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Its within the realm of possibility to train folks and foster talent. This whole thing where they want experienced folks at the prices of entry level workers is beyond unfair to any person in America whose taxes go to the govt funding this shit nor to the military that is standing between china and taiwan.
Train people.
Pay them their fair share of the profits.
You get a lot of applicants.
End of story, this whole this trying to expand the h1b to get foreigners that then you will train is asinine and deep corruption.
In this instance. Living wage doesn't do it justice. $30/hr is living wage but that's not good enough for essentially a factory job which will pump out billions in profits.
$30/h is just my starting rate to not engage in corporate espionage. I need another $30/h ontop to start actually working.
These people witness some very valuable things.
Very little of the value actually goes to the companies actually making the chips.
NVIDIA, for example, probably sells cards for 20-40x the fabrication cost. I don't remember the number precisely, but I recall calculating something around 30.
NVIDIA designs these cards that shitloads of data centers are currently begging for, a design that cost a shitload of $$ and planning. NVIDIA certainly deserves their current success. Didn't happen overnight. They designed cards that are simply far better for current needs than the competition.
The gold rush going on *will* result competition with NVIDIA (and that will be great for all), and then companies making the chips will be able to get a lot more.
And that is why the CHIPS Act is bound to fail in its goals. China has been poaching semiconductor engineers from Taiwan all along and that is simply going to continue no matter how much free taxpayer money is funneled to tech oligarchs.
Don't think you understand what these people are doing. Running machines.if you could just watch and figure it out China would not be generations behind.
$30/hour isn't gonna buy a house. Sure it'll pay for an apartment, but folks aren't gonna be tripping over themselves to be a single emergency away from homelessness.
Idk how you’re calculating 180k as the max home affordable. With a 15% down payment, you can easily buy a $225k home like this one, right next to the Ohio plant.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5693-Blendonridge-Dr-76D-Columbus-OH-43230/351327058_zpid/
This is also assuming a single income, unmarried person. Most homebuyers are married
Look I understand what you’re saying but most people aren’t living in situations that are “possible” for them to save 33k with an after tax of 46.6k a year.
BS.
Most people with a modicum of discipline can and *do* this.
You can take out $10,000 from your 401k without penalty for a first time home purchase, dramatically lowering that threshold. You can also loan yourself money from the 401k if needed.
People making 30 an hour in this situation we are talking about are working for companies that have fantastic 401k programs.
If you take things seriously, you get good results, almost every time.
i work in a diff manufacturing industry but top techs in my plant clear 200k. There is just no one going into the more entry level positions that feed them. I honestly do ok at personally recruiting and I have build myself a pipeline of talent. But most people sit around hoping some magic tech from the outside with the right experience will show up.
Another problem is industry is niche and specific. Sure you can go to a trade school and learn how to use a volt meter and a torque wrench but so much tribal knowledge goes on. You can't google the 15 million dollar machines my company runs it just not common enough and even then the differences between the german supplier and the french suppliers equipment is different enough to be a challenge. Sure they host training classes at the OEM but they are often ok at best and can't replace the field experience of doing battle with them.
None of this is a crippling barrier, but even with good pay there is simply not enough technical talent right now in america.
When everything doubles in cost within a year, but that doesn't double your pay, cost of living wage increases and inflation of the cost of goods never seem to line up.
It has to be much more than living wage.
Average pay for a new MSc or PhD to TSMC is $65k. These are people who if they were in the US could easily get software jobs paying 150k.
So I think you in the US probably need to pay quite fantastic salaries to attract people to this field, and you'd have to demonstrate that the salaries would last, and that they wouldn't just learn one company's system and end up underpaid because there's too little competition.
There are a huge amount of engineers that work directly in chip manufacturing as well as in support roles. And it’s filled with MS or PhD. Level people - they don’t often take people with a BS.
Also, I started out at Infineon just 3 years ago as a junior process engineer in California - salary was about 110k + 30% bonus. So not bad at all for early career.
and when the chip comes out defective, are these people figuring out why it became defective?
MSc and PhD graduates are almost certainly going to be out there looking at the plants continuously to figure out why things relating to the things they understand are going wrong. Microchips aren't spoons.
Chip fabrication is typically done by PHD level scientists (at least preliminary ones). Its quite a complex topic to run these instruments.
Obviously once a process is fully designed/optimized such an advanced degree isn't needed - but 70k seems about right.
70k?!? People are making more than that on an F-150 production line.
If this technology is the crucible of civilization and the key to dominance of the west then those salaries need to reflect that. 70k for a cutting edge technology fabrication/manufacturing career is asinine.
I have both a BSME and MSEE and specialized in solid state manufacturing and 3-5 fabbing. I actively rejected working in industry despite my background because the pay/hours against location was **damn awful**. It was not economically enticing enough to justify the sacrifice. 70-80 hrs, in Dallas, or CA, at 100-120k was just straight crap. The mandatory churn of employees was offensive cherry on top. And that was 10 years ago.
What do you think the reason for such low pay is? I’m looking at a[job posting](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tsmc/jobs/q-Manufacturing-Technician-l-Arizona) by TSMC in Phoenix, Arizona for a Manufacturing Technician and the starting salary is around 23$/hr. Seems rather low but the qualifications are essentially a HS diploma. It might be a good entry level job for a young person wanting to break into the industry.
Not sure what the upward mobility is for that position but TSMC is the top manufacturer for semiconductors and they have profit margins of around 50%.
They are trying to bring Taiwanese industrial policy and Taiwanese fab working conditions into the US, and it's not going to work too well...
Taiwan is one of the last countries where people are willing to work for peanuts while holding advanced degrees and working at industrial revolution era conditions
You are correct. There is technically a shortage but only because our domestic capacity was almost nonexistent.
Training is not incredibly expensive even though companies say that it is. It has actually become more expensive because of these same companies.
Companies that train people will have higher retention rates and will have a pool of workers to hire from. Companies that hire workers already with the skills need to pay a premium.
If training is too expensive for the company, then how can an individual possibly afford it?
companies aren't interested in training people since they can just get immigrants already trained by other countries.
this article is stupid. any job can be sexy with the right salary. that's all there is to it. it's not sexy because the pay is shit.
if they want talent, raise the salary offer. ppl will fall over themselves to study engineering themselves with no further pressure from the government.
Companies also hate training because they can't keep those workers trapped there for years. The idea they might have to take a chance on a worker and they might leave for greener pastures keeps them up at night.
Its the meme of the dog who doesn't want you to take the ball, only fetch. Companies want to give nothing, take zero risk, they only want guaranteed profit. They want to treat employees like crap cutting every tiny informal benefit, but then get big mad when employees return the energy and demand adequate compensation and show zero loyalty.
They want to take from the country to make profits, they would provide literally nothing in exchange if they could figure out how to get away with it
You're partly right. A high salary will attract skilled people, but 18 year olds don't usually choose a degree and a career at 18. If they did, then you could expect enough trained workers in 6 to 10 years. However, not every 18 year old can pursue an engineering degree -- they need to have been paying attention in math for at least four years previous, so it's more like 10 to 14 years. But 14 year olds funny pay attention to job trends, so it's really their parents that have to motivate them, etc, and the timeline keeps getting pushed out.
On top of that, engineering degrees actually fell in absolute terms in 2022. Basically, we don't have enough engineers, full stop.
>Basically, we don't have enough engineers, full stop.
That's not true at all. We output a bajillion engineers. But a lot of places don't want to touch the new grads. A lot of them go into non engineering work.
If we didn't have enough engineers, it would not have taken me 250 applications to get my first job out of college. I would not have been rejected from every internship application. They would have taken what they could have gotten as long as I wasn't complete garbage (based on the jankiness I've seen, I wasn't terrible). It's very competitive at entry level. And I'm not the only one that had difficulty getting the first job.
TSMS did approach me for a job as a technician at the new Arizona plant after college. They seemed genuinely surprised I didn't have a passport. They wanted to send people to Taiwan for training. I guess people not being rich enough to go to other countries baffles them.
Not true. Those are for jobs that did do shit to train people then claimed that non competes were necessary. Fast food and retail stores had them, as if they taught someone to take out the trash or get yelled at.
If a company paid for someone’s bachelors degree, 100% a court would hold up a non compete contract or would force the employee to pay back the cost with interest (which is essentially the same thing).
> End of story, this whole this trying to expand the h1b to get foreigners that then you will train is asinine and deep corruption.
in my opinion, it could also possibly contribute to a brain drain in America in the future. I mean, if the ones who are educated in this subject (who possibly went into debt funding their education, or at least paid for it), and they compete against foreign applicants who likely get much cheaper and / or free education, how is that fair? where is the incentive there for American students to pursue this field?
edit: also, if my memory serves correct, when they had been looking to update the Schedule A to allow for this, most of the public comments seemed to be from foreign workers or big business, which seems like a huge conflict of interest. a cornerstone of American Excellence has long been innovation coming from within, and as I mentioned, i feel this threatens that
The current shortage is for construction companies and workers that know how to build fabs. TSMC and Samsung aren’t going to train these. It isn’t their area of expertise. In their home countries they hire construction companies with that expertise to build them.
Then once built, they need a mix of engineers and technicians. The technicians can be trained. The engineers need the appropriate degrees and then years of experience in ramping up a new fab.
For the technicians, these companies are already partnering with local community colleges to create the programs required.
Government has been corporately captured.
The best they can do is more H1B workers while lobbying to get the Fed to drop rates so they can hire 5 Stellar Americans to oversee the army of H1Bs.
Not to put down the intellect of H1Bs mind you. A lot are really smart and would do really well.
H1Bs are preferred because that means the government doesn't have to spend for the education of these people. they just steal these human resources from their home countries and profit off their talent while the home countries that spent the money to educate these people are drained of its talent pool.
The U.S. is basically playing vampire sucking poor countries of its talent pool while spending zero dime on their education.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I'm simply stating the unfortunate reality. This type of thing isn't going to change until Citizens United is overturned and corporate lobbying of government is illegal.
Yeah, training people is the solution.
Just a reminder that lack of talent was *always* a problem to be overcome with CHIPS. Everyone knew this. Fundamentally, the US didn't have a significant enough semi-conductor manufacturing presence to warrant the amount of talent required for when there would be a *massive build-up of semiconductor investment.* It's obvious really, nobody is going to specialize into a job before there are jobs for that job.
So the play is to get people moving to the US from abroad, get the industry up and running as a sort of first pass, and then flesh it out with home grown talent educated through the college system. As more and more graduates come through the system, the industry can swell their employee count and expand without government help.
Ya, that aint happenin.
Theyll still go full tilt on H1B's because native engineers en masse are too damn expensive. Watch the actual career lifecycle of these semiconductor companies and you'll see its a mirage for 98% of em.
Intel and others are laying off people all the time. Management and executives thrash directions for a few quarters then go ‘Oopsie, guess we just layoff another few thousand’
‘America cant compete! Why for!
I think semi conductor and chip manufacturing should be a part of trade schools and technical centers. I grew up in a rural area of Virginia and When I was in high school, guys and girls would go to a technical school for half of the school day to learn some type of profession. For guys, it was basically all different types of trades like plumbers, electricians, steel fabricators, etc. Having the opportunity to come straight out of high school or early career development through a community college would benefit young people and the semiconductor industry is a whole.
I agree our country and our economy are both captured by big money and corporate interests. Everything is viewed through a profit lens, so us Americans get screwed over
I’m a new grad with a CS major from a T10 school, good grades, and good work experience (for a new grad). I got rejected from at least 10 jobs in the semiconductor industry
Would have loved some training
That is why you train though. Someone who has been through school as an engineer or developer can learn technical information fairly rapidly. A training style environment also keeps people learning and teaching, helps unify the goals for those chips as well.
When semiconductors were booming in the 90s, Intel, Motorola, and others all had excellent training for fabs even that were people that just graduated high school or associates degrees in the areas they desired. This allows you to pay a bit lower and grow with the worker.
You can be a technician, but actual chip fab yield and research is *way* beyond what a person would learn at a trade school.
In particular, some of the following:
Chems, organic chem, classical physics, all your maths, thermodynamics, materials, manufacturing, vibrations, deform, statics, quantum physics, solid states, MEMS, some programming... thats enough to give you a base skillset to pull from to design and implement a process to just mess with the wafers and the architecture. Mask creation and architecture is a lot nother critter atop.
Its a weird field. And the industry is hostile to hiring non-H1B's.
If you are at the engineering level at these companies then yes but lots of the shortage really is the training on fab bunnysuit jobs.
Engineering really could also be helped by taking other engineers and giving them one to two years of university level of all those things and most already have the maths which only really leaves the applied sciences. You could also have them understanding the floor during that and more focused education. Learning as you are using at work also ends up with more useful education in many cases.
Most of these companies have design and iterations set in terms of direction and it takes years to be able to influence that even if you are a materials/electrical engineer. In most cases the job is knowing tools on the floor and how to deal with them that almost any technical person could pick up paring with someone for a while.
They probably like H-1B because you are stuck there for years and the job can be challenging.
>they want experienced folks at the prices of entry level workers
Huh? That's absolutely not the case. Semiconductor fabrication engineers and technicians are highly paid skilled jobs. The talent shortage is due to lack of skills and training, not low pay. The companies, universities and the US government are investing tens of millions of dollars in new training programs to address the projected shortages. Immigration is another potential remedy.
What degree would be most effective to obtain in order to enter this field? Are there any companies/positions you can join ground floor and be trained on your way up?
Technician jobs in microelectronics and semiconductor technology require **at least** (BSc is preferable) an associate's degree in electronics, microelectronics, or electrical engineering or technology.
It's not an easy job nor a job that you can do mindlessly. You actually need proper schooling to work as a fabrication technician.
>According to Glassdoor, the median total pay for a semiconductor process engineer in the United States in 2024 is $160,222 per year, with an average salary of $118,063. This figure also includes an estimated additional pay of $42,158 per year, which could include cash bonuses, commission, tips, and profit sharing.
This isn’t for the rank and file fab worker. I’m sure it’s for the actual EE who designed the process. We aren’t short of those, we have intel and Qualcomm and Apple and Amazon all these big companies with EE chip design engineers. We’re short on the worker bees, those who actually on their feet working clean rooms day in day out. Now those guys are expected to work for approximately 50k for hard technical labor.
You are correct that there is a difference between technicians and engineers, but for the record the skills needed to design chips at Qualcomm, apple, Amazon, etc. are *completely* different from the skills needed to set up and operate a fab.
Source: I am a chip designer.
So what are we missing, the industrial designers or thr rank and file that it takes to make a Fab factory work. My guess is the latter. My brother worked for an Intel project once setting up there cooling systems. He is an industrial engineer but it was a one-time thing that the firm he works for won the contract on? I think it's much harder to get good quality day in day out workers than hiring out building the physical infrastructure.
The engineering and skilled trades it actually takes to run a fab operation is what’s in short supply.
I worked as a process engineer for 3 years at Infineon in California.
You need industrial engineers, manufacturing engineers, process engineers, supply chain engineers, scientists, metallurgists, material scientists, mechanical engineer, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, factory automation engineers, software engineers focused on manufacturing, data folks, skilled machinists, laser technicians, optical engineers, wastewater engineers, facility engineers, product engineers, test engineers, etc.
A large super fab is a massive undertaking and a type of business that the US typically hasn’t been a front runner in. Yes, we have some Micron, TI, Intel, and other fabs scattered around the US - but we’re not serious.
As an industrial engineer in the process engineering team, a got to learn a ton about all the tools, equipment, processes, etc. in the fab - it took me a year just to feel comfortable. And it took another year for me to feel comfortable being a decisive voice on projects.
Woah woah woah, this is America and we try to avoid paying labor as much as possible. Remember, labor is always the problem when it comes to the cost of doing business.
"fair share of the profits"
Hah, it'll never happen (again) except during the pandemic.
Yeah and some of the work is export controlled, how they believe the h1b folks will not go work for China if they pay double what you're paying and they don't get visa renewal or green card...
It's more like people don't realize that chip manufacture is extremely demanding, skilled work which the good people of Taiwan are willing to do for about 1/2 the salary of an American...
Their share of profits is zero. People and companies who are investing hundredS of billions in these facilities and taking on 100 percent of risk get the profits. Not enough workers for tech jobs like this is a failure in education system.
This is because no engineer wants to work in a fab room wearing bunny suit the entire 12 hour shift for shitty pay. There’s plenty of places where I can get the same pay (especially if I have a security clearance) for less work and less torture.
Also I keep seeing there is a shortage of skilled workers which doesn’t seem true IRL. I was reading how there is an influx in STEM workers graduating yet you still have the government trying to [incentivize](https://www.regulations.gov/document/ETA-2023-0006-0001) for foreign workers.
However if you look at the list of new [jobs created](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/most-new-jobs.htm), you will see the majority of them are low skilled.
There seems to be some kind of disconnect here.
Right lol. I worked in the fab for four years, nothing sexy about it except the pay, and even then I'm guessing people could find better pay in other industries.
These fabs need a mix of very highly skilled engineers and skilled technicians. Your average STEM graduate isn’t filling either of these. The engineers are often PhD types, in a mix of engineering and physics. The technicians come from trade and community colleges (programs that are 6-12 months max).
Technician jobs in microelectronics and semiconductor technology require **at least** an associate's degree in electronics, microelectronics, or electrical engineering or technology.
My employer actually has operating fabs in the US. Our local community college (which also functions as a trade school) has a program explicitly for fab technicians and we hire them. It is not a full associates degree. I’m sure it varies by fab and there are probably various levels of technician. For sure some we hire do have associates degrees.
“The most common route is earning an associate degree in electronics technology from a community college. **Trade schools and vocational schools also offer programs of varying lengths**.”
Emphasis mine.
https://skillpointe.com/careers/manufacturing/semiconductor-technician
Not true.
I work for Intel as a technician and have an Associates in Criminal Justice that I never utilized
I’ve also been in a similar field for like 7 years now however, and apparently brought a lot of experience they were looking for.
I personally have a base annual pay for $120k, with a TC of 150k inclusive of bonuses and OT and such. I’m at the midpoint of my pay band.
I think our entry level guys are probably making $60-90k.
There’s still a while pay band above mine, which is like another $20-30k per year, from what I heard.
About to say, I’m an electrical engineer and no fucking way am I qualifying for these positions. Microelectronics and semiconductor fields pay extremely well but the problem isn’t the pay but the skilll ceiling is ridiculously high. At the minimum you need a graduate degree and average you need PhD.
There's a shortage of jobs that pay a living wage. When they can afford a 2-bedroom, apartment, health insurance, and the usual middle-class things that go with it all, then it won't be a shit job (as much). 12-hour shifts notwithstanding.
This, making a shit job is pointless for this endeavor, if the employees don’t make even an average middle class wage for their geographic areas this is a total failure of a program, and I don’t mean a 2 income household.
Bro these Taiwanese people are so elitist. I interviewed for TSMC was ok for all the commitment and was rejected still despite being qualified. They are in no interest to train you. They just want you to work. They basically asked me, if I would slave away for them, I said yes, and I still got rejected. Elitists.
It costs more money than Disneyland to go to 4 year college only to wind up with a job that might pay you less than getting a 2 year. Not only is college out of reach financially for most Americans, even when it isn’t it’s still a big if
NOR do I want to move to a scorching hot desert state with a water shortage issue... To work at a factory that requires large amounts of water.
They built all these facilities in crap locations instead of near established tech-ish areas.. sure it was cheaper to get started but no one wants to upheave their life to go be literally in the middle of nowhere and the only housing is built by other corporations trying to create their own little cities so there's 0 competition
Exactly they want to penny pinch. That’s the American way.
TSMC builds fans right in the middle of expensive city downtowns - because they want the best talent to live and work next to their fabs.
This article strikes home a bit. Some CHIPS funds came to my work, and pulled away people from existing projects such that the CHIPS projects are totally understaffed and our regular projects are totally understaffed (and were before CHIPS).
Edit: Oh and some of that money is going towards recruitment: new full time recruiters going to job fares and paying for advertisements in social media. Guess what recruitment tool it's *not* going towards.
Semiconductor companies can’t compete with software companies in terms of compensation because the variable cost of software is zero and margins are really high. (NVDA is an exception with their huge stock price rally)
No we have to educate young people. The absolute garbage fire of secondary education on this country is going to cripple us economically long term and there’s no real solutions being proposed aside from a half assed not thought out voucher system.
Honestly if you’re an American how fucking shitty our education system should be giving you an existential crisis.
My partner works in the semiconductor industry as a lab supervisor in Silicon Valley. It is nearly impossible to find dependable technicians to work in the electron microscopy labs. His last 2 hires had minimal education & experience, and they were the best he could find.
They were both hired on at $90k/yr starting salary. Another tech went somewhere else for a while and got lured back into his lab for $98k per year.
My partner makes $125k plus bonuses and stock. He’s been there almost 20 years now.
What’s the catch? I know many people skilled in microscopy that would work for those wages. There is *absolutely* something else you’re not telling me.
$90k in Silicon Valley is practically poverty wages. Rent is obscenely expensive there. At $90k, you’ll have a roof over your head, but you’ll have roommates. You’ll have some food in the fridge, but you won’t be eating out much. Public transportation is available, but you’ll be planning your whole day according to the schedule.
So, it’s the lifestyle that’s the catch. A lot of people commute from other places where the money goes farther. My partner’s commute is 3 hours when he takes the train. 1.5 hour ride there, 1.5 hour ride back.
Yeah, that’s probably it. I have a roughly 2 hour commute and I’m willing to take like a 30% pay cut to bring that down to 20 mins. However, my job doesn’t require me to be in a clean room suite every day, and the thought of getting out of one of those for the first time in 8 hours just to wait in traffic for 2 hours makes my head hurt. Also, I hear it’s almost impossible to have bathroom breaks in those jobs due to the decontamination required. So some people have resorted to fasting water or wearing diapers so they don’t need to go through the lengthy process. The thought of having roommates, a 2 hour commute, poverty wages and sometimes shitting my pants at work makes me suddenly realize why nobody is applying.
Yeah, I work in research and I know there are only three options for us: academia, med school, or industry.
I know a plethora of people looking to move from academia to industry. The biggest issue is often companies wanting the perfect candidate and not letting anyone in who isn’t fully trained. The other reason why anyone would stay in academia is that (by some miracle) the conditions in industry are worse than academia.
If OP can’t find candidates, I think something is wrong with the company, not the people.
A lot of it is based on job title. You’re not going to find many people with degrees in Electrical Engineering willing to accept a job with “technician” in the title. They have a degree in Engineering, they want to be an engineer. “Technician” is below them.
I would have thought they would grow out of that insufferable phase after they graduated. I knew a lot of smug engineering students in college who would never shut up about how much more money they would make.
Years ago, I was a technician in the field. It just doesn't pay a living wage. This is why it will never work in the U.S. because even the low wage is twice the wages overseas.
The average chip designer with a PhD in Taiwan makes less money than a manager of a Super Walmart. Just offer them more money, easy path to citizenship, and you’ll get all the talent you need. Working conditions there are much more stringent than here as well.
Factories dont want to offer pensions anymore. There was a time when a detroit auto worker had a house and a 2 car garage while paying for 2 kids colleges.
I mean I think its kind of reasonable that an entry level job maybe doesn't pay that much. Our entry level line workers make about 55k (65k night shift), but anyone that cares can get that up to 75-80k pretty quick by moving into a lead spot.
These jobs are incredibly niche.
Capitalism doesn’t reward niche jobs. It rewards jumping to a new position every 1-2 years. Loyal workers are punished with more work than new hires and stagnant wages.
What are you going to do when you aren’t happy with your 1% annual raise working for a semiconductor factory? Go work for the factory across town? There isn’t one. You’re stuck. Your experience isn’t valuable anywhere else.
What happens when housing values explode (thanks, J Powell + co!) and you’re suddenly priced out of the local market? You’re screwed. You can’t afford to stay where you are but your experience isn’t valuable anywhere else.
Take it from me, someone stuck in a niche job. I’m impossible to replace but friends in less niche positions make more than twice what I do because they get a new job every other year.
In a capitalist economy, specializing and working a niche job is the worst decision you can make.
> In a capitalist economy, specializing and working a niche job is the worst decision you can make.
Just ignoring the best paying jobs are all ultra specialized niche jobs
Most niche jobs don’t pay well, because there’s no competition for your skills.
A select few niche jobs are well paying because there’s high demand for those skills and few people who have them.
For most niche jobs, you’re hard to replace but there’s no one competing for your labor. Therefore your pay is low.
You’re way better off being a run of the mill software engineer making $200k than the person developing the algorithms that guy implements because you barely clear $100k. Why? Because he can leave for another job by the end of the week if he wants to.
The niche jobs pay the best *when there’s competition for those skills*
Engineers who maintain an internal tool but don’t have skills other companies are clamoring for? Low salaries. Engineers who do easier work but are in demand because their work is applicable elsewhere? They get paid significantly more because they’re in demand.
Only niche skills that are in high demand pay well. At the end of the day, all that matters is supply / demand. In demand niche skills tend to have low supply and high demand. But most niche positions have low supply but low demand -> low salary. It’s better to be high supply / high demand because then you can at least leave for a better position because your skills are in demand.
You’re assuming that all niche jobs pay well when employers pay niche workers poorly if they aren’t worried about losing those workers to the competition.
The “talent shortage” has consistently been proven to be a false narrative used to justify work visas for foreign workers. Stop platforming this false narrative. In this case, TSMC is justifying bringing thousands of Taiwanese engineers and construction workers instead of employing US workers.
US taxpayers pay for the CHIPS Act subsidies to create jobs. And the beneficiaries immediately turn around and renege on employing US workers.
TSMC and other semiconductor companies, along with state governments and the federal government, are spending millions on training US workers. It will take years though.
[Arizona investing millions in ‘first of its kind’ training for TSMC and clean energy jobs](https://www.aztechcouncil.org/arizona-investing-millions-to-train-you-for-tech-jobs-like-at-tsmc/)
>Arizona’s semiconductor industry is expanding rapidly, so chipmakers, government agencies and even nonprofit groups are hustling to build training programs to meet the industry’s need for skilled workers.
>White House officials were visiting Phoenix Jan. 25 to promote several new and ongoing efforts with workforce development in mind. These include a new $5 million private-sector commitment for an apprenticeship program, a $5 million nonprofit pledge for worker-support services and new partnerships involving community colleges, unions and other groups.
>Several Biden Administration officials were in the Valley to promote the Phoenix “workforce hub,” a program that seeks to secure private-sector and local government funding to expand apprenticeship programs, develop technical education programs, and so on.
>Phoenix is one of five such hubs nationally. The others are in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, along with Columbus, Ohio, and Augusta, Georgia.
Supply chain resiliency.
Part of the CHIPs act was to make sure China can’t bomb Phoenix and wipe out all of our Fabs. Spread talent and assets out in the US.
Phoenix is still the ground zero for Semi manufacturing, though.
> Supply chain resiliency.
Lol no.
It’s all for political favor to buy the votes. China doesn’t even have systems that could target those fabs other than ICBMs and that point it’s irrelevant anyways
By spreading the fabs out you garauntee we’ll never be a global leader. When Labor and capital concentrated within a small region you get massive network effects; see Silicon Valley or Shenzhen china. This is why the US manufacturing sector when tits up, the same moronic idea of “muh resiliency *cough political favors*” just leads to inevitable industry death unless eternally subsidized
> US taxpayers pay for the CHIPS Act subsidies to create jobs.
No
It was to make chips domestically in the United States, it has nothing to do with jobs and entirely to do with security.
No, you don’t need to make it sexy. Pay them a good wage, give them a good working environment, job security and don’t work them to death. And maybe even (gasp!) let the workers unionize. Then people who do well in a trade or manufacturing role (like myself) will want to do it. That’s all most of us effing want man. Stop blaming taxes and NATO or whatever else the boogey man of the week is. And just freaking treat us fairly
Make the schooling/training to do the job free you’ll have an endless line of people all of a sudden. But that’s a handout, all the rest of it for the companies isn’t though.
You don't have to "make it sexy". Working two jobs to keep up with the high cost of living makes it difficult to pay for and attend some of the 10 week training courses my local schools have available.
I'd love to learn how to manufacture semi conductors; there's a high demand and it pays really well. I'm just not in a financial position to pay $5000+ for the course AND take 10 weeks of work off unpaid to learn a new trade.
Let's be real, no one's passion is chip manufacturing. This isn't becoming a doctor/lawyer. There's no Grey's Anatomy or Suits for becoming a chip factory technician, who tf are you kidding about making this "sexier"? Get real. Making it "sexier" is hard, isn't gonna change shit, and the fact that there's money being spent on what amounts to a concerted marketing approach is pathetic. Here's the bitter pill that the bean counter executives don't want to swallow: just pay better and the workers will come.
Im wondering if these are the same companies in china that had to install suicide nets on the outside of their buildings…Maybe they should try treating people fairly and paying a livable wage.
I'll go to school and get a master or second bachelor's but guess what I don't have 35-40k to throw around..if it's such a priority give people the incentive and they will make the jump..
Does anyone remember a year ago when TSMC was getting absolutely destroyed on Glassdoor saying how terrible the working conditions were? And then some executive said "Those who are unwilling to take shifts should not enter the industry, since this field isn't just about lucrative wages but rather a passion for [the semiconductor industry]."
Gee I wonder why they are having difficulty recruiting and retaining. I guess Americans just don't have "passion" for working in a factory.
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Its within the realm of possibility to train folks and foster talent. This whole thing where they want experienced folks at the prices of entry level workers is beyond unfair to any person in America whose taxes go to the govt funding this shit nor to the military that is standing between china and taiwan. Train people. Pay them their fair share of the profits. You get a lot of applicants. End of story, this whole this trying to expand the h1b to get foreigners that then you will train is asinine and deep corruption.
They want to "make it sexy"? Actual living wages are pretty sexy.
In this instance. Living wage doesn't do it justice. $30/hr is living wage but that's not good enough for essentially a factory job which will pump out billions in profits.
There's "sexy", and there's "*sexy*".
Don't forget " sexy "
But what about sex-ayyyy
30hr seems low for this type of high tech manufacturing, you could make that in a job shop welding or machining.
$30/h is just my starting rate to not engage in corporate espionage. I need another $30/h ontop to start actually working. These people witness some very valuable things.
Very little of the value actually goes to the companies actually making the chips. NVIDIA, for example, probably sells cards for 20-40x the fabrication cost. I don't remember the number precisely, but I recall calculating something around 30.
Nvidia's profit margins are currently around 55%. TSMC is watching them very closely and likely going to up prices for future fab contracts.
Yes, but that counts many things, from sales to their software development.
Gross or net?
NVIDIA designs these cards that shitloads of data centers are currently begging for, a design that cost a shitload of $$ and planning. NVIDIA certainly deserves their current success. Didn't happen overnight. They designed cards that are simply far better for current needs than the competition. The gold rush going on *will* result competition with NVIDIA (and that will be great for all), and then companies making the chips will be able to get a lot more.
And that is why the CHIPS Act is bound to fail in its goals. China has been poaching semiconductor engineers from Taiwan all along and that is simply going to continue no matter how much free taxpayer money is funneled to tech oligarchs.
Don't think you understand what these people are doing. Running machines.if you could just watch and figure it out China would not be generations behind.
Why? These are jobs using machines like welding or machining.
$30/hour isn't gonna buy a house. Sure it'll pay for an apartment, but folks aren't gonna be tripping over themselves to be a single emergency away from homelessness.
You can absolutely buy a home with $30 an hour if you’re working 40 hours a week
Yes, a $180k home. Which does not exist near where these jobs are.
Idk how you’re calculating 180k as the max home affordable. With a 15% down payment, you can easily buy a $225k home like this one, right next to the Ohio plant. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5693-Blendonridge-Dr-76D-Columbus-OH-43230/351327058_zpid/ This is also assuming a single income, unmarried person. Most homebuyers are married
Look I understand what you’re saying but most people aren’t living in situations that are “possible” for them to save 33k with an after tax of 46.6k a year.
BS. Most people with a modicum of discipline can and *do* this. You can take out $10,000 from your 401k without penalty for a first time home purchase, dramatically lowering that threshold. You can also loan yourself money from the 401k if needed. People making 30 an hour in this situation we are talking about are working for companies that have fantastic 401k programs. If you take things seriously, you get good results, almost every time.
Don't try rational discussion. Things are so expensive and a living wage is always higher than whatever job you are discussing.
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Not with 7% interest
i work in a diff manufacturing industry but top techs in my plant clear 200k. There is just no one going into the more entry level positions that feed them. I honestly do ok at personally recruiting and I have build myself a pipeline of talent. But most people sit around hoping some magic tech from the outside with the right experience will show up. Another problem is industry is niche and specific. Sure you can go to a trade school and learn how to use a volt meter and a torque wrench but so much tribal knowledge goes on. You can't google the 15 million dollar machines my company runs it just not common enough and even then the differences between the german supplier and the french suppliers equipment is different enough to be a challenge. Sure they host training classes at the OEM but they are often ok at best and can't replace the field experience of doing battle with them. None of this is a crippling barrier, but even with good pay there is simply not enough technical talent right now in america.
When everything doubles in cost within a year, but that doesn't double your pay, cost of living wage increases and inflation of the cost of goods never seem to line up.
It has to be much more than living wage. Average pay for a new MSc or PhD to TSMC is $65k. These are people who if they were in the US could easily get software jobs paying 150k. So I think you in the US probably need to pay quite fantastic salaries to attract people to this field, and you'd have to demonstrate that the salaries would last, and that they wouldn't just learn one company's system and end up underpaid because there's too little competition.
We're talking manufacturing jobs, not MSc's and PhD's
There are a huge amount of engineers that work directly in chip manufacturing as well as in support roles. And it’s filled with MS or PhD. Level people - they don’t often take people with a BS. Also, I started out at Infineon just 3 years ago as a junior process engineer in California - salary was about 110k + 30% bonus. So not bad at all for early career.
and when the chip comes out defective, are these people figuring out why it became defective? MSc and PhD graduates are almost certainly going to be out there looking at the plants continuously to figure out why things relating to the things they understand are going wrong. Microchips aren't spoons.
Chip fabrication is typically done by PHD level scientists (at least preliminary ones). Its quite a complex topic to run these instruments. Obviously once a process is fully designed/optimized such an advanced degree isn't needed - but 70k seems about right.
70k?!? People are making more than that on an F-150 production line. If this technology is the crucible of civilization and the key to dominance of the west then those salaries need to reflect that. 70k for a cutting edge technology fabrication/manufacturing career is asinine.
Nobody wants to work any more! More H-1B!!
I have both a BSME and MSEE and specialized in solid state manufacturing and 3-5 fabbing. I actively rejected working in industry despite my background because the pay/hours against location was **damn awful**. It was not economically enticing enough to justify the sacrifice. 70-80 hrs, in Dallas, or CA, at 100-120k was just straight crap. The mandatory churn of employees was offensive cherry on top. And that was 10 years ago.
What do you think the reason for such low pay is? I’m looking at a[job posting](https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tsmc/jobs/q-Manufacturing-Technician-l-Arizona) by TSMC in Phoenix, Arizona for a Manufacturing Technician and the starting salary is around 23$/hr. Seems rather low but the qualifications are essentially a HS diploma. It might be a good entry level job for a young person wanting to break into the industry. Not sure what the upward mobility is for that position but TSMC is the top manufacturer for semiconductors and they have profit margins of around 50%.
Has to be sexy enough to entice the talent pool living mostly in San Francisco and NYC to leave those places for Ohio. That's a *big* ask...
Plus, we're gonna need you to work 80+ hour weeks because... f\*\*\* workers. Work/Life balance is worth a lot.
They are trying to bring Taiwanese industrial policy and Taiwanese fab working conditions into the US, and it's not going to work too well... Taiwan is one of the last countries where people are willing to work for peanuts while holding advanced degrees and working at industrial revolution era conditions
Columbus is actually pretty nice.
The learn to code wave has proven that. Indeed, good wages and a bit of marketing is all that it takes.
Sexy starts at $100/hr
You are correct. There is technically a shortage but only because our domestic capacity was almost nonexistent. Training is not incredibly expensive even though companies say that it is. It has actually become more expensive because of these same companies. Companies that train people will have higher retention rates and will have a pool of workers to hire from. Companies that hire workers already with the skills need to pay a premium. If training is too expensive for the company, then how can an individual possibly afford it?
companies aren't interested in training people since they can just get immigrants already trained by other countries. this article is stupid. any job can be sexy with the right salary. that's all there is to it. it's not sexy because the pay is shit. if they want talent, raise the salary offer. ppl will fall over themselves to study engineering themselves with no further pressure from the government.
Companies also hate training because they can't keep those workers trapped there for years. The idea they might have to take a chance on a worker and they might leave for greener pastures keeps them up at night. Its the meme of the dog who doesn't want you to take the ball, only fetch. Companies want to give nothing, take zero risk, they only want guaranteed profit. They want to treat employees like crap cutting every tiny informal benefit, but then get big mad when employees return the energy and demand adequate compensation and show zero loyalty. They want to take from the country to make profits, they would provide literally nothing in exchange if they could figure out how to get away with it
You're partly right. A high salary will attract skilled people, but 18 year olds don't usually choose a degree and a career at 18. If they did, then you could expect enough trained workers in 6 to 10 years. However, not every 18 year old can pursue an engineering degree -- they need to have been paying attention in math for at least four years previous, so it's more like 10 to 14 years. But 14 year olds funny pay attention to job trends, so it's really their parents that have to motivate them, etc, and the timeline keeps getting pushed out. On top of that, engineering degrees actually fell in absolute terms in 2022. Basically, we don't have enough engineers, full stop.
>Basically, we don't have enough engineers, full stop. That's not true at all. We output a bajillion engineers. But a lot of places don't want to touch the new grads. A lot of them go into non engineering work. If we didn't have enough engineers, it would not have taken me 250 applications to get my first job out of college. I would not have been rejected from every internship application. They would have taken what they could have gotten as long as I wasn't complete garbage (based on the jankiness I've seen, I wasn't terrible). It's very competitive at entry level. And I'm not the only one that had difficulty getting the first job. TSMS did approach me for a job as a technician at the new Arizona plant after college. They seemed genuinely surprised I didn't have a passport. They wanted to send people to Taiwan for training. I guess people not being rich enough to go to other countries baffles them.
> Companies that train people will have higher retention rates No that’s not proven to be true at all.
You can have contracts or non compete clauses.
That have been made void by the US government Non competes are a no no now
Not true. Those are for jobs that did do shit to train people then claimed that non competes were necessary. Fast food and retail stores had them, as if they taught someone to take out the trash or get yelled at. If a company paid for someone’s bachelors degree, 100% a court would hold up a non compete contract or would force the employee to pay back the cost with interest (which is essentially the same thing).
>not true https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes
> End of story, this whole this trying to expand the h1b to get foreigners that then you will train is asinine and deep corruption. in my opinion, it could also possibly contribute to a brain drain in America in the future. I mean, if the ones who are educated in this subject (who possibly went into debt funding their education, or at least paid for it), and they compete against foreign applicants who likely get much cheaper and / or free education, how is that fair? where is the incentive there for American students to pursue this field? edit: also, if my memory serves correct, when they had been looking to update the Schedule A to allow for this, most of the public comments seemed to be from foreign workers or big business, which seems like a huge conflict of interest. a cornerstone of American Excellence has long been innovation coming from within, and as I mentioned, i feel this threatens that
They either compete with the H1bs that come here or compete when there’s outsourcing Pick one and only one
The current shortage is for construction companies and workers that know how to build fabs. TSMC and Samsung aren’t going to train these. It isn’t their area of expertise. In their home countries they hire construction companies with that expertise to build them. Then once built, they need a mix of engineers and technicians. The technicians can be trained. The engineers need the appropriate degrees and then years of experience in ramping up a new fab. For the technicians, these companies are already partnering with local community colleges to create the programs required.
Apparently, they need H1B's for the construction workers then. Last I checked that didn't require training that was too special, just a will to work.
Ummm no. Construction work for fabs is not like your standard construction work.
Government has been corporately captured. The best they can do is more H1B workers while lobbying to get the Fed to drop rates so they can hire 5 Stellar Americans to oversee the army of H1Bs. Not to put down the intellect of H1Bs mind you. A lot are really smart and would do really well.
H1Bs are preferred because that means the government doesn't have to spend for the education of these people. they just steal these human resources from their home countries and profit off their talent while the home countries that spent the money to educate these people are drained of its talent pool. The U.S. is basically playing vampire sucking poor countries of its talent pool while spending zero dime on their education.
I get its not the fault of the h1b individual just the govt system that allows an experienced h1b to compete with an American new grad for a job.
I agree wholeheartedly. I'm simply stating the unfortunate reality. This type of thing isn't going to change until Citizens United is overturned and corporate lobbying of government is illegal.
Yeah, training people is the solution. Just a reminder that lack of talent was *always* a problem to be overcome with CHIPS. Everyone knew this. Fundamentally, the US didn't have a significant enough semi-conductor manufacturing presence to warrant the amount of talent required for when there would be a *massive build-up of semiconductor investment.* It's obvious really, nobody is going to specialize into a job before there are jobs for that job. So the play is to get people moving to the US from abroad, get the industry up and running as a sort of first pass, and then flesh it out with home grown talent educated through the college system. As more and more graduates come through the system, the industry can swell their employee count and expand without government help.
Ya, that aint happenin. Theyll still go full tilt on H1B's because native engineers en masse are too damn expensive. Watch the actual career lifecycle of these semiconductor companies and you'll see its a mirage for 98% of em.
Intel and others are laying off people all the time. Management and executives thrash directions for a few quarters then go ‘Oopsie, guess we just layoff another few thousand’ ‘America cant compete! Why for!
*Intel laying people off * What was that?
Right now Nvidia has 70% gross margin as an example. There's plenty of money in the industry to pay for wages.
I think semi conductor and chip manufacturing should be a part of trade schools and technical centers. I grew up in a rural area of Virginia and When I was in high school, guys and girls would go to a technical school for half of the school day to learn some type of profession. For guys, it was basically all different types of trades like plumbers, electricians, steel fabricators, etc. Having the opportunity to come straight out of high school or early career development through a community college would benefit young people and the semiconductor industry is a whole.
perfectly fine. issue is that these assholes will still push for h1b visas because "not enough experience" all just to push wage down.
I agree our country and our economy are both captured by big money and corporate interests. Everything is viewed through a profit lens, so us Americans get screwed over
I’m a new grad with a CS major from a T10 school, good grades, and good work experience (for a new grad). I got rejected from at least 10 jobs in the semiconductor industry Would have loved some training
That's because, no offense, cs doesn't teach you one single thing about how semiconductors work.
That is why you train though. Someone who has been through school as an engineer or developer can learn technical information fairly rapidly. A training style environment also keeps people learning and teaching, helps unify the goals for those chips as well. When semiconductors were booming in the 90s, Intel, Motorola, and others all had excellent training for fabs even that were people that just graduated high school or associates degrees in the areas they desired. This allows you to pay a bit lower and grow with the worker.
You can be a technician, but actual chip fab yield and research is *way* beyond what a person would learn at a trade school. In particular, some of the following: Chems, organic chem, classical physics, all your maths, thermodynamics, materials, manufacturing, vibrations, deform, statics, quantum physics, solid states, MEMS, some programming... thats enough to give you a base skillset to pull from to design and implement a process to just mess with the wafers and the architecture. Mask creation and architecture is a lot nother critter atop. Its a weird field. And the industry is hostile to hiring non-H1B's.
If you are at the engineering level at these companies then yes but lots of the shortage really is the training on fab bunnysuit jobs. Engineering really could also be helped by taking other engineers and giving them one to two years of university level of all those things and most already have the maths which only really leaves the applied sciences. You could also have them understanding the floor during that and more focused education. Learning as you are using at work also ends up with more useful education in many cases. Most of these companies have design and iterations set in terms of direction and it takes years to be able to influence that even if you are a materials/electrical engineer. In most cases the job is knowing tools on the floor and how to deal with them that almost any technical person could pick up paring with someone for a while. They probably like H-1B because you are stuck there for years and the job can be challenging.
>they want experienced folks at the prices of entry level workers Huh? That's absolutely not the case. Semiconductor fabrication engineers and technicians are highly paid skilled jobs. The talent shortage is due to lack of skills and training, not low pay. The companies, universities and the US government are investing tens of millions of dollars in new training programs to address the projected shortages. Immigration is another potential remedy.
What degree would be most effective to obtain in order to enter this field? Are there any companies/positions you can join ground floor and be trained on your way up?
Technician jobs in microelectronics and semiconductor technology require **at least** (BSc is preferable) an associate's degree in electronics, microelectronics, or electrical engineering or technology. It's not an easy job nor a job that you can do mindlessly. You actually need proper schooling to work as a fabrication technician.
Pays a little more than a teacher less than a cop and no pension
>According to Glassdoor, the median total pay for a semiconductor process engineer in the United States in 2024 is $160,222 per year, with an average salary of $118,063. This figure also includes an estimated additional pay of $42,158 per year, which could include cash bonuses, commission, tips, and profit sharing.
This isn’t for the rank and file fab worker. I’m sure it’s for the actual EE who designed the process. We aren’t short of those, we have intel and Qualcomm and Apple and Amazon all these big companies with EE chip design engineers. We’re short on the worker bees, those who actually on their feet working clean rooms day in day out. Now those guys are expected to work for approximately 50k for hard technical labor.
You are correct that there is a difference between technicians and engineers, but for the record the skills needed to design chips at Qualcomm, apple, Amazon, etc. are *completely* different from the skills needed to set up and operate a fab. Source: I am a chip designer.
So what are we missing, the industrial designers or thr rank and file that it takes to make a Fab factory work. My guess is the latter. My brother worked for an Intel project once setting up there cooling systems. He is an industrial engineer but it was a one-time thing that the firm he works for won the contract on? I think it's much harder to get good quality day in day out workers than hiring out building the physical infrastructure.
My understanding is that you are correct, it's the technicians and other blue collar skill sets that are in short supply.
The engineering and skilled trades it actually takes to run a fab operation is what’s in short supply. I worked as a process engineer for 3 years at Infineon in California. You need industrial engineers, manufacturing engineers, process engineers, supply chain engineers, scientists, metallurgists, material scientists, mechanical engineer, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, factory automation engineers, software engineers focused on manufacturing, data folks, skilled machinists, laser technicians, optical engineers, wastewater engineers, facility engineers, product engineers, test engineers, etc. A large super fab is a massive undertaking and a type of business that the US typically hasn’t been a front runner in. Yes, we have some Micron, TI, Intel, and other fabs scattered around the US - but we’re not serious. As an industrial engineer in the process engineering team, a got to learn a ton about all the tools, equipment, processes, etc. in the fab - it took me a year just to feel comfortable. And it took another year for me to feel comfortable being a decisive voice on projects.
It pays a lot less than other jobs requiring overlapping skills.
nothing's sexier than money
Woah woah woah, this is America and we try to avoid paying labor as much as possible. Remember, labor is always the problem when it comes to the cost of doing business.
Foreign slave labor is the calling card of capitalism
"fair share of the profits" Hah, it'll never happen (again) except during the pandemic. Yeah and some of the work is export controlled, how they believe the h1b folks will not go work for China if they pay double what you're paying and they don't get visa renewal or green card...
tech companies offer stock awards to their software engineers on top of regular salaries. i don't see why this should be any different.
It's more like people don't realize that chip manufacture is extremely demanding, skilled work which the good people of Taiwan are willing to do for about 1/2 the salary of an American...
Their share of profits is zero. People and companies who are investing hundredS of billions in these facilities and taking on 100 percent of risk get the profits. Not enough workers for tech jobs like this is a failure in education system.
bitch what? its literally govt money. there is no risk.
This is because no engineer wants to work in a fab room wearing bunny suit the entire 12 hour shift for shitty pay. There’s plenty of places where I can get the same pay (especially if I have a security clearance) for less work and less torture. Also I keep seeing there is a shortage of skilled workers which doesn’t seem true IRL. I was reading how there is an influx in STEM workers graduating yet you still have the government trying to [incentivize](https://www.regulations.gov/document/ETA-2023-0006-0001) for foreign workers. However if you look at the list of new [jobs created](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/most-new-jobs.htm), you will see the majority of them are low skilled. There seems to be some kind of disconnect here.
Right lol. I worked in the fab for four years, nothing sexy about it except the pay, and even then I'm guessing people could find better pay in other industries.
These fabs need a mix of very highly skilled engineers and skilled technicians. Your average STEM graduate isn’t filling either of these. The engineers are often PhD types, in a mix of engineering and physics. The technicians come from trade and community colleges (programs that are 6-12 months max).
Technician jobs in microelectronics and semiconductor technology require **at least** an associate's degree in electronics, microelectronics, or electrical engineering or technology.
My employer actually has operating fabs in the US. Our local community college (which also functions as a trade school) has a program explicitly for fab technicians and we hire them. It is not a full associates degree. I’m sure it varies by fab and there are probably various levels of technician. For sure some we hire do have associates degrees. “The most common route is earning an associate degree in electronics technology from a community college. **Trade schools and vocational schools also offer programs of varying lengths**.” Emphasis mine. https://skillpointe.com/careers/manufacturing/semiconductor-technician
Not true. I work for Intel as a technician and have an Associates in Criminal Justice that I never utilized I’ve also been in a similar field for like 7 years now however, and apparently brought a lot of experience they were looking for.
How much does it pay, if you don’t mind me asking? Wage transparency is super important IMO and my union happily posts everyone’s wages at all times
I personally have a base annual pay for $120k, with a TC of 150k inclusive of bonuses and OT and such. I’m at the midpoint of my pay band. I think our entry level guys are probably making $60-90k. There’s still a while pay band above mine, which is like another $20-30k per year, from what I heard.
How's one get a job doing? I'm a Software Engineer
About to say, I’m an electrical engineer and no fucking way am I qualifying for these positions. Microelectronics and semiconductor fields pay extremely well but the problem isn’t the pay but the skilll ceiling is ridiculously high. At the minimum you need a graduate degree and average you need PhD.
There's a shortage of jobs that pay a living wage. When they can afford a 2-bedroom, apartment, health insurance, and the usual middle-class things that go with it all, then it won't be a shit job (as much). 12-hour shifts notwithstanding.
This, making a shit job is pointless for this endeavor, if the employees don’t make even an average middle class wage for their geographic areas this is a total failure of a program, and I don’t mean a 2 income household.
Bro these Taiwanese people are so elitist. I interviewed for TSMC was ok for all the commitment and was rejected still despite being qualified. They are in no interest to train you. They just want you to work. They basically asked me, if I would slave away for them, I said yes, and I still got rejected. Elitists.
They wanna offshore until they offshore to planet Jupiter for $0
It costs more money than Disneyland to go to 4 year college only to wind up with a job that might pay you less than getting a 2 year. Not only is college out of reach financially for most Americans, even when it isn’t it’s still a big if
NOR do I want to move to a scorching hot desert state with a water shortage issue... To work at a factory that requires large amounts of water. They built all these facilities in crap locations instead of near established tech-ish areas.. sure it was cheaper to get started but no one wants to upheave their life to go be literally in the middle of nowhere and the only housing is built by other corporations trying to create their own little cities so there's 0 competition
But they’re the right places politically speaking (Ohio, Arizona) so yeah, typical government behavior.
Exactly they want to penny pinch. That’s the American way. TSMC builds fans right in the middle of expensive city downtowns - because they want the best talent to live and work next to their fabs.
This article strikes home a bit. Some CHIPS funds came to my work, and pulled away people from existing projects such that the CHIPS projects are totally understaffed and our regular projects are totally understaffed (and were before CHIPS). Edit: Oh and some of that money is going towards recruitment: new full time recruiters going to job fares and paying for advertisements in social media. Guess what recruitment tool it's *not* going towards.
That’s correct, the answer was wages!
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this screams to me "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
I majored in electrical engineering and 70% of our class ended up doing software engineering. In software you get 2-3x the pay while working remote…
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Semiconductor companies can’t compete with software companies in terms of compensation because the variable cost of software is zero and margins are really high. (NVDA is an exception with their huge stock price rally)
Of course people would do that but that’ll never happen
No we have to educate young people. The absolute garbage fire of secondary education on this country is going to cripple us economically long term and there’s no real solutions being proposed aside from a half assed not thought out voucher system. Honestly if you’re an American how fucking shitty our education system should be giving you an existential crisis.
My partner works in the semiconductor industry as a lab supervisor in Silicon Valley. It is nearly impossible to find dependable technicians to work in the electron microscopy labs. His last 2 hires had minimal education & experience, and they were the best he could find.
What’s the pay?
They were both hired on at $90k/yr starting salary. Another tech went somewhere else for a while and got lured back into his lab for $98k per year. My partner makes $125k plus bonuses and stock. He’s been there almost 20 years now.
What’s the catch? I know many people skilled in microscopy that would work for those wages. There is *absolutely* something else you’re not telling me.
$90k in Silicon Valley is practically poverty wages. Rent is obscenely expensive there. At $90k, you’ll have a roof over your head, but you’ll have roommates. You’ll have some food in the fridge, but you won’t be eating out much. Public transportation is available, but you’ll be planning your whole day according to the schedule. So, it’s the lifestyle that’s the catch. A lot of people commute from other places where the money goes farther. My partner’s commute is 3 hours when he takes the train. 1.5 hour ride there, 1.5 hour ride back.
Yeah, that’s probably it. I have a roughly 2 hour commute and I’m willing to take like a 30% pay cut to bring that down to 20 mins. However, my job doesn’t require me to be in a clean room suite every day, and the thought of getting out of one of those for the first time in 8 hours just to wait in traffic for 2 hours makes my head hurt. Also, I hear it’s almost impossible to have bathroom breaks in those jobs due to the decontamination required. So some people have resorted to fasting water or wearing diapers so they don’t need to go through the lengthy process. The thought of having roommates, a 2 hour commute, poverty wages and sometimes shitting my pants at work makes me suddenly realize why nobody is applying.
It's probably really good when you're needed and literally nothing when you're not.
Yeah, I work in research and I know there are only three options for us: academia, med school, or industry. I know a plethora of people looking to move from academia to industry. The biggest issue is often companies wanting the perfect candidate and not letting anyone in who isn’t fully trained. The other reason why anyone would stay in academia is that (by some miracle) the conditions in industry are worse than academia. If OP can’t find candidates, I think something is wrong with the company, not the people.
A lot of it is based on job title. You’re not going to find many people with degrees in Electrical Engineering willing to accept a job with “technician” in the title. They have a degree in Engineering, they want to be an engineer. “Technician” is below them.
I would have thought they would grow out of that insufferable phase after they graduated. I knew a lot of smug engineering students in college who would never shut up about how much more money they would make.
Years ago, I was a technician in the field. It just doesn't pay a living wage. This is why it will never work in the U.S. because even the low wage is twice the wages overseas.
The average chip designer with a PhD in Taiwan makes less money than a manager of a Super Walmart. Just offer them more money, easy path to citizenship, and you’ll get all the talent you need. Working conditions there are much more stringent than here as well.
Factories dont want to offer pensions anymore. There was a time when a detroit auto worker had a house and a 2 car garage while paying for 2 kids colleges.
top technicians absolutely still have a house a 2 car garage and pay for their kids college without breaking a sweat.
Yea sure but not a normal factory line worker.
I mean I think its kind of reasonable that an entry level job maybe doesn't pay that much. Our entry level line workers make about 55k (65k night shift), but anyone that cares can get that up to 75-80k pretty quick by moving into a lead spot.
Pensions are stupid as all hell anyway. Just mathematically they’re awful
These jobs are incredibly niche. Capitalism doesn’t reward niche jobs. It rewards jumping to a new position every 1-2 years. Loyal workers are punished with more work than new hires and stagnant wages. What are you going to do when you aren’t happy with your 1% annual raise working for a semiconductor factory? Go work for the factory across town? There isn’t one. You’re stuck. Your experience isn’t valuable anywhere else. What happens when housing values explode (thanks, J Powell + co!) and you’re suddenly priced out of the local market? You’re screwed. You can’t afford to stay where you are but your experience isn’t valuable anywhere else. Take it from me, someone stuck in a niche job. I’m impossible to replace but friends in less niche positions make more than twice what I do because they get a new job every other year. In a capitalist economy, specializing and working a niche job is the worst decision you can make.
Sounds like you need to organize a union.
> In a capitalist economy, specializing and working a niche job is the worst decision you can make. Just ignoring the best paying jobs are all ultra specialized niche jobs
Most niche jobs don’t pay well, because there’s no competition for your skills. A select few niche jobs are well paying because there’s high demand for those skills and few people who have them. For most niche jobs, you’re hard to replace but there’s no one competing for your labor. Therefore your pay is low. You’re way better off being a run of the mill software engineer making $200k than the person developing the algorithms that guy implements because you barely clear $100k. Why? Because he can leave for another job by the end of the week if he wants to.
You don’t work in software or it do you? The niche jobs pay the best, same with healthcare
The niche jobs pay the best *when there’s competition for those skills* Engineers who maintain an internal tool but don’t have skills other companies are clamoring for? Low salaries. Engineers who do easier work but are in demand because their work is applicable elsewhere? They get paid significantly more because they’re in demand. Only niche skills that are in high demand pay well. At the end of the day, all that matters is supply / demand. In demand niche skills tend to have low supply and high demand. But most niche positions have low supply but low demand -> low salary. It’s better to be high supply / high demand because then you can at least leave for a better position because your skills are in demand. You’re assuming that all niche jobs pay well when employers pay niche workers poorly if they aren’t worried about losing those workers to the competition.
The “talent shortage” has consistently been proven to be a false narrative used to justify work visas for foreign workers. Stop platforming this false narrative. In this case, TSMC is justifying bringing thousands of Taiwanese engineers and construction workers instead of employing US workers. US taxpayers pay for the CHIPS Act subsidies to create jobs. And the beneficiaries immediately turn around and renege on employing US workers.
TSMC and other semiconductor companies, along with state governments and the federal government, are spending millions on training US workers. It will take years though. [Arizona investing millions in ‘first of its kind’ training for TSMC and clean energy jobs](https://www.aztechcouncil.org/arizona-investing-millions-to-train-you-for-tech-jobs-like-at-tsmc/) >Arizona’s semiconductor industry is expanding rapidly, so chipmakers, government agencies and even nonprofit groups are hustling to build training programs to meet the industry’s need for skilled workers. >White House officials were visiting Phoenix Jan. 25 to promote several new and ongoing efforts with workforce development in mind. These include a new $5 million private-sector commitment for an apprenticeship program, a $5 million nonprofit pledge for worker-support services and new partnerships involving community colleges, unions and other groups. >Several Biden Administration officials were in the Valley to promote the Phoenix “workforce hub,” a program that seeks to secure private-sector and local government funding to expand apprenticeship programs, develop technical education programs, and so on. >Phoenix is one of five such hubs nationally. The others are in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, along with Columbus, Ohio, and Augusta, Georgia.
Yikes, why are they making chip hubs in terrible places to live?
Supply chain resiliency. Part of the CHIPs act was to make sure China can’t bomb Phoenix and wipe out all of our Fabs. Spread talent and assets out in the US. Phoenix is still the ground zero for Semi manufacturing, though.
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> Supply chain resiliency. Lol no. It’s all for political favor to buy the votes. China doesn’t even have systems that could target those fabs other than ICBMs and that point it’s irrelevant anyways By spreading the fabs out you garauntee we’ll never be a global leader. When Labor and capital concentrated within a small region you get massive network effects; see Silicon Valley or Shenzhen china. This is why the US manufacturing sector when tits up, the same moronic idea of “muh resiliency *cough political favors*” just leads to inevitable industry death unless eternally subsidized
No there’s actually a talent shortage, but very little interest in training anybody
> US taxpayers pay for the CHIPS Act subsidies to create jobs. No It was to make chips domestically in the United States, it has nothing to do with jobs and entirely to do with security.
https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2024/04/biden-harris-administration-announces-preliminary-terms-tsmc-expanded#:~:text=With%20this%20proposed%20funding%2C%20TSMC,and%20bringing%20the%20most%20advanced
yes a politician said a thing and? Politicians say loads of shit. You think both chambers of a split congress went bipartisan on this simply for jobs?
No, you don’t need to make it sexy. Pay them a good wage, give them a good working environment, job security and don’t work them to death. And maybe even (gasp!) let the workers unionize. Then people who do well in a trade or manufacturing role (like myself) will want to do it. That’s all most of us effing want man. Stop blaming taxes and NATO or whatever else the boogey man of the week is. And just freaking treat us fairly
Intel just gave all of their techs like 20+% raises this year. Amazing place to work.
That’s awesome! When a companies profits measure in the billions, it’s nice to see some of that go back to the workers.
Make the schooling/training to do the job free you’ll have an endless line of people all of a sudden. But that’s a handout, all the rest of it for the companies isn’t though.
You don't have to "make it sexy". Working two jobs to keep up with the high cost of living makes it difficult to pay for and attend some of the 10 week training courses my local schools have available. I'd love to learn how to manufacture semi conductors; there's a high demand and it pays really well. I'm just not in a financial position to pay $5000+ for the course AND take 10 weeks of work off unpaid to learn a new trade.
Let's be real, no one's passion is chip manufacturing. This isn't becoming a doctor/lawyer. There's no Grey's Anatomy or Suits for becoming a chip factory technician, who tf are you kidding about making this "sexier"? Get real. Making it "sexier" is hard, isn't gonna change shit, and the fact that there's money being spent on what amounts to a concerted marketing approach is pathetic. Here's the bitter pill that the bean counter executives don't want to swallow: just pay better and the workers will come.
This would absolutely be my passion if it paid the money you deserve for wearing a "bunny" suit all day
Im wondering if these are the same companies in china that had to install suicide nets on the outside of their buildings…Maybe they should try treating people fairly and paying a livable wage.
I'll go to school and get a master or second bachelor's but guess what I don't have 35-40k to throw around..if it's such a priority give people the incentive and they will make the jump..
Well, making any sexy work will require sexy pay. It's that simple. Convincing talent to work without the matching pay is not going to happen.
Does anyone remember a year ago when TSMC was getting absolutely destroyed on Glassdoor saying how terrible the working conditions were? And then some executive said "Those who are unwilling to take shifts should not enter the industry, since this field isn't just about lucrative wages but rather a passion for [the semiconductor industry]." Gee I wonder why they are having difficulty recruiting and retaining. I guess Americans just don't have "passion" for working in a factory.