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Comment by vsskanth | Hacker News Reader

Are there enough qualified people available to hire in the US for this? Unemployment rate for electrical engineers is very low.

Chip making is a highly specialized field where you need access to global talent. US work visa/immigration system is capricious and isn't easy to work with.

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There are way too many computer scientists coming out of the college pipeline, it'll be very easy for those engineers to pivot to the semiconductor field. Additionally, on the manufacturing side, semiconductors are in principle pretty similar to biotech and biologics pharma maufacturing (many discrete unit operation skids, cleanroom environment, lots of documentation, etc) and i'm seeing lots of automation and manufacturing companies pivoting to semi-conductors.

it won't be 100% efficient, but where the money goes, the talent will follow pretty quickly.

AFAIK, salaries for electrical engineers are very low compared to software engineers so there isn't much interest in working on EE problems. Unless it's your passion and you're willing to give up a good salary.

It's a good question. Part of the reason TSMC's plant in Arizona can't get going is because local unions block them bringing over skilled personnel from Taiwan.

I think there are a lot of ECEs that work in software. A lot of my classmates from my EE undergrad went to software despite getting a more hardware centric education because software was offering more money.

I imagine there are many people people that, if they pay was higher, would move back to more 'pure' EE/ECE work.

You have to start somewhere. If the US wants to get the supply chain back (which it foolishly gave away for a short term boost in corporate profits) it's gonna have to do what the economies that took the supply chain away did and start making public investments in it.

I'm assuming Intel took the contract because they already have the capacity to fulfill it.

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