4 ms·

There are plenty of EEs in the good ol' US of A, they're just working as software engineers at the moment out of necessity, since there aren't really any EE job

by ein0p 2y ago

There are plenty of EEs in the good ol' US of A, they're just working as software engineers at the moment out of necessity, since there aren't really any EE jobs here, outside the defense sector and a few large companies. But that is beside the point since it's not "EE" that's being done in China. It's manufacturing and assembly of US designs. And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. The actual work is mostly done by robots, but before it _is_ done by robots, manufacturing capacity needs to be designed and built. Under the best circumstances (e.g. unlimited Apple resources in India) this takes years.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. Rather: cheap (US) labor that can do that. :-)
- ein0p 2y ago
  I don't even think it's the cost. The actual formerly labor-intensive work is mostly done by robots now (save for e.g. the garment industry which is still only very partially automated). It's just that anything in the physical world takes time and effort. As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. I was first exposed to this when I worked for a "mostly hardware" company that also designs chips. They were going to introduce some features into the chips that I needed on the software side, and when asked about the timeline they said "3-4 years". Not a typo. That's how it is in hardware. I have no reason to believe that the timelines are substantially shorter in large scale high tech manufacturing - it's just the nature of the thing. You fuck something up, you can't just patch it, you have to re-do it, and that takes time and $$$. Be all of that as it may, we still _have_ to revitalize the "real" segment of our industry, no matter the cost.
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. That's also partly because (physical world) engineers don't invest the same intense effort to enable quick iteration cycles for their area as software engineers do. I cannot say whether this is a "culture problem" of engineering disciplines, or managers don't see a huge economic value that this would enable, and thus don't allow engineers to work on such topics. I at least somewhat know what I am talking about, since when I had to get used to some CAD program, I really felt set back by decades in comparison what are standard practices in software development. A little bit like the difference between programming in a modern programming language and programming in Excel. Thus, in some sense I am impressed by (e.g. mechanical) engineers who despite all this actually are capable to accomplish creating a product (and I do believe that if the practices improved, they could do so much more).
    - ein0p 1y ago
      It's more fundamental than this, IMO. No matter how much you invest into faster iteration cycles, physical world just takes a long time, and the worst part is, you either have to get some very complicated thing right the first time, or add a sufficient buffer to your plans. Discovered a bug in your chip after initial tapeout? Add months to the schedule. Too much RF crosstalk in the PCB? Add a couple of weeks at least. Take Apple for example. Do you think they didn't invest into faster iterations? I'm sure they did. And each chip still takes 3+ years there, too. Qualcomm? About 3 years. Google? Also about 3 years (I heard of the upcoming 192GB TPU being developed over 2 years ago when I was there; it was announced this week). The "innovations" that they are talking about today were actually decided 3 years ago. 3 years ago was a very different time, of course. There's also another problem when it comes to chips. On the higher end, you have to design for the technological processes that don't yet exist. E.g. 2nm did not exist 3 years ago, yet the design of the chips that use it was done back then. You're also doing it with bleeding edge tooling.
vdfs 1y ago
From the article: "If you scoured the United States, you would be able to probably actually still count the number of skilled electronics engineers. If you go to Shenzhen, there's floor after floor after floor after floor of skilled EE's"

by ein0p 2y ago

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> And that is where there's real shortage - skilled labor that can do that. Rather: cheap (US) labor that can do that. :-)

ein0p 2y ago
I don't even think it's the cost. The actual formerly labor-intensive work is mostly done by robots now (save for e.g. the garment industry which is still only very partially automated). It's just that anything in the physical world takes time and effort. As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. I was first exposed to this when I worked for a "mostly hardware" company that also designs chips. They were going to introduce some features into the chips that I needed on the software side, and when asked about the timeline they said "3-4 years". Not a typo. That's how it is in hardware. I have no reason to believe that the timelines are substantially shorter in large scale high tech manufacturing - it's just the nature of the thing. You fuck something up, you can't just patch it, you have to re-do it, and that takes time and $$$. Be all of that as it may, we still _have_ to revitalize the "real" segment of our industry, no matter the cost.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > As software engineers we're used to quick iteration cycles in everything. It might not seem to you that they are "quick", but compared to the physical world they are. That's also partly because (physical world) engineers don't invest the same intense effort to enable quick iteration cycles for their area as software engineers do. I cannot say whether this is a "culture problem" of engineering disciplines, or managers don't see a huge economic value that this would enable, and thus don't allow engineers to work on such topics. I at least somewhat know what I am talking about, since when I had to get used to some CAD program, I really felt set back by decades in comparison what are standard practices in software development. A little bit like the difference between programming in a modern programming language and programming in Excel. Thus, in some sense I am impressed by (e.g. mechanical) engineers who despite all this actually are capable to accomplish creating a product (and I do believe that if the practices improved, they could do so much more).
  - ein0p 1y ago
    It's more fundamental than this, IMO. No matter how much you invest into faster iteration cycles, physical world just takes a long time, and the worst part is, you either have to get some very complicated thing right the first time, or add a sufficient buffer to your plans. Discovered a bug in your chip after initial tapeout? Add months to the schedule. Too much RF crosstalk in the PCB? Add a couple of weeks at least. Take Apple for example. Do you think they didn't invest into faster iterations? I'm sure they did. And each chip still takes 3+ years there, too. Qualcomm? About 3 years. Google? Also about 3 years (I heard of the upcoming 192GB TPU being developed over 2 years ago when I was there; it was announced this week). The "innovations" that they are talking about today were actually decided 3 years ago. 3 years ago was a very different time, of course. There's also another problem when it comes to chips. On the higher end, you have to design for the technological processes that don't yet exist. E.g. 2nm did not exist 3 years ago, yet the design of the chips that use it was done back then. You're also doing it with bleeding edge tooling.

vdfs 1y ago

From the article: "If you scoured the United States, you would be able to probably actually still count the number of skilled electronics engineers. If you go to Shenzhen, there's floor after floor after floor after floor of skilled EE's"