Apologies for being obtuse. It was me, not you, that failed at communication. :) The type of work, though, and skills required are quite different, regardless

Apologies for being obtuse. It was me, not you, that failed at communication. :) The type of work, though, and skills required are quite different, regardless of that they technically both develop and involve 'technology'. Semiconductor lithography requires a pretty exciting mix of skills starting with plain physics (classical and by now a bit of quantum optics), materials science, mechanical engineering, data analysis/science, software engineering (both for simulation and analysis of production of lensing systems), and I'm sure I'm missing half. It is quite different from "writes software for a software company", which is the framing I had interpreted from the comment I originally responded to.