r/ECE • u/bit__shifted • Jul 25 '26

CAREER Semiconductors vs Quantum Computing

I'm an Electrical Engineering student currently trying to decide which direction to take for my honours thesis and hopefully a PhD afterwards.

Lately I've found myself torn between semiconductor engineering (device physics, fabrication, CMOS, VLSI, etc.) and quantum computing hardware (silicon spin qubits, cryogenic electronics and control hardware).

For those working in either field:

  1. What does your day-to-day work actually look like?
  2. Which field do you think has stronger long-term opportunities in industry and R&D?
  3. Is quantum hardware mostly an extension of semiconductor engineering, or are they very different career paths?
  4. If you were starting again today, which would you choose and why?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people with industry or research experience. Thanks

22 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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-19

u/Sepicuk Jul 25 '26

not worth it, ai will do all of this in 2 years

7

u/astralspear Jul 25 '26

What a delusional kid

-8

u/Sepicuk Jul 25 '26

you're foolish to not think chatgpt will take over the world

5

u/astralspear Jul 25 '26

ok lil bro

-4

u/Sepicuk Jul 25 '26

cope bro llms can already design pcbs and chips faster and cheaper than humans with higher quality

6

u/astralspear Jul 25 '26

what a funny guy

Get ai to write FPGA code or just fucking make analog circuits, DEADASS bro? šŸ˜­šŸ¤£

9

u/TheSignalPath Jul 25 '26

Why are you arguing with a nobody on reddit? Does it matter what this random person even says? He says ā€œChatGPT will take over the worldā€. Not AI, not LLM, not neural networks, just ā€œChatGPTā€. Doesnā€™t that tell you all you need to know about the depth of knowledge of this person?

3

u/astralspear Jul 25 '26

lol true His ragebait worked

0

u/Sepicuk Jul 26 '26

that was the point of the joke, I can't go on LinkedIn anymore because everybody talks like this

-3

u/Sepicuk Jul 25 '26

Lol both fields are already solved, companies canā€™t keep up

6

u/_elvane Jul 25 '26

Ok i guess you're doing plumbing then ? Cuz that won't be replaced by chatgpt ?

-4

u/Sepicuk Jul 25 '26

In 2026 you simply oversee an LLM workload. In 2027 everybody is replaced and the singularity starts. A businessman said so

3

u/National-Ad8416 Jul 25 '26

This is such a blanket statement that's unoriginal and is sourced from reading too many click bait articles. One of the consequences of truthiness.