talent can go somewhere else and make a lot of money. Where does top talent go in the US? To the FAANGS, where you make an easy $500k a year in total comp right out of the box, or to an AI company where you make 7 figures ($1m+) right out of the box.
I've only known one lithography person, and they were severely underpaid. I think they were barely breaking $100k working for Texas Instruments, and candidly, they were smart enough to work for a FAANG based on my own recruiting and team leading experiences.
This is the same reason nobody smart stays in academia to do research any more. Lets see, you can live on literal ramen and hopes and dreams while sharing a single bedroom in a student flop house, in an environment where tenure is by far the exception and getting jerked around for years is the norm, and where the years you pour into papers ends in a handful of citations...OR you could move to NYC or DC or Boston or SF and print mid-six-figures basically tomorrow and have an actual life and place of your own and family. Tough choice.
Most places lamenting how impossible smart people are to find in their industry / job family are just complaining that they can't hire smart people for pennies, because other, smarter people and companies are offering those smart people dollars.
Yes, we heard that software companies pay double or even triple the salaries of semiconductor firms in America. Yet we also heard that young people are more interested in IC design rather than manufacturing, if they decide to enter the semiconductor industry.
Agreed. Saying that US talent doesn’t persue semiconductor roles because they simply believe the world is going in the direction of software totally ignores reality - salaries and the locations where these jobs are located are simply not where graduates are willing to go given alternatives.
The article is well written and provides valuable insights. For most of the US readers, they probably cannot appreciate it, because very few college graduates study semiconductors. Since the e-commerce and social network era, most people believe that was the way the world is going! 😭😳
Yes, that's why the US' effort to bring semiconductor supply chains back may become "much ado about nothing" if talent still favor e-commerce and software over semiconductor.
Good topic 👍
It's a pleasure to collaborate with you! Thank you for the valuable insight and photos!
While the U.S. Software Companies continue to maintain their interest in the “Attention Economy” due to its high margins, low headcount to revenue, addictive nature, zero sum gains to the economy and lucrative salaries for the talent in their mid 20s who are setting up their careers and appetites for financial rewards for life, it will be very difficult for a silicon fabrication human capital pool to develop. This again is as economic structural problem not an industry specific micro problem.
The “Attention” Economy with its focus on gamification and dopamine based engineering outcomes is attractive to work on, pays well and emotionally is “fun” and continues to build at scale financially attractive cash flows.
Fix the dopamine addiction and maybe in 20 years people will seek missions and jobs in boring semiconductors. Self inflected problem by market dynamics.
Also remember Silicon Design and Fabrication is very much aligned with “waterfall” engineering process whereas software is aligned with agile models “ship crappy quickly and fix crappy, on the fly”.
The two styles are worlds apart in terms of culture, style, mission approach and outcome rewards. One is very high cadence that rewards speed while the other is a slower cadence that rewards perfection.
Having managed both types of engineering it is very hard to run a mixed culture and implement reward models.
Few companies can mix the cultures well and it is especially difficult to move people once they have developed their engineering style and cadence models.
Which one does the current crop of talent prefer?
Very insightful! It takes an experienced expert like you to see through it all.
Thanks Judy, I call it Dopamine Orientated Product Engineering aka “DOPE” and it’s very hard to compete with non-DOPE products or services to attract talent.
“That’s DOPE” is not just a pop culture word for what’s cool, it’s a HR cue for recruitment.
If your company is working on DOPE and paying well, then the talent will be knocking on the door.
P.S Vibe Coding is not helping the problem!
So what are chip engineer salaries like? If there are these gigantic 2-4x gaps between supply and demand, "demand" is always demand at a specific price point - if there's a gigantic gap, that's literally the entirety of the problem.
If only 3% of US engineers go into chips, it's probably because the real talent can go somewhere else and make a lot of money. Where does top talent go in the US? To the FAANGS, where you make an easy $500k a year in total comp right out of the box, or to an AI company where you make 7 figures ($1m+) right out of the box.
I've only known one lithography person, and they were severely underpaid. I think they were barely breaking $100k working for Texas Instruments, and candidly, they were smart enough to work for a FAANG based on my own recruiting and team leading experiences.
This is the same reason nobody smart stays in academia to do research any more. Lets see, you can live on literal ramen and hopes and dreams while sharing a single bedroom in a student flop house, in an environment where tenure is by far the exception and getting jerked around for years is the norm, and where the years you pour into papers ends in a handful of citations...OR you could move to NYC or DC or Boston or SF and print mid-six-figures basically tomorrow and have an actual life and place of your own and family. Tough choice.
Most places lamenting how impossible smart people are to find in their industry / job family are just complaining that they can't hire smart people for pennies, because other, smarter people and companies are offering those smart people dollars.
Yes, we heard that software companies pay double or even triple the salaries of semiconductor firms in America. Yet we also heard that young people are more interested in IC design rather than manufacturing, if they decide to enter the semiconductor industry.
Agreed. Saying that US talent doesn’t persue semiconductor roles because they simply believe the world is going in the direction of software totally ignores reality - salaries and the locations where these jobs are located are simply not where graduates are willing to go given alternatives.
The article is well written and provides valuable insights. For most of the US readers, they probably cannot appreciate it, because very few college graduates study semiconductors. Since the e-commerce and social network era, most people believe that was the way the world is going! 😭😳
Yes, that's why the US' effort to bring semiconductor supply chains back may become "much ado about nothing" if talent still favor e-commerce and software over semiconductor.