I'm not surprised to hear that traditional chipmakers are having trouble with their talent pool. I just recently left semiconductors to get into software. Gett

I'm not surprised to hear that traditional chipmakers are having trouble with their talent pool. I just recently left semiconductors to get into software. Getting into software is much more accessible, especially with the abundance of learning material online. It's also easier for people to imagine how software can make a difference in people's lives, which is a common motivator. We're more aware of how we use software on a daily basis. And it's often software that goes viral in a consumer market, not hardware - Apple and phones aside. Silicon fabrication and chip design are at a level of abstraction that's harder to grasp. How much accessible information is out there on hardware design? Neither is it easy to start fabricating your own chips. > “A big part of the challenge is in awareness — we need to help them see the path.” > That shouldn’t be difficult. “We make air travel safer, healthcare more predictable, we have an easy story to tell,” said Durn. I agree that there needs to be more awareness. It's not, however, as easy as you might think to sell a student on this story. Sure, it might sound great at first. It sounds convincing. Almost everything is based on the hardware these companies produce, right? Even if you convince them and get these new engineers in, you have to find out how to keep them. The scale of engineering that needs to happen at these companies is massive. It takes many moving parts. Many of these companies start by allocating new undergraduate engineers to grunt work that's required at any company of this size. > As our industry matured, operational efficiencies and a whole set of different DNA took hold Good luck convincing your new engineers that being inserted into your company as a cog and dealing with your business procedures for “operational efficiencies” is making the world a better place. > About 85% of chip vendors need new kinds of talent to keep pace with the rise of digital operations powered by automated systems, big data, and machine learning. However, 77% of them report a shortage of talent, particularly for EEs, according to studies by Deloitte Consulting done for the SEMI trade group. Sure, there’s going to be a shortage of talent when you often demand graduate degrees at a minimum. Even more so when you don’t pay as much as the software giants are. There is a good point in here though. These companies do need these new kinds of talent. And to be clear, it’s not the talent that needs to keep up with the new age, it’s these companies that need to keep pace. They need new processes and reorganization. And by reorganization, I mean something beyond just shuffling around managers and fattening up middle management. You have to somehow replace the processes that worked just ten years ago but are slowing you down now. IT and your software departments can’t be seen as a cost center anymore. Don’t hire bright young engineers to do things you should be automating. Hire people to automate those things instead.