I studied CS but stumbled into a verification internship with Intel and now converted to full time. This was the only job I could get since the job market is so brutal for juniors right now. Though I'm grateful I'm not unemployed. My work rn is 90% software, developing tools for FV. I've never used UVM and don't write almost any SystemVerilog code. As expected with Intel, work expectation is super low, my manager barely seems to have work for me to do, I could barely show up for an entire day quite frequently and be totally fine. Although, my current project is quite challenging and interesting, and the team I'm in is developing a very important and cool product (but it won't come out for another couple years). I wasn't that interested in HW or verification before the internship. The thing I love most about CS is building something that like magic produces something you won't expect from code. Things like simulations, modeling, graphics, games, ML models are the best. Verification on the other hand is so fundamentally unsexy to me, like you're basically a SDET with more rigor. Ultimately all technical work ends up feeling similar on a day-to-day basis, but I had the realization that I don't think I will ever finish building something in verification and think "wow, this is really cool, I'm proud of myself for having made this". I got an OA for a Google DV position yesterday and even though working at Google would be awesome, I'm not sure I would even want to accept the offer even if I pass, as I would be burrowing myself deeper into this career path. Should I try to transition into software? How? Would the work be more cool if I transition into HW design? I also maybe want to go back to school for a masters related to ML, is that stupid in this economy? TC: 150k YOE: 3 months #Intel #Verification #Hardware #CareerAdvice
If you are passionate about CS then I would encourage you to get a job in CS. Definitely yes for taking up coursework related to ML. (Sometimes Intel sponsors higher education and coursework part time. You don't need to go back to school full time.)
Lol you are in the right spot, there’s still no llm for system verilog if i were you i would work on that given hour lite workload. You can easily grow into the subject matter expert in this niche field, still call your work cs related
There are research going on. paper below https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.11140.pdf
Dude try for SDE positions
I came from a background of silicon design, and later switched to PM in the GenAI space. Few years ago I used to shit on semiconductor roles and on how boring it is and how low the comp is. But now I see everything is interrelated and glad that I came from semiconductor. if CS is your passion, you should aim to be the SWE that understands how compute works. That’s a niche domain to be in. Especially if you are into AI/ML stuff. AI these days is all about compute, and knowing how computer architecture works gives you an edge to build efficient ML models. Being in DV you get to dive deep into computer architecture and understand how things work.
It boggles my mind that anyone believes semiconductor industry is boring. There are so many different facets and different domains.
Not if you've not studied anything about semiconductors or EE in general in school. Then it's just something you don't understand but you're still building tools for it. Pretty boring career in long term if you have no clue about why you're doing stuff
Have you considered staying in hardware engineering but pivoting to working on FPGAs in trading/finance? I used to work with a guy who was a hardware engineer at Airbus (or at least for a company that worked with Airbus). He built some of the systems that are installed in the A320 (iirc). He was quite proud of that but I think he really enjoyed working in finance. Something for you to consider. Edit: Please don't romanticise software engineering all that much. If you want to transition into software, that's totally cool and you could probably do that easily. But a lot of software engineering is unfulfilling crap as well. I can promise you that 90% of the ML stuff is bullcrap and overhyped as well.
You're only 3 months in. Hardly time for your career path to be set. If you want to move back to SWE just leetcode or whatever and jump ship now. Don't wait and make it harder for yourself to jump out of this hole.
Formal verification is used for software too, although it is much much harder due to state space explosion problem. Check AWS Automated Reasoning group, they do FV for software and they may like your background. Many FV techniques were developed for software, in particular C, then they convert Verilog to C to verify. https://www.cprover.org/hardware/v2c/ The tool above was written by Daniel Korening, a professor at Oxford and L8 at AWS. After finishing undergrad, I worked as a hardware designer at Renesas, writing VHDL code. Now, I'm a generalist SWE, focusing on distributed system.
lol it’s crazy how relevant your response is to my current work. The two ppl I work with came from Amazon and meta, and I’m also writing a translator for FV! Might be doxing myself but whatever.
You’re gonna regret this attitude in a few years when you see people doing “boring jobs” making 4x as you
Join google . R u stupid to reject google offer and stay in sinking ship?