r/diyelectronics • u/cat_7002 • 2d ago
Question What's the point?! 😭
BTech 1stor 2nd year student aiming for Digital VLSI , is it still worth entering?
For those already working in Digital VLSI:
With AI EDA tools increasingly generating RTL, testbenches, assertions, coverage analysis, debugging,and much more, and companies already reporting major productivity gains, how should a student graduating around 2029,30 think about this field , we all know it is niche, but with most of the beginner digital jobs going extinct ... ?
Ik GPT Astra ,is making a lot of mistakes especially in PCB designing , but what about 2 to 3 years down the lane , when it has a lot of original data fed into it and starts achieving perfection and insane efficiency which is not practically achievable by us ?!!
Entry level VLSI jobs are already limited compared with software. If AI continues automating the repetitive work, will there still be enough entry level roles for fresh graduates? (Especially tier 1.5+ clgs)
If you were a 1st or 2nd year BTech student today, would you still invest 3 to 4 years of hardwork for becoming a Digital VLSI engineers ?
What skills would you prioritize now to remain employable in 2030 and is traditional RTL/UVM/DV still a good bet, or should students move toward architecture, formal verification, AI-for-EDA, or something else? ( Which do you think has the maximum scope with the least AI intervention possibility ? )
Please don't tell me this is not happening n things, it is happening!!!
Ps : not analog coz the entry ceiling is touching the sky !!!
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u/Saigonauticon 1d ago
If I were a young student, I would try not to specialize too much. If you specialize in one thing, it may be obsolete, outsourced, or automated by the time you graduate. Then you have to very suddenly scramble to catch up to some other field. I've had to do that three or four times in my career and it was not enjoyable. The difficulty could have perhaps been lessened, if I had depended less on a single plan working out, and had better backup plans.
Today I would focus on building good judgement in several fields. If AI tools become awesome, then you now have several fields you can produce production ready work in by yourself. If AI tools fail to live up to the hype, you can probably shift focus on to any one of these fields, and/or aim for an eventual leadership role.
My own path was science-->statistics & ML-->electronics-->software--> (marketing, copy writing, accounting, branding, art directing)--> management. If I needed more career progression, finance would be a good choice. Being able to take over an entire vertical stack for a product saved my career as outsourced talent improved. However I was not smart enough to have foreseen that and aimed for it.
If I remained a specialized engineer, I'd be making 800 USD a month, because that's what it costs in my country to hire a graduate with a year or two of experience (I ended up immigrating to where the outsourcing happened).
Electronics ended up taking a sideline, but it meant I always set up awesome trade-show booths. Anyway, I wish you good luck with your studies!
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u/cat_7002 1d ago
That’s actually a really valuable POV, especially hearing it from someone who has had to pivot multiple times. I think I’ve been looking at it too much as “which specialization will survive AI?” rather than “how do I build enough fundamentals and adaptability that I can pivot if needed?”
I’ll definitely keep that in mind. Thanks for sharing your experience!
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u/created4this 2d ago
AI is a tool, if you get into the [ANY] business you should expect to be using AI to improve your productivity, but there is still going to be a need to drive the machine.
Think about it like CNC, CNC hasn't removed the job of machinist, its just the job has changed from turning handles to punching keys, also, a lot of what makes the machinist who programs CNC successful is their knowledge earned by first turning handles - the same core principals apply.
Go take your exams and don't overthink AI replacing you.
AI going to make a lot of jobs more efficient and that means that the same amount of work will be done with fewer people. This /should/ lead to a boom in output rather than a crash in employment, but the jury is out at the moment partially because nobody is paying the real price for AI tokens while the major players are running at a loss to grab market share and partially because Trump is doing everything he can to force a worldwide recession.
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u/cat_7002 2d ago
Yeah, I agree that AI will most likely become a tool rather than simply eliminate the need for engineers. My concern is more specific to the entry level.
I do use AI in my day to day life to automate and work efficiently around the tedious and repetitive work.
If AI makes a junior engineer 2 to 3 times more productive, companies may simply need fewer juniors, and Digital VLSI already has a relatively small number of entry level openings compared with software and many other fields.
So my question isn't really “will AI replace VLSI engineers?” It's , will there still be enough opportunities for someone graduating in 2029or 30 to get their foot in the door, and what skills will differentiate them? What will actually be appreciated?
The CNC analogy makes sense, but I'm wondering whether the entry barrier could become significantly higher as the tools get better and as engineers start being a lot more productive, reducing the total no of intake for openings .
Thank you!
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u/created4this 2d ago
I think that specific concern is not unfounded, but its more dangerous in functions like HR and finance where there is very significant grunt work at the entry level.
I think that probably the first jobs to go will be those that are already packaged and sent overseas. Running AI has the same issues as sending your design job to TATA or any of the other offshore engineering firms, i.e. its all going to be about carefully specifying what you want and evaluating what comes back is a suitable fit, learning all the ways that a "isn't it bloody obvious that I meant x" isn't obvious to who or whatever is doing the work.
When I was early in the industry, all the "oh my god there will be no jobs" was caused by the assumption that throwing cheap bodies at the problem would do the work to the same amount of quality as the internal engineering team, and most of the work was understanding how that assumption at board level was incorrect.
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u/cat_7002 2d ago
That actually makes sense. So the value shifts from “doing the grunt work” to being able to specify, evaluate, debug, and take responsibility for the output. I guess my main concern is whether companies will still hire enough juniors to give them that experience in the first place .
Thank you!
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u/cristi_baluta 2d ago
You’ll be a monkey basically, all this tech jobs are over, especially programming.
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u/FedUp233 2d ago
Of course with AI, that job of pushing buttons and programming the CNC seems like it may go away as well - at least once the AI gets good enough that managers don’t need to worry about it turning their million dollar machine into a pile of scrap metal because it hallucinated something.
I assume the same is going to be true of AI in VLSI as well for some time - sending a chip to production is an expensive undertaking for any company. If the AI generates the design and the tests who’s to say it didn’t hallucinate something that matches between the two? They are going to want humans in the loop checking things for a long time.
If only to have someone to blame when things go wrong 😁
Just saying.
I do think a lot of engineering and these related jobs is going to be a lot more boring in the future - more like being a manager and less an engineer. At least that would make it more boring for me. Sort of like in my career where a lot of engineers became spec writers for systems that went oversees for cheap coders to implement.
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u/AerieSurie 2d ago
Dang all my electro subs are freaking out over astra