Honestly, I'm not so sure anymore if it would be enough to just leave this company or if it's wiser to leave this industry altogether.
Unfortunately, I do not have enough transferable skills to do the latter. There are more and more people looking for a way out of the industry in general. Any thoughts?
5 replies (most recent on top)
Either choice is not a bad thing, separating from Micron is a good thing.
I'm loving not working at Micron. The change of industry made me nervous, but I'm doing well in my new career.
Don't feel trapped at Micron, your skills are transferable to other industries.
It may feel like your skills and knowledge are very Micron specific but when you look at the bigger picture they will relate to other companies and industries. Semiconductor Manufacturing is manufacturing, Micron software is software, equipment data is data, Equipment maintenance is maintenance.... The knowledge and skills translate more than you think, I know first hand after spending my entire career at Micron in various roles supporting manufacturing. Now I work in a totally different industry not related to manufacturing at all.
Micron is very bad outlier. Compare it to the other companies like Samsung, Intel, and Global Foundaries (I am not saying these others are good or bad).
I think this area is going to get harder and harder much like trying to reach the speed of light.
TSMC is trying for 1nm-class production nodes. The Bohr radius is almost .1nm
Honestly depends on what you want.
Industry, if we’re talking about front end, runs the whole spectrum of TSMC tyranny to 5 day per week defense contractors that come in after the weekend and wonder why nothing is passing quals.
If it’s location, you’re gonna be locked into a few regions at large. If it’s pay then, it kinda is what it is, there’s not realistically a lot of job hopping you can do like In software without uprooting your life.
If you want out, Ive seen multiple engineers and techs get their PMP, do a PM role in Micron for a little bit then get out. You get kinda stuck in that job function but it’s a door Ive seen used.
With the CHIPS bill push this industry needs to get serious about retention and longevity because any talent push is going to leak for whoever makes it through and going to deter people from entering. (Why go in with meh pay for a technical person to move to someplace with no other employers to run the risk of getting laid off every few years?)
I dont see many of the biggest players taking this seriously. Best places to be have little to no competition like Texas Instruments but come with their own baggage.
The industry is not a problem. The toxicity of some of the companies in the industry is. There are many and many players in the semiconductor industry, and many of them are just regular companies where you come to work, do your best, get paid and go home. Without performance curves, gomicrons, and other typical bs of the last 5 years. The semi field gets much more diversified compare to 15 years ago with proliferation of foundry business model and SoC concept. There are many adjacent industries too, like MEMS, where semi skills are relevant.