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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

I think you’re looking at this from the wrong perspective. If your other option is to be a FAANG software engineer, sure, do that instead.

For the vast swathes of the country where the available jobs are some mix of retail/warehouse low wage drudgery, long haul trucking, drug dealing / fraud / other crime, or welfare, working in semiconductors might be a welcome and attractive option.

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“Better than welfare or crime” doesn’t really sell me that it’s a great option

You're replying from a place where you have OTHER options.

We should compare people's actual options, and not fall victim to the nirvana fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Sure but people able to be process engineers on the caliber of those at TSMC are likely to be able to get good SWE jobs if they really wanted to. We're talking about highly qualified jobs here, un Taiwan a lot of those are gonna have PhDs+.

phD are not what they used to be

If you can get a STEM PhD you can probably get into FAANG. Sure they're not what they used to be, they're still difficult to get. And they require many of the same skills as modern programming interviews.

> nd they require many of the same skills as modern programming interviews.

I don't know, I have seen numerous PHDs who can't competently write any piece of code, I'm beginning to think it's a feature, not a coincidence.

That's because their job isn't really to write code, it's to do something else. But if you can get a PhD you can probably learn how to leetcode. A lot of them don't really care much about being able to write good code.

People that create the factory flow, maybe. But I’d argue it’s a pretty different set of skills. People that run the flow, definitely not.

Some of those that maintain and make sure some machines are working correctly do have very advanced degrees, but I agree most aren't as qualified. However, these aren't the people the video is talking about nor the people that will be difficult to recruit.

The vast majority of people who are smart enough and have the work ethic to finish an EE degree are also smart enough to become a FANG engineer. EE is harder than computer science by far.

So for the set of people who can be fab engineers, live in the USA and speak English, yes, the FANG engineer option is always there.

As an EE I can assure you that’s not true. Also, many jobs at a fab don’t require a bachelors. Often they will want a relevant associate degree though.

Here’s an example: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/HRL-Laboratories/Job/Wafer-Pr...

That's not really the jobs that are most problematic. As the video mentions, Intel fixed this issue for them by setting up training pipelines from community colleges for these jobs. The issue is moreso for the positions requiring more advanced education.

Yes, but if you didn’t go to the handful of acceptable schools, it doesn’t matter much how smart you are.

this may have been true at some point in the past, but it certainly isn't now. most of the engineers I work with have degrees from schools I had never heard of before meeting them. my team just hired a new grad that didn't even have any internships in school. it's not hard to get an interview at FAANGs these days. the difficult (or "luck-required") part is actually giving good solutions to four out of five algo problems, each in 45 minutes.

They interview people from everywhere. Literally everywhere. They basically have tapped the whole market worth of talent.

You might not get an interview at any given company in a particular year, but you should be able to get some interviews over a couple years if you have decent GPA or work experience. You probably won't be placed on a top-notch team, but you'll get in.

EE isn't necessarily harder than CS, it just really depends on the school. CS degrees are extremely variable while engineering degrees are much less so. I agree with the rest of your argument though.

In my school in Canada it had one extra class per semester and I think took 5 years. It was known as a place where you didn't have a life and you were buried in coursework and not really expected to get great grades because of the workload.

I remember a professor sympathetically talking about how little clusters of people just split up the homework load together like it was a team project from random classes and then tell each other how to solve it to each other to save time.

CS was just another science degree in comparison.

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