Looking for a job related to ASIC design

[hunter]

Re: don't know

I am not familiar with silicon valley to that detail. How do you know that there is a shortage of RF people there? One of my old friends works for a RF consulting firm there and they are short of customers. Another of my friends has friends there working in RFIC development. They are going ahead in designing chips they hope someone will buy because they have not had paying customers for the past year.

Well, I don't know for sure but that's what Hunter said above - it is the same bad situation for digital and analog except RF.

actually it is slightly better for analog and mixed signal designer, and RF IC(not RF) is the best. from HR point of view.

 

[cin]

What is the chance for fresh graduate with a Master Degree to get a job in ASIC or VLSI in U.S. these day ?
Many of my friends can't find any jobs after graduation. The only ones got the jobs are those who have "CONNECTION"

 

[flatulent]

friend's experience

One of my friends over there says that the employers are looking for a long track record on the exact product type. Experience on similar things does not count.

 

[mitaka]

anybody can tell me what is the situation in canada or in europe

 

[sutapanaki]

anybody can tell me what is the situation in canada or in europe

Canada is basically the same as US. Almost no hiring, just here and there. I see more analog positions than digital. I don't know how's in Europe. How's in BG?

 

[ahgu]

so sad

so sad, what will they do after so many engineers graduate? find a job in burger king?

I thought analog takes a lot of experience. I see numerous opening for analog ic design in my area. digital are few. RF is very stable, it takes long time to train analog and RF engineer. You cannot jump that quickly like java, c++, verilog/vhdl programming. I think the demand for these engineers are at least stable, the number of these engineers cannot increase as fast as programmers(verilog/vhdl/c/c++/java).

A little funny story from chips designed from India where companies use cheap labor to do most of the logics. I guess the logic inside might work well if we get to test them, however, peripheral consideration was not considered, things like power supply, clock, reset, it takes extra logic just to reset the chips, and the chip can be easily broken with no protection schemes insides. basically we had to gave up the chip after prototype, it was waste of time. And that company has very good reputation(world class company) up to now. It is bad practice when management try to save money this way. Also, I heard a lot of good engineers from these companies left for smaller startup, what remains are just mediocre. Thru my exprience with one BIG semi companies, I notice more ladies running arround doing core engineers work(definitely more than before). And from the decline of quality of their products, I really hate to make the correlation. Well I guess mainly 2 reasons:
1. you try to save money by outsource hardware design, but you lose something in the middle. Sometime it is not as easy as writing database program. these pure software products. I know India produces a lot of good programmers, things like for database, now networking routing, but hardware/ic wise, I don't know. Taiwan definitely have more background in that area.

2. The BEST engineers left during the tech hype last couple years and they are not likeyly to come back. And it really takes time and opportunity to train these BEST engineers.



well, the fact is life sucks for us engineers at this time. maybe try to do some military stuff, make small handheld bomb that you can easily shoot down fighter airplanes. There are a lot of demand there. who knows, maybe WWIII is coming. okay, enough ranting, Please don't accuse me, consider this as bushit.

 

[qlyus]

Verilog/VHDL are not programming languages. They are used to describe hardware, or digital logic more specifically. This separates real good hardware designers from so called Verilog/VHDL programmers.

 

[flatulent]

feedback system

The job market is like a big feedback system with delay and nonlinearity. It oscillates. There is a shortage of some types of workers. People in school train for those jobs. This is a 4-8 year delay depending on what degree they get. Once there are enough workers for the job there are still 4-8 years of new workers coming on line with no jobs for them. DSP was once an area with more jobs than workers. Now it is the other way around.

Another aspect is the number of independent designs being done for a market. In the past each company did their own system engineering and hardware development in the hopes that they would get to market first and become the standard. Now the companies cooperate and set up standards for everyone to meet like 802.11. With no dreams of being the market leader and everyone having a share of the same market all making the same equipment, fewer companies are willing to risk large funds.

Another problem is managers. They frequently cannot evaluate job applicants properly and hire the biggest boaster instead of the most talented person.

I have seen many companies doing things the hard way because they cannot understand suggestions from talented consultants. One company used an 8 bit data collector because they wanted to do simple low pass filtering in DSP to smooth the data. Had they done the filtering in passive analog hardware they could have used a slower 12 bit data collector and gotten the data accuracy they really wanted.

 

[srik]

Re: so sad

A little funny story from chips designed from India where companies use cheap labor to do most of the logics. I guess the logic inside might work well if we get to test them, however, peripheral consideration was not considered, things like power supply, clock, reset, it takes extra logic just to reset the chips, and the chip can be easily broken with no protection schemes insides. basically we had to gave up the chip after prototype, it was waste of time. And that company has very good reputation(world class company) up to now.quote]


This may be true in one of your case. I know chips designed from India which have
done very well and used even in military applications.
Do we have the statistics to make objective statements?

or
Is there a postulate like cheap labour=low quality work

 

[flatulent]

another data point

Here is another data point on low cost development. A group of people in Eastern Europe decided to get into the RFIC business. They learned how to operate the controls of the design software. They, however, did not know about losses in on chip coils from metal resistance and coupled energy into the resistive substrate. Their IC did not work because the oscillator did not.

Here is a story about the job market oscillation. One of Captain Cook's decendents was in engineering school just prior to the 1929-39 world wide depression. When he graduated the common knowledge was that the industrial revolution had come to an end and there would be no engineering jobs in the future. he went into the clergy instead. After the 1939-45 war he decided to start a land surveying company in Los Angeles USA. He made much more in surveying the land in that rapidly developing region than he would have in an ordinary engineering job.

 

[ahgu]

srik

To srik:

just a personal observation in one case. I did not make the "cheap labor=lousy work" statement as you did.

But like buying goods, if you pay more mony, the chance is much higher that you will get a better product.

Also I see from common sense that it is harder to manage/coordinate when you have a project partitioned like that, from a engineer management point of view.

BTW, off shore are getting very expensive after M$ and oracle move to India big time and started to hire like crazy. But a lot of time it is middle man getting the money. Like one company I know, they are paying $60/hour to india support, the indian worker get merely $5/hour, the $55 goes to some infrastructure(like computer cost, phone) and traveling and medical benefits, and middleman(pimp)'s pocket. Now people are actually saying it is actually cheaper to do things/hire people local.

Well, I guess eventually, everyone arround the world will enjoy the same living standard, at least same pay for same work. unless one country control all the world resources by force. That is why I say we should look into weaponry and put us on hire on the global scale. like "outsourcing your n*ke project to us for $#B", or "outsourcing anti-F## missiles projects to us for $$$" , sorry, some bushit guy just made my imagination go wild.

 

[mitaka]

Canada is basically the same as US. Almost no hiring, just here and there. I see more analog positions than digital. I don't know how's in Europe. How's in BG?[/quote]

In BG...
no words to say:{
there is 3 firms for IC desing
and I'm ashamed to say how much they pay,
but as i see the problem is global for HW people
LET THE FORCE BE WITH US :!:

 

[srik]

Re: srik

To srik:

just a personal observation in one case. I did not make the "cheap labor=lousy work" statement as you did.

But like buying goods, if you pay more mony, the chance is much higher that you will get a better product.

Also I see from common sense that it is harder to manage/coordinate when you have a project partitioned like that, from a engineer management point of view.

BTW, off shore are getting very expensive after M$ and oracle move to India big time and started to hire like crazy. But a lot of time it is middle man getting the money. Like one company I know, they are paying $60/hour to india support, the indian worker get merely $5/hour, the $55 goes to some infrastructure(like computer cost, phone) and traveling and medical benefits, and middleman(pimp)'s pocket. Now people are actually saying it is actually cheaper to do things/hire people local.

Well, I guess eventually, everyone arround the world will enjoy the same living standard, at least same pay for same work. unless one country control all the world resources by force. That is why I say we should look into weaponry and put us on hire on the global scale. like "outsourcing your n*ke project to us for $#B", or "outsourcing anti-F## missiles projects to us for $$$" , sorry, some bushit guy just made my imagination go wild.

Any way I interpreted/misinterpreted your 1st point.

Well cheap labour may not be the only reason for moving some of the buisnesses to India/China. Dont forget 1/3 population is in India/China and it represents huge market potential. Also Infrastructure is cheaper and with the governments welcoming the foreign investment with open arms, I guess some of the businesses moved to India/China.

 

[sutapanaki]

Canada is basically the same as US. Almost no hiring, just here and there. I see more analog positions than digital. I don't know how's in Europe. How's in BG?

In BG...
no words to say:{
there is 3 firms for IC desing
and I'm ashamed to say how much they pay,
but as i see the problem is global for HW people
LET THE FORCE BE WITH US :!:[/quote]

As far as I know there is one major company - Melexis. Which are the other 2. HIC perhaps? Melexis should be paying relatively well for BG conditions, isn't it?

 

[mitaka]

to sutapanaki:
As far as I know there is one major company - Melexis. Which are the other 2. HIC perhaps? Melexis should be paying relatively well for BG conditions, isn't it?[/quote]
where are you from?

 

[Tomby]

After reading the posts you guys have, I have to admit it is very depressing. Being a junior engineer in north america with all the news of outsourcing ic designs to china and india, is there any hope for HW or maybe I should just switch majors to power or telecommunications?

 

[bluep]

In order to reduce the cost , you may be transfer the design to China

 

[rx300]

ASIC design vs. plumbing

A friend of mine has spent > 15 yrs. in IC industry. He was offered a contractor IC design job lately, $60/hr. He had to take it, since that was the only job he could find.

A plumber in his area charges $65/hr by average.

This is truely a sad story ... There will probably be very few IC jobs in US, since most of them will be transferred to low cost countries such as east europe, india, china. Especially the engineers from east europe are very well trained and highly skillful.

 

[Guest]

another factor

Another factor in these areas is the relaxed enforcement of the laws. They can buy one copy of expensive IC design software and put in on many computers.

 

[teedesk]

Re: so sad

What is the chance for fresh graduate with a Master Degree to get a job in ASIC or VLSI in U.S. these day ?
Many of my friends can't find any jobs after graduation. The only ones got the jobs are those who have "CONNECTION"

less capable ppl who have the 'connection' get jobs easily, as compared to more capable ppl without the 'connection'......sad

Added after 15 minutes:

so sad, what will they do after so many engineers graduate? find a job in burger king?

I thought analog takes a lot of experience. I see numerous opening for analog ic design in my area. digital are few. RF is very stable, it takes long time to train analog and RF engineer. You cannot jump that quickly like java, c++, verilog/vhdl programming. I think the demand for these engineers are at least stable, the number of these engineers cannot increase as fast as programmers(verilog/vhdl/c/c++/java).

A little funny story from chips designed from India where companies use cheap labor to do most of the logics. I guess the logic inside might work well if we get to test them, however, peripheral consideration was not considered, things like power supply, clock, reset, it takes extra logic just to reset the chips, and the chip can be easily broken with no protection schemes insides. basically we had to gave up the chip after prototype, it was waste of time. And that company has very good reputation(world class company) up to now. It is bad practice when management try to save money this way. Also, I heard a lot of good engineers from these companies left for smaller startup, what remains are just mediocre. Thru my exprience with one BIG semi companies, I notice more ladies running arround doing core engineers work(definitely more than before). And from the decline of quality of their products, I really hate to make the correlation. Well I guess mainly 2 reasons:
1. you try to save money by outsource hardware design, but you lose something in the middle. Sometime it is not as easy as writing database program. these pure software products. I know India produces a lot of good programmers, things like for database, now networking routing, but hardware/ic wise, I don't know. Taiwan definitely have more background in that area.

2. The BEST engineers left during the tech hype last couple years and they are not likeyly to come back. And it really takes time and opportunity to train these BEST engineers.



well, the fact is life sucks for us engineers at this time. maybe try to do some military stuff, make small handheld bomb that you can easily shoot down fighter airplanes. There are a lot of demand there. who knows, maybe WWIII is coming. okay, enough ranting, Please don't accuse me, consider this as bushit.

from your story and the way you categorised java, c++, verilog/vhdl as programming, it reminds me of one thing which my lecturer had mentioned:
"verilog/vhdl is NEVER the same as software programming."

i agree that india can produce good quality software but for ic design, i'm keeping my fingers crossed.