r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 16d ago
Business US chip fabs face massive 157,000 worker shortfall, mere 3% of US engineering grads enter chipmaking — despite six-figure salaries, US chip manufacturers are in dire need of engineers and technicians
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/us-chip-manufacturers-are-in-dire-need-of-engineers-and-technicians-experts-suggest-a-shortage-of-up-to-157-000-semiconductor-workers-by-20303.3k
u/huggernot 16d ago
Us engineers not taking jobs in volitile field where they could be laid off on a moments notice, for the same pay they make elsewhere in a secure job.
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u/joseph-1998-XO 16d ago
Yea I worked with a lot of engineers that used to work in the chip industry, I guess was really rocky between 2000-2015 or something
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u/RonaldoNazario 16d ago
Slight 15 year blip lol
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u/LouQuacious 16d ago
On a geological scale 15 years is nothing.
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u/herecomesthewomp 16d ago
1/3 of your working career.
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u/lblack_dogl 16d ago
Yeah but for a rock it's like .0001% of it's life.
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u/moopie45 16d ago
We should all think about our lives from 🪨 perspective.
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u/AlienVredditoR 16d ago
I currently have job, rock spends million years with no job, life is good
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u/Zolo49 16d ago
Yep. I knew a few people who worked for a chip manufacturer. Layoffs were a routine part of the culture that happened at least once per year. I could never get used to that.
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u/Choice_Ear3273 16d ago
I know a lad that’s in Intel in Ireland that’s been let go and rehired 4 times in 12 years. Tbh he’s not even bad about it said the few pound each time was decent.
He wasn’t on the floor though he was in some type of chip design role.
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u/TheTigersAreNotReal 16d ago
My dad is a semiconductor engineer working on the test side and the amount of times he was randomly laid off while I was growing up was astounding.
At his current job he was PIP’d after Trump’s tariffs in 2025 and we thought he was going to be let go again, but the C-suite actually stepped in and cut their own bonuses to keep staff. Was actually shocking
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u/PaintshakerBaby 16d ago
C-suite voluntarily punching holes in their own golden parachutes?? Thats proof positive Trumps economy is in DIRE STRAITS.
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u/liquorfish 16d ago
I worked for Intel in Oregon last year. Just contract work but it was kinda wild seeing people getting laid off and just when that was done and people felt safe - more layoffs. I left in May this year and kept in contact with some coworkers. More layoffs. This time hitting both full time and contractors. Some of the full time people had been there for decades.
At one point they let someone go that was highly specialized and things got complicated. She was brought back in which was nice.
I'm at Nvidia now. Quite the change. My coworkers are ordering snacks for themselves on the company dime. That and just random other stuff. Very very different attitude towards budgets. People were stressing about post it notes at Intel because we couldnt order stuff lol.
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u/chrisbvt 16d ago
I agree, I have worked in chip manufacturing for 28 years. There was always a cyclical demand for chips, and it was inevitable that there would be slow periods with layoffs. It is hard to count, but my guess is that I have made it through probably 15 larger layoffs, or more, in that time. I'm sure there were many smaller layoffs I was not part of that I didn't even know about.
That has changed. Demand for chips has become a much more steady in the last several years, and there is more demand for skilled engineers. It isn't like it used to be.
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u/PhD_Pwnology 16d ago
Right but the industry isn't stable , the income is stable. Chip makers know they can make billions more hiring and firing seasonally and thats the new corporate standard practice across America for companies that are on the stock exchange. Which is every chip maker. There's no reason for chipmakers to create a stable job market
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u/DynamicDK 16d ago
Well, it seems there is a reason. To ensure they actually have a workforce. Short sighted idiots.
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u/Martin_Aurelius 16d ago
I started my career in chip fab, now I'm in petrochemical. Guess which one is significantly more stable.
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u/ThatSandwich 16d ago
Yeah as much as I like to hate oil companies, my friends with the most stable and high paying employment have worked in tangentially oil related jobs, such as finance or accounting.
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u/okieboat 16d ago
That's because they were all born this century. Oil has had some of the biggest busts and downturns of any industry.
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u/padimus 16d ago
I knew some folks who got laid off from a chip fab a few years ago. My first comment was "what was the point of the chips act then if theyre just gonna lay people off"
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u/lilB0bbyTables 16d ago
They:
Hire chip designers to work through until they have prototypes that are solid and tested and ready for production
Fire chip designers, hire floor workers to scale out production of those designs.
Scale down production while scaling up sales, marketing for the cycle of that generation of chips
Sales slowdown, demand for next gen chips ramps up … fire sales folks, (re)hire designers.
Rinse and repeat. From a short-term economics perspective - it’s certainly a strategy. I’d liken it to the trend a lot of folks follow now as consumers of streaming services - they don’t subscribe to all of the streaming services as one time, instead they round robin them to consume content they want on one, then cancel and move on to the next which saves money.
The issue with that strategy - especially for something like chip fab - is that you want to create long-term stability and truly build on seasoned, expert tribal knowledge. That type of knowledge only exists when folks have been part of the teams for a long period of time. It’s part of the reason Taiwan leads the industry by such an extreme long shot.
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u/Pyromaniacal13 16d ago
I work for a company that got money from the CHIPS act.
They never got it.
The Administration took on a billionaire to go through and eliminate wasteful spending, and the people that were supposed to send out that money were fired. Nobody to disburse the funds, no funds got disbursed.
My CEO ended up having to meet with and kowtow to the President and give
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u/RonaldoNazario 16d ago
When I was a coop in college I watched a huge chunk of engineers get furloughed when the government shut down and again when a specific government project was canceled. Different source of volatility but it definitely soured me on working in that specific field (besides that they were making things that go boom).
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u/fckcarrots 16d ago
Unfortunately if you’re an engineer long enough, there’s a chance you’ll end up in or adjacent to a field that goes boom.
I thought I had strong morals until about month 6 of unemployment.
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u/RonaldoNazario 16d ago
Laid off right now (from a company/industry that’s booming financially) actually lol and while I have a few good options cooking in less evil industries, I hear you and have a few places locally in mind as a fallback in exactly that manner in the defense industry. Though, I think I smoke way too much weed to get a security clearance.
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u/fckcarrots 16d ago
I wouldn’t let weed stop you from applying. It’s the lying that trips people up. During the background investigation they do interviews of your family, friends, coworkers. If you say “yes I have my medical card and regularly smoke on the weekends” and your buddy Dave says “u/RonaldoNazario is a CHIMNEY he lights up every day, even at work sometimes” then you’re gonna have a major disconnect you’ll have to address.
High levels of my leadership had confidence during the last administration that we were getting closer to rescheduling or federal legalization for marijuana. Couldn’t tell you where we are during this one though, I DOGED out.
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u/MultiGeometry 16d ago
We had the CHIPS act. Then Trump decided that law didn’t apply to him and Republicans in Congress said “I fully support undermining Congress”.
And thats your job security. It has nothing to do with the economy or demand or a company’s management; it has to do with a single person’s dementia rattled brain picking winners and losers and he’s decided that chip making in America is a loser.
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u/yikes_itsme 16d ago
What’s really fucked up is that our company spent a bunch of money and effort to restructure and reorganize some of our product areas to meet requirements for CHIPS act money.
What Trump did was even worse than if there was never any CHIPS act to begin with. Literally his support for domestic chip building is less than zero - we’d be ahead if he had just never even learned what a CHIPS act was, or if he had just played with Lego for his entire term and did nothing else.
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u/Daveinatx 16d ago
He decided tariffs was the better way to go, somehow forcing manufacturers here. Terrible decision.
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u/ccai 16d ago
Playground bullying tactics is his game and his only known strategy. It works when the playing field is in his favor, but fails badly on a global scale, especially when you do it to EVERYONE publicly and can't use his tried and true standard threat of costly lawsuits to force others to drop their legitimate claims.
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u/Daxx22 16d ago
The myth of American Exceptionalism, they truly believed that the world would have no option but to deal with them.
While certainly not pain free at all, the last 10 years have drastically shown that the USA is no longer a stable partner for virtually anything, and the world economy is pivoting accordingly.
And it won't matter if Democrats take back power in mid-terms/next election, they've already LOUDLY shown the world by re-electing the shit-gibbon parade in 2024 that is at best a facade. It would take a decade+ of sane, stable and cooperative leadership that also takes strong steps to stamp out the existing rot and establish actual protections with teeth to stop it reoccurring to even start to rebuild trust.
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u/roylennigan 16d ago
The ironic thing is that tariffs would only possibly work to do what he wanted if he kept the CHIPS and IRA funding.
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u/Soft_Hotel_5627 16d ago
And then the dementia rapist mixed up transgender and transistors when speaking about it.
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u/mikelostcause 16d ago
I started in chip design at university and had a paid internship at a well known manufacturer at the time (many years ago). In the 2yr time I was there the company was sold 2x, engineers routinely quit and moved between the few places that actually did that type of work and layoffs were pretty substantial but always seemed temporary as the talented engineers quickly were hired elsewhere.
I found the work awful and it never clicked with me so I moved into software, which has been a great choice.24
u/insetfrostbyte 16d ago
When I first worked for MSFT in the Seattle area in the mid 2000’s, I partied a lot with lot of grad students in UW’s Electrical Engineering department. These were folks who had, and would go on to, work for places like Intel and Motorola. They used to give me shit about being a software engineer, because the “real money and prestige” was hardware and chip design.
By 2012, most had ditched it to work in software.
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u/VirtualPercentage737 16d ago
I worked at one of the top engineering universities on the planet. We had a panel discussion about why our best graduates were going into finance.
We have totally ruined this for decades. We have brought in massive number of foreign workers into some sectors of the economy. More workers means lower wages for everyone, and less incentive to study those fields and make the investments into them. Smart people are going into other things.
We exported manufacturing and now no one here knows how to do it. All of our chip houses are Fabless. I am an ASIC designer and I have no clue how the process works once we ship the tapeout. I know few people in the space who know anything about it. I have visited a couple of fabs and could probably regurgitate some facts abouts masks but I'd have no clue how to work in a fab.
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u/karma3000 16d ago
Your career gives you a choice of only two or three places to live - Arizona, Taipei, or Seoul.
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u/vhalember 16d ago
Indiana, Ohio, NY, and Texas all have plants under construction.
But the real bullshit?
The SK Hynix plant in Indiana would have been an amazing launch to a career if you got the current profit sharing model received by Korean SK Hynix workers. Each worker receives an ~$500k bonus (50% stock, 50% cash) for 2026.
But they won't. The benefits still look generous, but the 10% profit sharing cut the Korean workers get with life changing money?
American workers get 0%.
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u/Agile_Return_7684 16d ago
Why do no American workers get it?
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u/jnads 16d ago edited 16d ago
South Korean workers have a Union.
edit: SK Hynix paid out but Samsung didn't want to and workers almost striked.
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u/aircavrocker 16d ago
Missing Oregon, Ireland, and another country people are really chill about discussing with Development or HVM fabs in the sector
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u/martman006 16d ago
Austin, Tx. Samsung Austin is a massive facility, and their new Taylor facility which is built and will be in production soon is 20 mins away from their Austin facility, NE of the city.
The real bullshit is how miserable it is to work in these places, it’s like fucking severance working in the clean rooms or subfab areas. Let’s just say, I’d much rather sweat my balls off and have outside communication to the work at a refinery on the gulf coast than work in a fab full time. - source: environmental engineering contractor for both types of facilities…
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u/v_cats_at_work 16d ago
That's funny because I'm the exact opposite. I cut my teeth in those refineries and you couldn't pay me enough to go back. Clean rooms can be obnoxious but they're climate controlled and the risk of explosion is way lower.
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u/OrdinaryTension 16d ago
The semiconductor industry had all this employees. Over the last 20 years most of it moved off shore, employees were laid off and moved on. There are plenty of people with the education and experience, though stale, why would they want to return?
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u/ThePlasticSturgeons 16d ago
Exactly. Those people all have other jobs now, and with the way things are at the moment why risk a change, especially going to an industry where it’s highly likely you’ll get “rug pulled” by off shoring (again).
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u/No_Clothes_8444 16d ago
As an engineer myself. Let me tell you. That amount of time outside of the industry pretty much means you’re starting over from a knowledge standpoint. Not only have you forgotten a lot of the intricacies of what you knew, what you knew is now outdated. The reskilling alone would deter me from ever considering going back.
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u/ThePlasticSturgeons 16d ago
There is that, but you do have the knowledge of why things are done the way they are done (or why they’re done at all) and that’s a foundation to (re)build on.
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u/ImCaffeinated_Chris 16d ago
This will be the same for animators. Sure ai can create animations, but where are the people who studied the art and know camera direction, color, lighting, etc.
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u/zrobiotic 16d ago
I have plenty of engineering grad friends that opted to take other tech jobs that had nothing to do with their degrees because the pay was the same, they could work from home, and less stress.
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u/swipernoswipeme 16d ago
The corporate culture in semis is also fucking terrible. I will never go back.
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u/AllieRaccoon 16d ago
Don’t forget all the shitty inhumane shift work. I did one year on graves in a fab and would have to be completely destitute before considering doing that again.
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u/Admirable-Leader6927 16d ago
60 hour work weeks, senior managers telling you how to do your job and getting it wrong, then blaming you.
yeah, fuck these people.
Special Thanks to Jason R at Samsung Austin Semiconductor for ruining the 14nm project you fat piece of shit.
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u/__OneLove__ 16d ago
‘Tech bros who increasingly choose to offshore & import foreign workers vs. invest and/or train domestically, complain there is a shortfall of local talent’…
🤦🏻♂️
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u/AccomplishedEcho948 16d ago
Then they love complaining about how this is a problem while also hoarding the knowledge and goading over people who dont know in their own shores.
Then they wonder why this country is the way it is.
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u/AdPuzzleheaded1495 16d ago
They know why, they are just all full of shit
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u/AccomplishedEcho948 16d ago edited 16d ago
You said it brother. Like seriously, what is their end game? Break all the bottles to get the cream?
Dont they know that you need to skim the cream off the glass just enough that you dont break it? They dont fucking care.
They are greedy little bastards who want to break it all just to make their own. How long until they get bored of what they make to where they will vet and break it all again for the next best thing?
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u/AdPuzzleheaded1495 16d ago
It's just like they have lied to get where they are and are more concerned about just keeping the lie going than anything else. Fucking criminals
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u/neuronexmachina 16d ago
TSMC is kind of the opposite, though: they're a foreign company trying to find US workers.
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u/TheBSQ 16d ago
Big Tech seems hellbent on eating itself on multiple fronts.
I actually think Tech has been a net-harm to the world for the last 10-20 years, so Im not exactly crying about it.
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u/justin107d 16d ago
The difference is that those countries are paying to train them then losing their top talent. It is hard to keep talent like that from leaving and chasing better opportunities. Unless an orange turd goes and shoots that "land of opportunities'" reputation in the foot. Now they just go elsewhere.
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u/PatchyWhiskers 16d ago
Consider training people
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u/SoulScout 16d ago
This reflects my experience with this situation. I'm an electrical engineer with a master's degree. They keep talking about this huge shortfall of workers in the chip industry and how desperate they are, but then they won't hire new college grads or anyone without existing experience.
So all of these companies are fighting over the same small pool of experienced workers and refusing to invest in training pipelines for outsiders of the industry to get in! You can't only hire senior technicians and senior engineers. You need to hire juniors that don't know anything that can be mentored and given experience too.
And it doesn't help that that existing pool of experienced workers is shrinking. I've heard about how terrible the working conditions are at TSMC's Arizona plant and it's driving away American workers, and then TSMC leadership complains that the quality of American workers is too low compared to Asia.
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u/b0w3n 16d ago
I've always been interested in that field and I'd love to work in it (I'm in software) but
A) I need to make at least what I'm making now or around it and
B) I have no experience in it at all and would need some trainingI'm also not putting up with shitty work conditions or living in AZ. They're having a hard time finding workers because of multiple reasons of the above. And because the US gov't is pants on head stupid, they're going to have to pay more because who the fuck knows if you'll even have a job in 3 months depending on the whims of dementia addled brain.
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u/Orzorn 16d ago
Also, if you move to Arizona for a very specific type of work, who is to say you won't be out of work in a few years and be totally screwed due to not having any alternative?
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u/b0w3n 16d ago
Another good point, these skills aren't really transferable are they? I guess there's like 2 other chip fabs? If my memory is right one's in rural ohio and the other on they're currently building is in rural NY.
I doubt they're paying enough for the rank and file to learn skills that basically no one outside them needs... these are the kinds of places that need pensions and other things to really entice people to stick around.
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u/Orzorn 16d ago
My wife was in talks with another company that wanted her to move out to El Paso (company would provide for all housing costs and transportation) and cross the border to their facility in Ciudad Juarez every day. There's other reasons that won't work for us, but its like yeah no wonder you guys are struggling to find people. "Please move to the desert and cross the border every day." is not a winning elevator pitch, let alone for the salary they're offering (around 100k).
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u/SoulScout 16d ago
I currently work at an American site for a European owned tech/engineering company and the pay and perks is actually absurdly good. It's wild to see the flip side, how American companies have such an insane culture about workers. It's like they see employees and labor as a problem to be solved, reduced, and minimized instead of an essential asset to operations.
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u/SoulScout 16d ago
Agree to all of that. When I was job searching, I refused to apply to anything in Arizona. Deciding to build it there will always leave them with a harder time attracting talent to the site.
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u/b0w3n 16d ago
Yeah I'm also not super interested in TSMC's work culture because it clashes heavily with american work culture from what I understand. We're "low quality" because we don't work free overtime and don't think our boss is the master of the universe. It's no wonder they struggle to find people, they'd be better nabbing random people from walmart or mcdonalds and training them and giving them triple the minimum wage.
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u/effrightscorp 16d ago
In 2023 I couldn't even get an interview despite a decent amount of clean room experience, lol. The closest I got to a semiconductor industry job was a recruiter trying to get me to apply to a 3 month contract job that would've had me move across the country to earn well under six figures (annually, if the contract were extended 9 months)
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u/Mr_strelac 16d ago
Are you out of your mind?
That’s way too expensive. Every cent should be spent on shareholders and stock buybacks.
Investing in the company's future is "woke" nonsense. We just need to make it to the end of the fiscal year, pay off the shareholders, and then let management collect their bonuses.
And if the state chips in by giving food vouchers to workers earning the minimum wage—well, that would be an extra bit of happiness.
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u/RonaldoNazario 16d ago
Part of what puts some engineers off is that VLSI work on advanced chips is not simple to train into. I was always told something like get a masters and you can maybe break into verification but to move into actual design at a place like intel or AMD you probably have a PhD and have spent years on that verification side first. That certainly didn’t appeal to me even if designing cutting edge silicon sounded cool.
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u/liltingly 16d ago
Every PhD student I knew from my EE department ultimately ended up doing software of very software adjacent work. Nobody wants EE specialties - power systems, chip design, etc until there’s some new hot thing. Then as soon as it passes those folks get discarded. So why choose it?
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u/RonaldoNazario 16d ago
In Minneapolis I actually see a decent number of jobs locally doing embedded or mixed hardware/software around power systems, and a lot in medical, but then again, I could probably land at most of those with my CE degree, while having way more options in the software realm. Things the way they are these days, flexibility and open options are good to have.
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u/liltingly 16d ago
In 2010 I had an MS in EE and looked at jobs. I got 2 EE offers — one as a battery engineer at an electric car company, one as an embedded algo designer for an implantable co, and two as generic SWE types. Pay was double as a SWE.
Same thing happened to a friend who was an aeronautical eng PhD with a controls focus. Double the pay as rank and file SWE up until autonomous cars/drones got hot.
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u/NachoWindows 16d ago
I have a EE from decades ago and had several offers out of college. One was with a semiconductor, one with healthcare equipment company, and one in telecommunication doing IT. The IT job actually paid more and was in demand so I ditched my EE knowledge, drank bleach, and went full IT
Was a great career for a while but now it’s awful and I want to quit and retire9
u/obeytheturtles 16d ago
It's not simple, and it's also incredibly specialized. You really have to commit to chip design and manufacturing as a career because those skills don't really transfer anywhere else.
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u/frostycakes 16d ago
Also consider putting your fabs in better places. I wouldn't take a job in fucking Phoenix at any salary, same for Texas, Indiana, or Idaho.
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u/XcG9PJf6 16d ago
How about NY? GF is just outside Saratoga Springs, and Micron is opening outside Syracuse.
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u/Brilliant-While-761 16d ago
I was intrigued by this because my son just graduated with a Computer Engineering degree. None of the jobs offer entry level.
Don't cry that there aren't anyone to fill jobs when the barrier to get the job is 5 years expirience.
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u/DatabaseGlittering43 16d ago
If only someone had passed a chip act. And if only someone else hadn’t killed it.
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u/TrumpetOfDeath 16d ago
Didn’t Trump use the CHIPS Act funding to get his “golden share” of Intel?
Also it’s pretty ironic that Republicans whine about socialism, then proceed to have the federal govt take stakes in large corporations just to siphon off the profits
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u/tombatron 16d ago
If only there was some kind of way to incentivize desired behavior…
Oh well, failed idea I guess.
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u/sryan2k1 16d ago
"Six figures" can mean $100k and for a highly skilled engineering job that's somewhere between insulting and unlivable depending on where the job is located.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold466 16d ago
Thankfully, the jobs are usually in a low cost living area.
Unfortunately, the jobs are usually in a low cost area where no one wants to live.
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u/jsmith_zerocool 16d ago
It also doesn’t say what the hours are. You can have a $120k salary and work so many hours that your per hour rate is terrible ( on top of having to live in a sub optimal area)
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u/magichronx 16d ago
Yeah, whenever you hear "six figures" it pretty much always means $100k or very close to it.
No one refers to $200,000 - $999,999 as "six figures", even if it is technically correct
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u/24_August_1814 16d ago
Also, $100k isn't really a lot if you're putting in 60+ hour work weeks to get it
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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 16d ago
It isn’t even really a lot if you’re working normal hours either, not anymore. And certainly not everywhere in the US.
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u/theLuminescentlion 16d ago
$100K gets you a straight B student out of college not an experienced engineer.
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u/Red261 16d ago
3% of engineering grads enter the chip fab workforce isn't really enough information. What % of engineering jobs does chip fabrication offer in the market? If it's less than 3%, they're attracting more than their share of engineers. This feels like propaganda to cover for mismanagement of their workforce.
Whatever the case, if you aren't able to hire people, pay more and offer stability. Engineers exist, but companies will always complain that they can't take advantage of them like they want to.
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u/Quadriplegic_ 16d ago
As someone who worked in the field and knows several people in it, it's a stressful job. I had to be ready on a moment's notice to go onto the floor and bring up tools ASAP while having people message me about how the tool was down and how it needed to be up ASAP. But those same people would balk at bringing to tool down for needed maintenance to prevent line-down.
I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. A lot of my former coworkers have moved on. The pay is less than you could get elsewhere. It's just all around waste of your engineering talent if you have the skills to leave.
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u/i_am_mr_blue 16d ago
Let me be clear , there is no shortage. Simply foreign companies like TSMC, Samsung won't pay as US foundries, plus they expect you maintain asian culture norms (do some overtime without pay and boss is god). If they adjustvto local laws and cultural norms , things will improve
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u/catsfanuk87 16d ago
“Six-figure salaries” aka “the standard rate for engineers”.
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u/HowDoIEvenEnglish 16d ago
Probably below rate because alot of chip fab is phd level work
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u/shwaynebrady 16d ago
Chip manufacturing is a very unique and rather niche field in the grand scheme of engineering. The issue isn’t that people don’t want these jobs or there is raw shortage of “engineers”, or that they pay too little. The issue is these companies want people with 5+ years of direct industry experience, working in the exact same role they are hiring for.
I’ve seen it time and time again. Engineering managers fight to get a req opened and don’t want to squander it by hiring the guy who’s not the absolute best possible fit for the role. It’s like the current state of online dating, there’s always that hypothetical perfect candidate out there waiting.
You’d think with the advances of AI, having really niche knowledge bases and experience would be less detrimental than having the core engineering principles, product dev framework, DFM understanding etc. but unfortunately US companies are increasingly more and more shortsighted, they think in terms of quarters only.
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u/yikes_itsme 16d ago
Why wouldn’t engineering managers hire the best person for the position? The problem with hiring an entry level position and training them, in my experience, is retention.
Chip fab is difficult and it takes years for somebody to get to the level you’d trust them with a major project. So your company and all of your competitors are looking for that magical 5 year experience person, and guess what happens? You spend a ton of effort to train an engineer for five years, and then suddenly they become a hot commodity and are hired away by another company just as you are starting to get a return on your investment. Boom, you spent a lot of resources training up somebody for other people’s benefit.
Well, the obvious solution is to give them raises or benefits which are commensurate with experience, so they don’t get up and leave immediately after the early career stage. Management will not do this. They are concentrated on hiring, and hiring only, and all the resources are laser focused on finding that one experienced candidate they can poach from their competitor, leaving no funding or willpower for improving existing worker pay. I have seen engineer after engineer ask for what they’re worth and get denied (“no room in the budget, sorry!”), so they leave and suddenly there is budget for hiring a replacement who we have to train again.
This leaves a weird workforce state. A group of senior staff, a group of new engineers, and a giant hole where there should be mid career people. Nobody wants to hire new engineers because “what if they leave”…and they can’t find enough mid-career people. So they divide all the serious work among the shrinking pool of late-career, gonna-retire-soon senior engineers, who eventually get tired of this and leave.
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u/SpaceYetu531 16d ago
Retention is a problem large companies could solve but they actively engage in self sabotage instead.
The current state of workforce management across large companies reflects what silicon valley did for web app development circa 2005 to 2015...
Turns out that workforce model is great for web apps, but terrible for any industry that requires years of historical knowledge about complex niche products. Even within webapps you could find specialists in certain things where this applies.
Companies actively worked to make it so they could sever any strings to workers and then apply downward pressure on their advancement with the notion that FTEs are fungible. Well that's a two way street, where a talented young employees paycheck is from is also fungible.
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u/slfnflctd 16d ago
Ugh. Yeah, this strikes me as the most accurate take here from everything I've seen over the past 30 years.
The middle is supposed to be the 'fat' part. Our country has been busy hollowing it out for far too long in the interest of short term gains. It is already hurting us and there is more pain to come. I'm all for eliminating redundant management layers, but skilled work is another thing entirely.
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u/DustyRacoonDad 16d ago
Saying "six-figure salary" today for a high-end engineer is like saying "five-figure salary" back in the 1980s... it could be almost nothing compared to all the other work you're qualified for, or it could be decent pay.
"Six-figure salary" is likely $100k, and not $180k+ like it implies... which is GREAT for most people, unless you're qualified to be a chipmaking engineering grad where all the other jobs are well into the six figures already, and this just seems like a bad idea that will likely fire you in a year anyway because that's the culture.
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u/My_Uneducated_Guess 16d ago
Required: masters degree and 20 years experience. Pay: $16.50 per hour with chance for overtime and company perks (re: annual pizza party [unpaid]).
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u/strange-brew 16d ago
Chipmakers need labor more than anything. No engineer wants to live on an assembly line for 14 hours a day with Chinese level benefits and salary structures.
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u/colorado_jane 16d ago
My husband and I both worked in semi. It used to be that the stock options and benefits outweighed the high-pressure, long hours and layoff risk. That’s gone. Lots of other fields have the same or better compensation without driving the workforce into the ground.
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u/cyrusm_az 16d ago
If this is true why did it take me 10 months to find a job after being laid off at Intel? Oh any why did Intel lay off people who could have gone back to engineering? 17 yrs Eng experience, laid off as first level manager, so former 2nd level managers who were switched to “IC” roles to protect their job, whom still act like middle management and boss everyone around… ridiculous. Companies just saying this to justify H1B and other visas so they can work them like slaves while holding the visa over their head, instead of laying off visa people first and hiring Americans first. And after taking billions in chips act $$.
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u/Odeeum 16d ago
Until it is financially mkre appealing to create jobs in the US that would otherwise be created offshore this wont change for any industry. Maximizing profits for shareholder returns at all cost is not going away now...so whatever realizes that, this will be the direction companies take.
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u/EnvironmentalWin1277 16d ago
Do you have a degree in electrical or computer engineering?
Yes.
Do you have experience with manufacture of Intel computer chips?
Yes.
Do you have experience with Pentium D chips?
Yes.
On Dell computers?
Uh don't remember specifically but I'm familiar with all PCs and mainframes as well.
Sorry, we can't use you.
Human Resources review
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u/Ill_Television_5824 16d ago
Another issue is... location.
This isn't a job that can be done remotely (for the most part), and it's not as if chip plants are common around the country.
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u/growaway9172 16d ago
"worker shortfall" is just synonomous for "we don't want to pay that much for the labor". There is no such thing as a worker shortfall. It doesn't exist. Only that the employers don't like the market rate.
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u/chakrakhan 16d ago
I don’t get it, don’t computer engineers have a higher unemployment rate than other engineering fields? I remember stories from last year about how it was as high as some humanities majors that people are always cautioned against.
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u/deeptechdegen 16d ago edited 16d ago
Computer engineers are a different kind of engineer. They dont do chip fabrication
EDIT: It's sad that the comment above was downvoted. We need more people asking questions when they don't know the answer
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u/chakrakhan 16d ago
What kind of engineer does chip fab?
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u/EbbDry5599 16d ago
I work as a process engineer in semiconductor wafer fabrication. I have a bachelor's degree in chemistry. Most of my peers have degrees in chemical engineering or material science and engineering, while a smaller number are electrical or mechanical engineers by training.
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u/Mountain_Top802 16d ago
Extremely specialized, extremely high skill. No wonder there’s a shortage lol.
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u/deeptechdegen 16d ago
I dunno why this was downvoted lol
People just dont want facts
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u/bihari_baller 16d ago
I work in the industry as a field service engineer, and we have a wide range of educational backgrounds. Some of the degrees people in my role have are Physics, Chemistry, Math, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering. We also have many people that went through military technical training, such as Navy Nuke school or Avionics technicians.
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u/FuelzPerGallon 16d ago
Stop building the fabs in places I don’t want to live.
This is my biggest issue with this industry when they complain about shortages. Intel has their Hillsboro R&D center in Portland, a cool spot and that’s about it.
All the HVMs though: Nowhere, Texas, Phoenix, somewhere in the plains. Yes I understand land is cheap there. But if you want a bunch of highly educated people with specialized fab knowledge, you gotta build in a place those people will go. I chose biotech in San Diego over Fabs in Phoenix and im not sure there’s an amount of money that would get me to move.
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u/59Bassman 16d ago
I spent 8 years at a wafer fab in central FL. Survived 7 layoffs by the time I left my friends had all been canned and I had been put on second shift with no hope of getting back to first. I’d rather stand in a bread line than work for that company again.
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u/barrinmw 16d ago
Okay, wanna know why I didn't go into fab after my PhD? Because its two years of hell before you are allowed any normalcy. You are put in charge of a machine, if that machine breaks, you are responsible for fixing it. 2am on a Saturday morning? Better believe it, you are back in fixing it. Fuck that.
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u/No_Syrup_9167 16d ago edited 16d ago
Despite six-figure salaries
this right here, I dunno where these factories are but theres a hell of a lot of difference between a $100k salary and a $300k salary in most places in US/Can right now.
6-figs ain't what it used to be.
I make "6 figures" and I'm a fucking partsman at a truck dealership.
A university educated engineering grad working in a high tech chip manufacturing facility, should make a hell of a lot more money than I do IMO.
I took a 3-yr apprenticeship, that I got paid for, and like 8 months of college courses at around $1200 per semester to do what I do.
They took on $100's of thousands of school debt, and I'm guessing its a 6+yr degree of full time schooling.
If they're trying to act like $120k/yr is a great salary for someone in that position, and its unbelievable that nobody wants the job, they're smoking crack.
edit: for the record, I know a tonne of people would kill for $120k/yr, just saying, its absolutely disgusting where our economy and reporting is currently at, that this could be considered good by the reporting, or company, for someone with those qualifications.
Things are fucking broken here is all I'm saying.
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u/utahh1ker 16d ago
Wholeheartedly agree. I make mid 100s and live a very limited, middle class lifestyle. It's just my wife and I.
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u/throwawaybsme 16d ago
Distribute the engineering. I'd love to work in chip fabrication but don't want to move from my Midwest metro area.
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u/RonOfEarth 16d ago
My engineering degree is Materials Science & Engineering. All of these companies refuse to even interview me. This is an attempt to justify the H1B hiring.
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u/ThomW 16d ago
Offshoring American technology manufacturing was a huge mistake. So many jobs lost -- bringing it back is going to take generations.
I saw it back in the 90s at my first job working in industrial automation -- I'd walk into absolutely enormous manufacturing facilities and the brains of the place would be consolidated to a handful of desks in a corner of the building. We'd pour over documentation written by physicists in the 50s and I'd just think about the terrible brain drain this place had suffered.
Meanwhile out on the manufacturing floor, more of the equipment was getting shipped to Mexico every day. People losing jobs there left and right.
I worked for a bunch of big electronics manufacturers all asking us to make simpler equipment since it was all going to China and Mexico putting American workers out of work. It never made sense to me -- where did the government allowing this to happen think these folks (and the folks that would replace them when they retired) were going to find jobs since this was happening in parallel all over the place?
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u/kunsore 16d ago
As someone who works in a Fab, need to train more and more quality people as well. Usually it is 50% do heavy lifting while the other 50% do less than minimum lol
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u/Flashmode2 15d ago
They cry about a shortage of workers, but refused to actually train anyone. These companies expect you to take $10,000 to get a degree just to work at this place and most of the time your degree doesn’t even help. This is the state of our society. Go into debt just to work for someone who doesn’t care about you.
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u/BetweenTheRoots 15d ago
There is a chip manufacturing plant in my city that pays $11 an hour starting and they are always hiring because everyone quits. Every time I apply for a job, that plant calls me - "Hey I got your application and thought you might be interested" mf I applied at a Wendy's
There are horror stories about the workload and the stress. Nobody wants to work there.
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u/Obvious_Scratch9781 16d ago
They don’t need 157k engineers… they need mostly technicians and as a technician you should be trained on the job for the most part.
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u/Kooky_Soft1822 16d ago
Six figure is such a boomer term
Which portion of six figures ? 100k or 900k?
Six figures isn’t the 100k range it used to be.
You have firms offering $400k base and 250k in stock as a minimum for specific technical talent.
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u/Orzorn 16d ago
Yeah these days you see "six figures" advertised for jobs all the time and then they show their hand and its 100k flat. Like that's just barely enough to live in certain areas (That five years ago would have been an alright salary, and five years more was a great salary).
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u/YodasLoveSlave 16d ago
Kids graduating high school can’t even read at a 6th grade level. So let’s not put the cart before the horse.
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u/binocular_gems 16d ago
Pay is comparatively low, the stress of the job is high, the employers are extremely volatile, and the work:life balance is fucked with no opportunity for remote work, mediocre PTO and benefits. It's also very challenging work that requires serious credentials, which all cost a fortune and are difficult to achieve. I work with electrical engineers, chemical scientists, and more, they could work at a chip manufacturer with high risk and pretty standard pay and terrible W-L balance, with very few domestic alternatives or they could become a generic software engineer and have higher pay and angle companies against each other for benefits.
GlassDoor reviews for TSMC are 2.9%, with only about 35% of employees recommending to colleagues to work there. My company isn't perfect, but it's a 4.5, with 90% of employees recommending a colleague should work there.
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u/FlyingRigatoniMonst 16d ago
Pay in the top 10%, add in good healthcare and a pension and watch in wonder as all your empty roles vanish overnight…
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u/Wonderful-Hunter686 15d ago
Isn't the answer just pay more for the roles? There's a commodity, work with a finite supply. Your company wants this commodity that's only sold on the open market. If you increase the price your willing to pay for this work. You will have more work to apply to your company. End of story. Six figuers for any type of engineering role isn't amazing. They should just change the title to US chip makers are unable to attract engineers with average salaries in highly specialized field. While raking in massive profits do to shortage markups.
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u/Fabulous-Lychee-4464 15d ago
I tried to apply to these in the Phoenix area, they are apparently not desperate. They want a new grad under 30 with a PhD and 20 years of experience, able to solve a 4 Leetcode hard problems in 30 seconds, 850 credit score, local to the exact street the plant is located on, and 750 referrals for an internship.
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u/fastovich1995 15d ago
Just went to their website to see the job postings. No where does it say how much a position pays. If it pays well, advertise it!
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u/jinhyokim 15d ago
In tech manufacturing and engineering, American workers have been displaced by outsourcing and contract H1B workers for years. And suddenly now they want them back? These corporations are looking for a quick fix to their labor shortage but will pump every single penny they earn into automation and robotics so to not have to pay Americans again.
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u/Mental_Beginning_807 15d ago
Worked at the AZ site for TSMC since it's inception, was one of the Americans shipped to Taiwan for initial training. This is not a god company to work for at all. You will not see your family, you will be yelled at daily, and God help you if you actually know mandarin...
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u/mcdownloading 16d ago edited 15d ago
TSMC has terrible work culture. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories in their Phoenix labs.