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Comment by spectramax | Hacker News Reader

I think the culture is improving despite of cashing it out in the 90's and 2000's during the Ballmer / Jack Welsch era. Semiconductor industry hasn't done a good job of cultivating a good, positive company culture and making it less regimented. We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company. I can assure you that there are so many incredible challenges that exist - with good definition/funding to tackle them from materials to marketing (direly needs to revamped). Imagine running a portion of the world's most advanced manufacturing processes. Ultra high volume (thousands of wafer starts per week), mind you.

Perhaps videos such as these are shining a positive light on the entire semiconductor goodwill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI

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> We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company.

I'm not sure I agree. If by 'cool' you mean along the lines of receiving respect and admiration from others because, while they don't really understand the actual specifics of what you do, they have a general idea and it's celebrated widely, then I don't think we want that happening in semi space.

It looks to me that it's happened already in software development, and I don't think the end result of that is net-positive.

I think that when people are passionate about what they do, and do it because they're passionate about it, the end results tend to be better than if they're doing it because other people will give them recognition.

I'm not saying this is something that happens all the time, and you can argue that I'm being elitest, snobby, or annoyed that the 'cool kids' have come into my playground and are playing with my toys, all of which would be valid positions to take. I do think that with all communities, they're very different when they have smaller appeal to when they have wider appeal.

Niche communities are not without their problems (and the toxicity that can happen in them cannot be understated), but I personally prefer them, and believe the output is generally of a higher quality, than communities with wider appeal.

I know what you mean - I think some of the toxicity and heavy handed management style can certainly improve.

> We need to make it cool to work in a semiconductor company.

I am not optimistic. "Semiconductor company" ==> high capitalization (expensive processes) ==> fertile ground for lawsuits and attacks.

As long as a slightest mistake has a potential to turn into multi-million-loss lawsuits, it will never be cool. Is it easy to be cool walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers? Not for many I'd guess.

BTW it is the same for non-semi companies (like OEMs), except that volumes of a given single product are generally lower, so mistakes are more bounded.

Wow. Those machines are something else altogether. I watched a chip making clip a while back and I recall that they talked about having to make strange patterns in the stencils (not sure what they’re called) to work around the way the light twists when it actually hits the die. I’ve probably got most of that wrong but is that still a thing with the addition of the water layer?

Yeah, they calculate the transfer function of the pattern and then pattern the mask to achieve the end result printed on the silicon substrate. With EUV lithography, it substantially reduced this pattern complexity.

Jim talks about it at this mark in this presentation: https://youtu.be/Qnl7--MvNAM?t=784

Sounds like this video: Indistinguishable from magic: Manufacturing modern computer chips

https://youtu.be/NGFhc8R_uO4

Just amazing. I wish a newer video explaining more recent technologies was available.

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