5 ms·

I blame the American corporate meme. American corporations are hideously slow, lumbering and quite honestly many are just "too big to fail" prop ups at this poi

I blame the American corporate meme. American corporations are hideously slow, lumbering and quite honestly many are just "too big to fail" prop ups at this point. Long gone are actual qualified individuals running even semiconductor manufacturers and its just bean counters and country club nephews.

yapyap 1y ago
anddd, just like any other Western Europesn country Americans need to be paid (semi-) living wages
- azinman2 1y ago
  Are you arguing that engineers inadequate salaries are to blame for intel losing its edge?
  - kelipso 1y ago
    Software engineer salaries in the US are significantly higher than electrical and computer engineering salaries and have been for a whole. Most of the bright and ambitious EE and CE people went to faang companies in 2010s and probably earlier too.
    - corimaith 1y ago
      A big reason why TSMC is competitive on the global market is precisely that their wages are low.. Granted, they don't have a finance industry or big tech to draw away talent.
    - dlenski 1y ago
      Yes, this is true. I had a great job in R&D at Intel, in a department full of PhDs, in the 2010s, then jumped to another semi company from 2015-20. Just before the pandemic in 2020, I got a job at AWS as a software engineer. It wasn't the only reason, but it was clear that I could make a lot more money in software. I quickly became disillusioned with almost everything about how large software companies work, and now back working as a data scientist for an advanced manufacturing company 5 years later.
leptons 1y ago
American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. America is not slow, and it's definitely not "too big to fail" as the current administration is trying to make it fail, but that is an aside. I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world. There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few. Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned. What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  TSMC's competitive advantage comes from Taiwan's unique willingness to look away from wanton dumping of used acid wash like it's the 80s in Silicon Valley? Or moderately more expensive labor on one of those highly automated factories with FOUPs zooming every which way? Press (X) to doubt.
- timschmidt 1y ago
  > American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. According to https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-part-vi-the-secret-life-of-fred-terman-and-stanford/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-sili... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo the creation of Silicon Valley had more to do with academic expertise in radio research and Department of Defense funding circa World War II. Corporations were the "second wave".
  - leptons 1y ago
    >"The popularization of the name is often credited to Don Hoefler, the first journalist to use the term in a news story.[1] His article "Silicon Valley U.S.A." was published in the January 11, 1971" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley "Silicon Valley" describes the period between the late 1960s and mid/late 1990s (and still to this day to some extent). It has nothing to do with what went on there around World War II. Yes, semiconductor corporations created "Silicon Valley". Before that time it may have been a sort of "Vacuum Tube Valley", but that does not have the same ring to it. And around WW2 there was tech going on everywhere, not just around Mountain View.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
guelo 1y ago
Intel was killed by greedy investors that wanted profits plowed into buybacks instead of investing in the next fabs.
- corimaith 1y ago
  Pretty sure Intel failed because of the opposite, they were too ambitious in attempting to do both fab and design that they out outmanuvered by more nimble companies like AMD and TSMC.

yapyap 1y ago

anddd, just like any other Western Europesn country Americans need to be paid (semi-) living wages

azinman2 1y ago
Are you arguing that engineers inadequate salaries are to blame for intel losing its edge?
- kelipso 1y ago
  Software engineer salaries in the US are significantly higher than electrical and computer engineering salaries and have been for a whole. Most of the bright and ambitious EE and CE people went to faang companies in 2010s and probably earlier too.
  - corimaith 1y ago
    A big reason why TSMC is competitive on the global market is precisely that their wages are low.. Granted, they don't have a finance industry or big tech to draw away talent.
  - dlenski 1y ago
    Yes, this is true. I had a great job in R&D at Intel, in a department full of PhDs, in the 2010s, then jumped to another semi company from 2015-20. Just before the pandemic in 2020, I got a job at AWS as a software engineer. It wasn't the only reason, but it was clear that I could make a lot more money in software. I quickly became disillusioned with almost everything about how large software companies work, and now back working as a data scientist for an advanced manufacturing company 5 years later.

leptons 1y ago

American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. America is not slow, and it's definitely not "too big to fail" as the current administration is trying to make it fail, but that is an aside. I think America doesn't manufacture semiconductors because it is a very unclean process, full of nasty chemicals. It's expensive to make semiconductors and deal with the clean-up. There are less environmental restrictions and cheaper labor in other parts of the world. There are a bunch of Superfund sites around Mountain View, CA that serve as a reminder about the US Semiconductor industry - Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, National Semiconductor, Monolithic Memories, and Raytheon to name a few. Nobody in the U.S. really wants that in their back yard. Of course we've seen the same kind of thing from fracking, and everything else that rightly should be regulated or banned. What happens now with a defunded and purposefully dysfunctional EPA is anyone's guess. Maybe manufacturers will exploit the political climate to further destroy the environment to make a few more million or billion dollars.

smallmancontrov 1y ago
TSMC's competitive advantage comes from Taiwan's unique willingness to look away from wanton dumping of used acid wash like it's the 80s in Silicon Valley? Or moderately more expensive labor on one of those highly automated factories with FOUPs zooming every which way? Press (X) to doubt.
timschmidt 1y ago
> American corporations are what created "Silicon Valley" in the first place. According to https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-part-vi-the-secret-life-of-fred-terman-and-stanford/ https://steveblank.com/2009/04/27/the-secret-history-of-sili... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo the creation of Silicon Valley had more to do with academic expertise in radio research and Department of Defense funding circa World War II. Corporations were the "second wave".
- leptons 1y ago
  >"The popularization of the name is often credited to Don Hoefler, the first journalist to use the term in a news story.[1] His article "Silicon Valley U.S.A." was published in the January 11, 1971" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley "Silicon Valley" describes the period between the late 1960s and mid/late 1990s (and still to this day to some extent). It has nothing to do with what went on there around World War II. Yes, semiconductor corporations created "Silicon Valley". Before that time it may have been a sort of "Vacuum Tube Valley", but that does not have the same ring to it. And around WW2 there was tech going on everywhere, not just around Mountain View.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

guelo 1y ago

Intel was killed by greedy investors that wanted profits plowed into buybacks instead of investing in the next fabs.

corimaith 1y ago
Pretty sure Intel failed because of the opposite, they were too ambitious in attempting to do both fab and design that they out outmanuvered by more nimble companies like AMD and TSMC.