Non CS/EE hardware career advice
Hello guys, I joined intel about 6 months ago. My manager and the team are nice, WLB is good ( which is important to me since I have a family to take care of), the technique I use is relevant to my PhD work. Still have new things to learn now. However, I’m afraid my career will be limited and become hard to switch if I stay at this position for a long time. I feel my skills are strongly confined within the instruments I use (2-3 kinds). The majority of my job is doing experiment and preparing reports to support other teams, most of tasks don’t need a PhD to accomplish. The team is within a supporting group, so the visibility is not as good as CS/EE folks at intel . I’m thinking to switch to AMAT/LAM for their product engineer roles. I have interviewed with them before, it sounds like the job involves some design and project management stuff? Is it worth to move? Or are there other good companies I’m not aware of? Given that I prefer not to move to Bay Area, not many choices I could find :( Any suggestions will be very appreciated! TC: 148K #hardware #semiconductor #intel #career #lamresearch #appliedmaterials
Lam and AMAT both have poor WLB and known for micromanagement. Just search up old threads on Blind.
Yes I have searched related threads before and this is what makes me hesitate to move. The worse case is the change in career growth is not much but with worse WLB and manager….
The career growth in niche engineering fields will never be as much as EE/CS and you will have fewer options. If you’re young, it’s not too late to switch…
Switch to SWE and thank me later.
There are product engineers who actually design the tools, and product engineers who mostly support customers by trying to solve issues when things go wrong. As far as I know, most designing decisions are made/tested at the headquarters in the Bay Area. I’m not sure how much you are able to impact major tool design outside of the Bay Area. That sounds like a path even more limited than your current situation. Switch to SWE if you want to make a jump! Or CS/EE if it’s not too far of a transition.
Thanks for sharing! I’m aware of these two types of product engineers. Th one involving designing tools is what I’ve received an offer and am still interested.
If you can move for a higher TC per hour of your time, why not.
That’s true. With my limited years of experience, I’d expect the change in compensation will not be large. So want see if anyone here has similar experience and if the product engineer is better in terms of career growth.