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I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building these fabs will do amazing things for the local community & economy. It is also likely the most resil

I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building these fabs will do amazing things for the local community & economy. It is also likely the most resilient part of the TX power grid...

gorjusborg 3y ago
Careful. The cost of a fab makes it very difficult for competitors to start up. Working in a field with only a few competitors seems attractive, but you risk specializing in skills that only few businesses worldwide can leverage. I used to work in semiconductors and transitioned to software when I realized how precarious that was.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  Using mad physics and computer skillz to change the course of empire? Cool! For a $78k salary in HCOL area? Not Cool! This was years ago and not TX. I'm sure it has gotten slightly better but what I see on glassdoor still makes me very glad I listened to the job hunting postdocs in nanofab class and steered clear of this career path.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    It really is such a cool field, but yeah, the pay isn't great, especially given the tendency to crunch.
- bob1029 3y ago
  I used to work in semiconductors as well. At the SAS A2/S2 lines right down the street. I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former employer, although the thought has crossed my mind... My reasoning for a move would be about all of the higher-order consequences of having well-compensated technology enthusiasts imported by the thousands.
  - gorjusborg 3y ago
    > I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former employer No worries, I was picturing a young person setting out to 'make their fortune' by moving across the country to make it. I just wanted to share the perspective I left the field with. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to make it work!
dpflan 3y ago
I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up to support this long term, assuming best conditions. I'm curious about investment into education that can lead to further economic developments (e.g. rise in engineering education due to factors like proximity to tech jobs that can persist, i.e. working at a fab (in any capacity) is good job/career to learn/work towards).
- vel0city 3y ago
  > I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up to support this long term From a North Texas perspective, the communities were already built up. The first integrated circuit was made in North Texas. DFW has some of the highest number of fabs per square mile, tons of small producers around along with some of the big behemoths. North Texas has been a pretty big semiconductor manufacturer since semiconductor manufacturing has been a thing. For a historical context of the history of the community of semiconductors in North Texas, JFK was shot on his way going to give a speech at what would become UT Dallas, a school whose entire history is focused on semiconductors.
Spooky23 3y ago
It’s the worst business to work for. You’ll work 60 hours a week for shitty pay, and be the Yoda of some tool. In 10 years there will be a new magic tool. Then you start learning the Starbucks menu.
- vel0city 3y ago
  There are loads of jobs related to the fabs surrounding them though. Lots of companies designing the things these fabs will end up actually producing, lots of testing the things these fabs produce, lots of integrating these things the fabs produce. The technology services supporting those companies making the designs. Etc.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Those jobs don't pay well either. You'll see salaries of around $70-110k in very expensive metros like the Bay, Portland, Dallas, Austin, etc. Salaries just haven't kept up in the EE space.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      I'll tell that to all my friends in the EE space who live very comfortably that they're clearly not paid well. They'll probably have a laugh while they're out boating.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade. I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE salaries where either you work at an Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which pays competitively and others which pay subpar wages. Maybe this is heavily dependent on the subset of EE as well (eg. I'd assume the profit margins for a fabless GPU company like Nvidia are much higher than a company building/desigining ASICs for Telcom usecases like KLA). That said, you seem to be from North Texas/DFW and EE wages and cost of living seem much more managable compared to those offered in the Bay Area and Portland.
vel0city 3y ago
There's a lot to like and some to dislike, but I imagine that holds true just about anywhere. I've enjoyed my time living in North Texas, mostly from a cost of living and plenty of opportunity perspective. I don't exactly make a massive income (probably about half of a similar salary to the valley) but with that I'm able to actually afford a decent house with a single income family and still save, have a commute of only a few minutes, and I can take a light rail very close to my home into downtown to access all the things I'd want from a big city. I definitely don't pretend its all just roses though. It being over 100F every day for the past month or so is definitely a big negative, and a good bit of the politics here is getting ugly. We need to continue to expand the public transit in North Texas and make it more useful to reduce car dependency. More dense housing options need to be available to allow people to choose different ways to live and alleviate rising housing costs. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed, but there's movement in positive directions around here. A lot of the debate about Texas power grid make things sound way worse than it is. In reality Texas is about average when it comes to reliability in the US. Meanwhile we produce the most renewable energy in the country, we enable people to buy 100% renewable electric plans, and our cost of energy is some of the cheapest in the country. There's definitely challenges ahead for the grid and some of the market strategies we have need to be re-thought, but overall I'm not too worried about the grid long-term. Texas isn't alone with its grid challenges though, most states need to address massively aging infrastructure.
- sgarland 3y ago
  > In reality Texas is about average when it comes to reliability Do you have a source for this? Anecdotally, I felt the need to buy a generator when I lived north of Austin, because outages were frequent enough that it seemed warranted. Since moving to North Carolina (just north of Charlotte), I’ve had exactly one outage in a year, and that was on a mild day, just had some equipment failure. Never once here have I received notice that I needed to reduce consumption to help the grid.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Electric-Utility-Performance-A-State-By-State-Data-Review_final.pdf https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021... Here they rank it 30/50 in reliability and performance metrics. If we're sharing anecdotes, I've never lost power for more than a few seconds in the past decade or so, and before that it was pretty much only because of hurricanes or tornadoes in the area.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
"the most resilient part of TX power grid" A roommate of mine once quipped on something: 'that's like saying my crap smells better than yours'. Feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert, but Texas runs its own state-only independent grid, it got completely pants in the ice storm a few years ago, and at the time a lot of articles said the Texas grid is fundamentally less resilient that other power companies. Is any of that wrong? However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-generation industry.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-generation industry. Surprisingly, you got to thank George Bush for that He made renewable wind and solar energy a major part of his energy policy when he was Govenor of TX. [0]. In 1999, he passed a law mandating Texas to get 2,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy by 2009. This helped spurt the entire renewable industry in TX [0] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-bush-helped-make-texas-a-clean-energy-powerhouse/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-b...
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Why's that surprising?
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Rhetorical flourish.
    - red-iron-pine 3y ago
      Because the Bushs are a family of oil types
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        They actually started off in the New York City publishing industry. McGraw Hill was founded by the Bush family before they decamped for Dallas in the 1920s.

I've been thinking about moving out to that area. Building these fabs will do amazing things for the local community & economy. It is also likely the most resilient part of the TX power grid...

gorjusborg 3y ago

Careful. The cost of a fab makes it very difficult for competitors to start up. Working in a field with only a few competitors seems attractive, but you risk specializing in skills that only few businesses worldwide can leverage. I used to work in semiconductors and transitioned to software when I realized how precarious that was.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jjoonathan 3y ago
Using mad physics and computer skillz to change the course of empire? Cool! For a $78k salary in HCOL area? Not Cool! This was years ago and not TX. I'm sure it has gotten slightly better but what I see on glassdoor still makes me very glad I listened to the job hunting postdocs in nanofab class and steered clear of this career path.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  It really is such a cool field, but yeah, the pay isn't great, especially given the tendency to crunch.
bob1029 3y ago
I used to work in semiconductors as well. At the SAS A2/S2 lines right down the street. I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former employer, although the thought has crossed my mind... My reasoning for a move would be about all of the higher-order consequences of having well-compensated technology enthusiasts imported by the thousands.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  > I wasn't actually suggesting that I return to my former employer No worries, I was picturing a young person setting out to 'make their fortune' by moving across the country to make it. I just wanted to share the perspective I left the field with. That doesn't mean it isn't possible to make it work!

dpflan 3y ago

I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up to support this long term, assuming best conditions. I'm curious about investment into education that can lead to further economic developments (e.g. rise in engineering education due to factors like proximity to tech jobs that can persist, i.e. working at a fab (in any capacity) is good job/career to learn/work towards).

vel0city 3y ago
> I'm definitely interested in how the communities build up to support this long term From a North Texas perspective, the communities were already built up. The first integrated circuit was made in North Texas. DFW has some of the highest number of fabs per square mile, tons of small producers around along with some of the big behemoths. North Texas has been a pretty big semiconductor manufacturer since semiconductor manufacturing has been a thing. For a historical context of the history of the community of semiconductors in North Texas, JFK was shot on his way going to give a speech at what would become UT Dallas, a school whose entire history is focused on semiconductors.

Spooky23 3y ago

It’s the worst business to work for. You’ll work 60 hours a week for shitty pay, and be the Yoda of some tool. In 10 years there will be a new magic tool. Then you start learning the Starbucks menu.

vel0city 3y ago
There are loads of jobs related to the fabs surrounding them though. Lots of companies designing the things these fabs will end up actually producing, lots of testing the things these fabs produce, lots of integrating these things the fabs produce. The technology services supporting those companies making the designs. Etc.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Those jobs don't pay well either. You'll see salaries of around $70-110k in very expensive metros like the Bay, Portland, Dallas, Austin, etc. Salaries just haven't kept up in the EE space.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I'll tell that to all my friends in the EE space who live very comfortably that they're clearly not paid well. They'll probably have a laugh while they're out boating.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Idk, KLA has multiple Test Engineer roles open right now in Milpitas that are offering $29/hour and the idiots at Motek have been spamming me with ASIC Design Engineer roles paying around $80-100k/yr within the Bay Area even though I haven't been an engineer for almost a decade. I think there might be a bimodal distribution within EE salaries where either you work at an Nvidia/Google/Apple/AMD/TI type company which pays competitively and others which pay subpar wages. Maybe this is heavily dependent on the subset of EE as well (eg. I'd assume the profit margins for a fabless GPU company like Nvidia are much higher than a company building/desigining ASICs for Telcom usecases like KLA). That said, you seem to be from North Texas/DFW and EE wages and cost of living seem much more managable compared to those offered in the Bay Area and Portland.

vel0city 3y ago

There's a lot to like and some to dislike, but I imagine that holds true just about anywhere. I've enjoyed my time living in North Texas, mostly from a cost of living and plenty of opportunity perspective. I don't exactly make a massive income (probably about half of a similar salary to the valley) but with that I'm able to actually afford a decent house with a single income family and still save, have a commute of only a few minutes, and I can take a light rail very close to my home into downtown to access all the things I'd want from a big city. I definitely don't pretend its all just roses though. It being over 100F every day for the past month or so is definitely a big negative, and a good bit of the politics here is getting ugly. We need to continue to expand the public transit in North Texas and make it more useful to reduce car dependency. More dense housing options need to be available to allow people to choose different ways to live and alleviate rising housing costs. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed, but there's movement in positive directions around here. A lot of the debate about Texas power grid make things sound way worse than it is. In reality Texas is about average when it comes to reliability in the US. Meanwhile we produce the most renewable energy in the country, we enable people to buy 100% renewable electric plans, and our cost of energy is some of the cheapest in the country. There's definitely challenges ahead for the grid and some of the market strategies we have need to be re-thought, but overall I'm not too worried about the grid long-term. Texas isn't alone with its grid challenges though, most states need to address massively aging infrastructure.

sgarland 3y ago
> In reality Texas is about average when it comes to reliability Do you have a source for this? Anecdotally, I felt the need to buy a generator when I lived north of Austin, because outages were frequent enough that it seemed warranted. Since moving to North Carolina (just north of Charlotte), I’ve had exactly one outage in a year, and that was on a mild day, just had some equipment failure. Never once here have I received notice that I needed to reduce consumption to help the grid.
- vel0city 3y ago
  https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Electric-Utility-Performance-A-State-By-State-Data-Review_final.pdf https://www.citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2021... Here they rank it 30/50 in reliability and performance metrics. If we're sharing anecdotes, I've never lost power for more than a few seconds in the past decade or so, and before that it was pretty much only because of hurricanes or tornadoes in the area.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

"the most resilient part of TX power grid" A roommate of mine once quipped on something: 'that's like saying my crap smells better than yours'. Feel free to correct me, I'm not an expert, but Texas runs its own state-only independent grid, it got completely pants in the ice storm a few years ago, and at the time a lot of articles said the Texas grid is fundamentally less resilient that other power companies. Is any of that wrong? However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-generation industry.

alephnerd 3y ago
> However, Texas is loaded with sun/desert and I believe a ton of wind resources, so it has that going for it for next-generation industry. Surprisingly, you got to thank George Bush for that He made renewable wind and solar energy a major part of his energy policy when he was Govenor of TX. [0]. In 1999, he passed a law mandating Texas to get 2,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy by 2009. This helped spurt the entire renewable industry in TX [0] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-bush-helped-make-texas-a-clean-energy-powerhouse/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/08/29/70295/george-w-b...
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  Why's that surprising?
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Rhetorical flourish.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    Because the Bushs are a family of oil types
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      They actually started off in the New York City publishing industry. McGraw Hill was founded by the Bush family before they decamped for Dallas in the 1920s.