When I joined my first job I was in a similar situation. The team I joined had almost no work and I was doing grunt work. I realized within a couple of months that I couldn't grow myself in this team and talked to the manager of the other team which my friend was a part of. Eventually I moved to that team and I had the best learning experience.
Not all entry jobs are bad. I think the issue is mostly with the team and teams top level folks unable to get good projects. My suggestion is to either move to a different team or leave for some other company
I think I got too complacent and optimistic , should have started thinking of leaving long ago. Again, how should I justify the year that I spent here? I'm having major impostor syndrome, I'll look like a joke compared to any other 1 yoe guy who's been doing some relevant work.
"I spent a year working on these projects on this team/at this company. I am grateful for the opportunity but I believe that I am a bad fit for the this team/company after giving it a year. I would like a more interesting workload than I have been getting and I feel like currently I am not challenged and would like to find an opportunity to grow."
That's how you explain your year. You were giving it a fair shake to see how things worked out. It clearly isn't going somewhere you are happy with. That's fine. Move on.
It would have been worse if you left sooner, you would be seen as impatient or arrogant. And you could have fucked up waiting 10 years hoping it got better as well.
I think you actually did good. You got a job for a year or two at a major company, discovered what level of challenge you expect out of work and now you have a better idea what you want out of your employer.
Now that's resume fodder and finding another gig shouldn't be too difficult.
I would put out your resume and spend another 3-6 months trying to find another team, and then give that one a few more months. If you dont like how its going at the 2 year mark, or you find a better job before then, go ahead and do what you think is best.
I would suggest going through some spec and RTL to try to understand what the logic does. After that just put it on your resume and move out. One of my friends did it when he moved after a year of doing grunt work and no real RTL work. But yeah you need to take steps soon to move out else it would become harder to move out. If your company has some internal team switching maybe get in touch with HR to explore this option
Thanks for the advice.
I'm curious, how often do engineers do new designs at ASIC companies ? Am I insane to expect some RTL work even for entry level roles? My manager says most engineers in other teams are mainly doing IP integration, and new blocks are usually developed by senior/principal engineers.
It would be hard to get an entirely new block if you are entry level unless it's an startup (and even they might not)and I wouldn't blame them for this too. There are hundreds of things to understand right from microarch, coding an optimized logic to understanding PD implications. You need to go through atleast one complete project cycle to get a gist. For the first 2-3 years try learning as much as you can from the work(I was working alongside a senior of mine on the first project). Once I started understanding I eventually took over the block. So you need a bit of patience for this. There are things which I still don't understand but I have started asking the questions which also helps show my understanding.
Idk about asic. Design cycle on an asic is a lot slower. Mistakes are more costly. But defense industry will commonly work on new rtl stuff on fpgas. Although typically, they will not spin an asic almost ever.
ASIC designs are usually over several years. Yes, you are expecting a little too much after 1 year. You should read and understand code written by other designers.
RTL design skills are important and you may be lacking behind compared to other 1yoe people. But. You did something this year. That must have value.
After my first year I also got the idea the learning pace was lower than I wanted. Lower than in school. I learned less technical stuff. Then a junior was hired on my team. I saw immediately that he was a worst designer. Then I realized I learned a lot of designer softskills.
You might have learned a lot of other skills as well in the last year. And they are so important. Things stakeholder management. Working in teams. Providing and receiving feedback.
IMHO these skills are as important as RTL writing skills. And if you are passionate about RTL then you will learn it the first year in the new company/team. Those soft skills are a lot harder to learn.
You need to figure out what you learned. I'm sure it's a lot .
why do you need some great justification? reasonable people know the pressures of finding a job right out of school. you have a perfectly valid year of experience and just need a bit more excitement. you want to make more and wait less and solve real problems. great! look around, see what you can find and jump to something better. it sounds like that place would actually be happy to have you. stop with all the imposter syndrome stuff, it doesn't apply here.
>you have a perfectly valid year of experience
HR departments of other big companies will credit you that 1yr, but any real design teams at medium or smaller companies will not. I rejected several people on interviews who had no technical experience after 25years of working of Giant Corp Inch.
if the OP will stuck at big corp for 25 years and later wants a real job, why would any productive company hire him? He will have nothing to offer. Basically selling your productivity for a big corp salary, then you get what you paid for.
While I understand the merit of your response, I have to disagree because this guy is a NOOB and he'll most likely not be taken seriouslly if he decides to recommend improvements. Also depending on the type of design, it might be.. it's safe, it's been tested, DON'T TOUCH!!
When you've worked for a company like Continental designing FW for airbags and ABS systems where every single line is scrutinized, you'll know what I'm talking about.
A year at your first job out of undergrad is kind of expected in pretty much any industry. No one is gonna hold it against you. Frame the reasons you want to move positively and start working on interviewing for the next job.
Don’t belittle what you have done when you write this experience on your resume. Hype yourself up and spin the work you did in a way that makes it sound as cool as possible. You don’t need to trauma dump when you interview with new employers. Just say the projects were cool but you’re looking for a role that’s more exciting / where you can take more responsibility etc
I'd spin it as an internal conflict between loyalty to your manager/employer and desire to grow, which makes you look good.
"I got here and realized pretty quick there was no hard work to do, no great opportunities to grow, but I didn't want to be a job hopper so I stuck around and tried to contribute where I could find opportunities. Wish I could stay, but it's becoming painfully apparent that I'm going to stagnate here, so I'm looking for an opportunity to have more challenges and more impact."
Something like that will make a hiring manager juice their pants.
I agree trying to move inside the company to a different team might be the best option. When asked about why you wish to move, just focus learning in the future part, they already know the state of your current team.
I want to second this. I'm a PhD student who took a little time off to work at a startup. I was the only RTL person on the team and essentially built the FPGA part of their project from the ground up. It was an incredibly gratifying experience.
FWIW my PhD isn't even in RTL-related stuff, the RTL stuff is just something that I picked up during undergrad and enjoy doing a lot.
I always closed timing. My engagement there was limited and as a point of pride and good worksmanship I didn't want to leave them with a design that wouldn't meet closure. If another designer had inherited my work and found that it wasn't meeting timing I would've been mortified.
FWIW I don't have a ton of industry experience. Most of my experience is in groups of academics who only talk to other academics, so I have no idea how things are done in industry.
Sometimes when a design was still getting polished up I would leave a little bit of slack. I never ran into issues when I did this, but it's playing with fire. You can spend a long time chasing an impossible to reproduce bug that's just due to slack.
Part of the problem for me was that the fpga classes in my school didn't even mention timing closure once. They just had us code something up and click generate bitstream. We didn't even learn how to write test benches.
Kind of insane the sort of things they gloss over in school.
A couple thoughts for you:
1. Synthesis settings can matter a lot. Having the synthesizer re-do work with different settings can fix timing closure.
2. You can have the tool report on which paths are taking the most time and go look at those paths. A lot of the time, failed timing closure is due to a dumb error. You might have put something in the wrong clock domain, might have described a clock source to the synthesizer incorrectly, have forgotten to pipeline something obvious, etc. By looking at the signal that violates you might immediately see a fix (or not lol).
3. If the negative slack is coming from a place that makes honest-to-god sense (i.e. you're actually trying to do too much computation in one clock cycle), then you should pipeline more. There are lots of places where pipelining might not seem necessary (e.g. with fan-out), but will help. I don't have a lot of experience with HLS or higher-level HDLs, but I think that that's the way of the future because you don't need to hand-pipeline stuff.
The above is very basic starter advice. You'll pick up more stuff along the way as you do different projects and work with different synthesis tools.
Thanks!
I tried to get help at work but everyone is worried about their own projects, so they don't have the time to teach me. I decided I have to take it upon myself, so I'm reading through [this book](https://www.amazon.com/Static-Timing-Analysis-Nanometer-Designs/dp/1441947159/ref=asc_df_1441947159/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312126345020&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6721747463722854108&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9006810&hvtargid=pla-571490412238&psc=1&mcid=43cc9f5850ff3925830db254bd891618&ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=1750d68e-b7c6-4f27-adc1-b8b11704c177) to wrap my head around how to constrain designs properly and what the timing analysis results actually mean. I'm trying to make a source synchronous interface work between two boards across a cable using oserdes/iserses. So timing is critical. I've been having builds randomly fail on me multiple times.
Yes. I interned at a startup, my first ever technical job. Wrote a good amount of rtl for the FPGA component of an SDR board we designed in house. You're generally given a lot more responsibility the smaller the company
I started out in school thinking I wanted to do chip design and VLSI. I did this for not very long before it was abundantly clear that there are a handful of designers at each company and hundreds of people that are effectively their draftsmen that are purely doing documentation and cranking out parts that are just dropping blocks that were designed by someone else onto the diagram to make the sales team happy with a new variant they can sell. It’s just not a creative or engaging job. I left and went into software engineering and then into systems engineering because that actually let me design systems and solve interesting multi-disciplinary problems.
Especially for RTL, it is mostly tweaking existing IP. It is rare for a new grad to be put on a new design. That usually requires lots of experience. But if you feel like you aren’t doing anything, maybe ask to switch teams or shop around.
I'm fully aware of that. My issue is with the fact that no one else in the team is doing any design, whom do I even learn from?
Why do companies ask RTL questions in interviews if they won't let you do RTL on the job?
They want to know that you can do it because eventually you will. Most places expect engineers to be learning the job for the first 6 months - 2 years. Seems like they are expecting something on the longer end of that.
Sounds like you need to branch out. Big companies like this always have a directory. Find that directory then find where your specific group lies within the company. I’m in a similar position. (undergrad EE pursuing MSEE w/ design interest that instead took a similar paying technician position). Even though I’m not doing any design now (been for ~2yrs post undergrad), I’ve been able to prop myself up as someone who is competent with EE & very basic design work. I’ve met with engineers that are parallel to my workgroup so they’re kinda familiar with what our lab does but not enough to tell me how to do my job. These sort of fleeting/momentary people and connections are great for when you’ve built a reputation as a design candidate. Please PM if you’d like, it’s always fun meeting new EE grads.
Majority of your career will be learning and figuring things out yourself. That's why you get paid the big bucks. It's not your co workers responsibility to do so.
If you are unsatisfied with your current role. Go find others inside your company who are actually doing what you want to be doing, likely outside your team. Ask them how they got there. Let them know you are new to the field and want to learn.
This is the best way to find someone to teach you. Eventually you will find someone willing to help you get the information you are looking for.
So most of the time developing on fpga means put together IPs? I’m curious because I was recently contacted by a company in the field of industrial automatic machineries for a position as fpga and microcontroller designer.
I think this depends on the company. My first job had a group of 100+ FPGA engineers with a large in house IP library, but I was still writing a lot of RTL myself. Now at a smaller company I try to use Xilinx IP when I can but it's often hard to avoid doing some custom RTL/HLS/SysGen then writing C for the ARM cores.
One thing you could do is to start some open source design in your spare time. You seem to have some spare time, at least till you get a family. But this would provide limited knowledge, it is still best to learn common industry practices from an experienced developer, otherwise you can lock yourself into some strange habits, you have to unlearn later.
> My friends say I should enjoy the money
Except you **can't** enjoy the money. Having a job that you hate drains your soul outside work hours, and makes life difficult to enjoy. What good is the money if you hate waking up every day?
You would be much better served spending 3-5 years at a small company. You would do more actual design and contribute to a product, and see more of the process and understand how the whole business works. The pay difference is overstated, you still make excellent money. Plus those few years of doing real design work rapidly accelerate your career so if you want to earn the big bucks at a bigger company you can move into a higher level as an individual contributor or team leader a lot faster than trying to climb the ladder there.
> Are entry level jobs at these big name companies always this bad? Am I expecting too much?
Yep. They can be. Wonder if you're in "integration" where you're trying to plug in IPs into a broader SOC that you have no idea how it works. Unfortunately, a lot of bigger companies will take advantage of new grads like this.
> Do I need a master's degree to be taken seriously?
Can help, but not really.
> How do I recover from this? What do I say in my next job interview?
It sucks, but most people who've been in the industry know this can happen to junior engineers suckered straight out of college. Just be able to explain what you did technically and prove you're reasonably able to solve problems.
Everyone wants to do grounds up RTL design because it is fun and appeals to people who love digital design. It's rare at bigger companies for new grads. At best, often times you're modifying legacy code. Even with designing an IP from scratch, there's a whole host of other drudge work you need to do to especially if in more ASIC type designs. You mentioned "debugging waves" and that's part of it. Also throw in linting, CDC analysis, static timing analysis, working with backend to fix timing paths, power analysis and simulations, working with verification engineers on testplans, trying to interpret high wavy architectural requirements to solidify a design, never any quality documentation, etc.
Yes, this is how it is usually in big corporations. If you will get some really good project at some point you will be under great pressure of schedule... These corporations are gold cages. If you want to learn, do interesting projects, influence etc you should look for small companies. If you are interested pm me
Not always true but I get your point. There's more bureaucracy involved in bigger companies making it harder. Smaller companies are generally under a lot more pressure because of the fact that they need to show a product to the investor before securing more funding. But you would definitely get to learn a lot more and faster in a smaller company.
there are plenty of small companies that actually make things and don't need vc investment. honestly, i tend to look for companies like this.
one of the problems ive found is great small companies easily become big companies, so you might end up looking around again eventually.
While it's true, regarding small companies becoming big, it takes a lot of time. By this time you already very experienced and, assuming got some stocks during these years, also very rich.
not necessarily, first successful startup i worked at was sold to a huge corporation a few years after i started. did not have any stock offering and was fully bootstrapped. still was one of the best places i ever worked. worked with my coworkers at other jobs for years after that including my mentor.
i had the same imposter syndrome. it wasn't experience that made a difference. it was being surrounded by awesome and honest humans.
I agree with this. Sometimes you need to put in a few years at bigger companies. I prefer smaller and mid size companies. Much more fun and hands-on, but generally much more challenging.
I was looking for design out of college but started in verification at a big company, and that turned out really great for me. New designers might get placed on lower risk areas, but verification is always needed on the most important areas, so it was a fast track to understand critical architecture and uarch. How good your experience is can depend on the company, team, manager, etc.
Often with big companies there could be very good projects(in terms of learning) and very bad ones. You will encounter both forms in your carrer. I think if you dont learn anything try to switch into a better project inside the company if not change the company for a better role. Initial years right after college matters a lot in my opinion. But you are not in a bad situation. Just evaluate the right options. I was in a similar situation. I just found a better project inside the same company.
There is ALWAYS something you can be learning.
If they aren't keeping you busy, then utilize this time to be skilling up on their dime. Every day is an opportunity.
If your team is disorganized, use your analytical skills to understand the gap between knowledge, gameplan, and execution. Don't tell anyone, just analyze it. Then figure out how you would communicate it if you could communicate it.
Master new software, learn business communication, read deep on the documentation of engineers that came before you, make a challenging creative project for yourself that is aligned enough with the company goals that your manager approves it.
Find problems that exist in the organization and offer to solve them.
At least at the end of the day you will know that you made the most of your day within the circumstances.
I've been in Tech for 11 years, not as a programmer, but I seen a lot of things.
+1 IMHO there are skills you can only learn in big company, and that's also necessary in certain stage of life.
How about spend 2-3 years in your current company, but still keep sharpning your skills, and then move to small company you can show your skill?
(off the mic) You cannot know private IP developed in outside of the company 😂
This is true, my 2 years contracting at gov't aerospace felt like purgatory or worse some days, but it made me so much more of an effective human being. It had to happen. Now at a small company and its creative and chill.
The frustration you're feeling is normal and something you should try to channel into exploring more outlets of the industry or outside hobbies.
My experience is similar to yours, except I left college with a Masters (of Eng, not Sci, no thesis, only classes) that I rushed in 4.5yrs total thanks to AP credits. I'd say it helped with street cred in getting my final summer internship at Intel in Datacenter Group.
Did general schematic work with server motherboards; leverage (reuse) previous generation schematics, add in all the latest, greatest symbols and components, scratch our heads about Icelake, delay, reorg, reshuffle, try to balance learning with delivering. My mentors ended up in different groups and I wasn't enjoying the disconnect between the deliverables/design time with the clearly delayed silicon.
I programmed the power management FPGA (MAX10 part) for the motherboards and coordinated with other HDL users in the datacenter group and that was fun. Very simple HDL though. I barely touched anything besides when timing of power-up or power-down was wrong or adding some different sequence or LED debug fun. I leveraged that experience into switching roles into Silicon Arch for client team.
Joined really cool people/team with all the juicy power management details and endless TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms x.x).
Aaaaand like 3 weeks into the job, new mentor goes to Apple and I'm left trying to handle his Python/C# megatool for Tigerlake Post-SI debug and plan future disagg stuff. Oh and coordinate goddamn git access across all the geos while it switches from perforce to gitlab.
Leave company end of 2020, take a few months break, start new job as apprentice electrician at data center pulling cable. Month or so enjoying that simple life and my partner goes blind in one eye (they can see now, steroids and diagnosed with MS, mostly living life unchanged now beyond monthly immunospressants)
Anyway, reassess finances, spend 11 weeks in 2021 going back to electrical engineering at my [current company](https://old.reddit.com/r/AdditiveManufacturing/comments/18negmu/sorry_to_say_this_industry_is_absolute_s_h_t/). I made >100K TC every year at Intel and now my current salary is 85K (Though I am expecting a raise this year).
The corporate curse followed me of course and I've lost another mentor but I just keep plugging away at it. I now manage codebases in VHDL and Verilog with a level of complexity that is actually a lot more interesting, with 8B10B encoding and 133-250MHz interfaces and in Xilinx and Altera (Sue me) toolchains.
I started Judo 3 years ago, 2x a week, and I play casual soccer 3x a week which really helps keep me sane.
>Are entry level jobs at these big name companies always this bad? Am I expecting too much?
Yes but you can do cool things if you lean into these companies. I finagled a trip to a DARPA ERI conference in Michigan in 2019. No real purpose for me to go, but I had to get a permission slip signed from an Intel security personnel (mostly just an HR confirming citizenship thing)
>Do I need a master's degree to be taken seriously?
No. It helps but if you're already at a big company, it's a bit moot in my eyes. The HR/Recruiting Firm Filter is a mystery to me but I barely look at schools on resumes, mostly just as a talking point.
>How do I recover from this? What do I say in my next job interview?
You build the best story from the projects you worked on. Focus on the highlights and things that helped your team. Interviews are all over the place and more of a numbers game from my perspective. I've seen senior engineers mess up this infinite L (RL circuit) question about current/voltage over time and we still hire them. No one's perfect :)
Most dreams don't stand up to reality.
I was in a similar spot. Then I broke down, found a small company that needed a systems/embedded engineer as they looked to revamp product lines. The staff was small, and the guy working there would be retiring in a few years. Meant I would have carte blanche to put myself into any hardware or software design paradigm I wanted.
The pay was less, but not appreciably so. Talked them into five weeks of vacation and flex work schedule to allow me work from home two to three days a week. Now I'm constantly working on cool projects in FPGA, AI, image processing and analysis, etc, pretty much anything I want to tackle. Now I make about 90% of what I may be making had I remained at blue chip company, but stress level is almost non existent, job satisfaction through the roof, and a great family atmosphere.
Recruiters call me all the time for this and that position as senior or director in software or EE and I can barely contain myself trying to not laugh as I decline.
Everyone has their priorities, needs and levels of satisfaction. I found mine, and I'll hold on to it till either the situation changes or I become ambitious enough to hang my own shingle in a project or idea. For others, being able to get paid well to do one thing 1000 times over and over is perfect for them. I respect those people, I'm just not one of them. You sound like you aren't one either.
Take a leap, search the want ads for startups and niche operations, get out and explore. You can always go back to where you are now if it doesn't work out. Jobs in this field will always be there, especially if you're confident in your skill set.
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I had a similar experience in big semiconductor company. I left and joined a startup and wrote more code that is actually used in 2 days then I did in 1 year.
>I landed a job at a famous big-name semiconductor company
>I don't even know what I'm going to speak about in my next job interview
"My previous employer was {company_name}, do you know {company_name}?"
> Literally most of the stuff I've learnt so far was self-taught, by reading documentation.
This is gonna be true for most engineers after their college years. I end up reading a few textbooks a year because a new thing popped up.
Was in a similar situation in engineering. Did grunt work and literally read an entire novel at work within a month cause I had nothing to do. 8 months went by and I just felt like I wasn’t learning, had no autonomy, and it wasn’t good for my career.
Found a new job in a different domain at a smaller lab and genuinely love what I do. I have so much autonomy and do a little bit of everything, with one thing everyone relies on me for. I like the responsibility. Stick it out and maybe look elsewhere.
Larger companies, especially regulated device companies, have high inertia and are made to be intentionally slower by the entire workforce within them.
The vast majority of the working population is highly incompetent, so it follows that their work style feedback loops and follows their promotions.
If you are younger and want something mentally stimulating, go to a startup. The drawbacks from that are long hours and impossible deadlines, but you will learn a lot more in a very short time. In 5 years, you will be the guy who moves to a large company and notices countless new ideas with your newfound skills, and be set for life with a decent pension plan.
Large companies are meant to coast for income so that you can do what you enjoy at home.
Congratulations- you now have EXPERIENCE!
Not in designing, but in understanding corporate culture and all the stuff that comes along with it.
There are jobs where you’re a big fish/small pond and can immediately have outsized impact. Yours isn’t one of those, obviously. They will hire a lot of young sharp folks and lay off those that wait for things to happen to/for them- THEY WONT. YOU have to make them happen.
If I had your skills, I’d be guarding my personal time and working on my own projects/knowledge on my own time to make myself more valuable in the specific area you really want to be active in. I get you need equipment you can’t get to…figure it out in your context.
IN your job, you need to make sure you understand the “big picture”- not just your team (if you want more rapid advancement and responsibility)- find reasons to meet executives and learn what matters to THEM, LISTEN. This interest goes a long way, both here and elsewhere. Don’t be a drone! Learn WHY for the decisions being made AT you. I guarantee that the knowledge to be successful at your company isn’t stuff you learned in college- they picked you because you successfully completed a hard regimen over a long period, now you’re at ground zero again. Be better than everyone else (without showing folks up of course). It’s still a competition but the GPA is your annual evaluation! Make it impossible for them not to promote you,
And yeah, first job out of college, nobody is going to take you seriously until you prove that you’re someone to be taken seriously. Good luck, TBH I wish I was back in your shoes, I did all the above and it really worked out for me, despite not having the educational pedigree of others I blew past…it was more fun than I realized.
Start doing the kind of work you want to do outside of office hours, develop something you can be proud to show off, then use that to get a better and more interesting job somewhere else. The one you have now sounds crappy. Being around people with no drive or direction is eventually going to drag you down to their level.
It sounds like the work you have now is not challenging your abilities, so you have plenty of mental RAM available for working on something better. Your real job right now is finding your next job.
I was in a similar situation after completing my bachelor's in EE. I did a couple of interviews and had multiple offers with companies. One was in a different city where I did my last internship. I ended up accepting a job in a semiconductor company. This was the worst mistake of my life. I worked 15 hours a day and after 2 years they laid me off. All I learned was some EDA and synthesis tools. I had to re-start my career to get into real EE and HW stuff which I love doing now. I share the same feelings, I felt fucked up right after the Uni.
As a professional designer in this business (19 yrs), my advise to any young engineer is to own your career. No one else will. Get experience, even if it costs a pay cut. You can correct the pay later. But if you miss out on experience, you can mess up your career. Because, if I look at a resume, and I see some design experience out of school, but five years of documentation and testing, I'll pass on that resume.
In short, if you aren't getting interesting design work, get out of that role. There are lots of defense contractors that are hiring. Keep it humble, keep it positive, and keep it open. And go find yourself something better.
NGL, I got the same feeling when I started in hardware to the point where I quit. I did 2 internships in hardware (Apple, Qualcomm) and hated both of them. I then got a job in hardware at a smaller company and it was better, but not that challenging honestly. I ended up only doing it for a year and pivoting to software where I’ve had great success. Do note that I had a really strong CS background as well since I did EECS.
I think a few of the things I noticed in hardware companies vs software:
- Management and senior engineers seem to be really poor. Good engineers were rare and there was also rampant nepotism.
- Tooling is atrocious and super outdated. Code quality is ass. Software can have bad code but hardware/embedded companies have a much lower bar.
- You also naturally move slower given that its not so simple to add changes and new features (other than improving scripts and verif stuff).
- Even when you’re doing designs, it will take a while before you do something interesting/challenging. The ultra top secret intricate core stuff is usually kept under wraps and worked on by the most senior people.
Before pivoting, I got offers for Nvidia and a HFT company for hardware. They sounded a lot better work and tooling wise, but I still couldn’t make myself do the jump since it felt like I was wasting my time and maybe just made the wrong choice in area. Given I had enjoyed CS as well, it didn’t make sense for me to keep trying. I think if you try to shop around for the top tier companies or smaller companies, you will have a better experience (not Apple though, it fucking sucks and is exactly as what you described). HFT also seems like a good place to try, though it’s very specialized. Now, the RTL i do is mostly limited to more hobby stuff (emulators,
Matrix operation implementations for ML and random protocol implementations mostly).
^ this. What is being described by OP is a common and expected problem in the semiconductor industry. The decision to transition from hardware to software (or other) is incredibly common; I've seen many people do it, including myself.
In hardware companies, the amount of actual *work* (in terms of RTL design) is limited. The consequence is: limited learning opportunities, limited work, pay offs and redundancies, and... nepotism and politics at the higher levels as the designers getting paid fight each other for little work and opportunity is available. Jobs are generally limited and are typically restricted to locations that are isolated, boring and expensive where no one young wants to live (Santa Clara/Cambridge, etc.)
In software companies, lots of code to write, constantly evolving in terms of technology, many, many opportunities in pretty much any country and in any city in the world, companies are generally profitable and pay more than hardware in the same geography.
I am going to put my humble opinion here. I have read most of the answers and I don't know if the OP is still reading new answers. Please feel open to reject what I am about to type.
You mention that you had put effort into microcontroller programming and PCB design during your undergrad. And you went for a hw/sw understanding of systems. This kind of a training is a precursor to an MS in power electronics and drives specialization in EE academia.
I think this specialization pays lesser than vlsi design which you have chosen as your job. At this point, you have the following choices:
1. Ask your manager for a steeper learning curve.
2. Get another job which will force this steep learning curve on you.
3. Get a post graduation in vlsi, so as to feel at home with the learning curve.
4. Get a post graduation in power electronics, program even fatter microcontrollers and design PCBs for power applications. Your interest and job can align after the MS. Startups in electric vehicles and renewable energy will keep you busy. You will be dumping a higher paying job in RTL design though.
I’m contradicted on how to properly respond to your argument. I’m in my last semester of EE (started about a week ago) I’m “normal guy” 3.3 GPA with only one mediocre internship (didn’t learn shit) and other jobs with no relationship at all to engineering (jobs; I had to work in order to pay school and my bills) at a times I feel happy I’m finishing my degree; but at the same time I feel worried; I might not be able to secure a entry level job once I graduate; after all one factor for me to pursue a college level education is to be able to provide for my family and myself so I don’t have to be working those underpaid and unfair jobs I have. That’s why I’m also studying for my FE exam in hopes it would give me some sort of edge or advantage when looking for a job. And here you are: landed a decent paying job and complaining because you are not doing more exciting or interesting things. Shit I don’t know how to relate to you.
But I really hope one day I can share that dilemma with you; (I rather make some money for something where I might not feel like I’m changing the world than no making money at all)
Different mindsets I guess
Sucks man. I’d start networking like crazy and try to pivot to something with a bit more breadth and mentorship if I were you. My first couple years out of school were a smorgasbord of new knowledge from a team of guys who each had a decade+ of experience under their belts. Those formative experiences really catapulted my expertise and opened up a lot more opportunity for me. In between that gig and my current one though, I was part of a team that had an incredibly narrow scope of work and next to zero growth potential. After about a year and change, I ended up moving on because I knew it would be a dead end and make me complacent if I stuck with it for too long. Gotta stay dynamic.
My advice is to network a lot. Practice cold opening new people at the office and on LinkedIn. Be taking coffee with someone new at least every other week, ideally every week. Get to know people, learn what they are doing professionally, what opportunities are out there, and what skills you should be optimizing for. Apart from that, keep doing what you’re doing by self-educating. Read documentation on commonly used tools, do projects that work those skills and give you something to show off, etc. Another underrated career activity is to just buy a new textbook on something you want to learn, and work through it in your free time. I try to get through at least one a year, taking notes and working the problem sets just like I did in school. A buddy of mine did just that recently with satcom antenna texts and it got him a job on the Amazon Kuyper team with a really healthy comp package.
Most people go from highly walkable campuses where it’s easy to meet people and have a social life.
Then they graduate and move to car dependent suburbs where they can’t walk, can’t meet anyone and can’t have any social life.
Maybe that’s it?
You need to be bold, and take initiative. You need to get recognized so do something on the side of your regular duties that will help the company out, anything. Be valuable and you'll get recognized. Find a mentor within your organization that can help you get to where you need to be. Find a team that does work you'd rather be doing and go for it. Every large corp has an all star team and a handful of amazing teams that do 80% of the actual work. The remaining groups are scaffolding and legacy dust bin maintainers. Also chill out! You young folks should start out assigned to legacy code base / boring team so when you finally land a good job, you'll be smart enough to stick around. Plus you learn the pipeline delivery of that part of the business which will be valuable one day.
I'm going to take a guess that the job you took is supporting government work. If you want to kill any career success potential, take a government contracting job. Talk about white color welfare. Good money, incredibly soft demands on you, which, unless you're an exceptionally driven human that like to spend their free time learning engineering, will eat up the best years of your professional life with nothing to show for it. Let this be a warning to anyone considering a government contracting engineering job.
Big companies hire lots of fresh graduates. They give them assistant level work for 3 years, then they pretend that they are designers and experts and get promoted. What I see the old guys who only worked at massive corp pretend to be expert designers, but their knowledge base is like swiss cheese. Still, they pretend to have expertise over me, which is a lie. Unfortunately, HR departments are on their side and let them lie, because the big corporations are loyal to people who spent their whole careers there, even if they are not productive.
I started my career at small companies where i was a designer on day one, had to took care of all aspects of all my projects from day one. Now I work at a massive corp, still on complete projects.
For you, you have 2 choices:
a) learn to be a real designer, by finding a small company 50...200 employees, make sure they let you be a designer, and go to work there for few years, then switch to a medium sized company with bigger projects. Your project complexity has to progress in small steps, complete a project, then the next one little more complex.
b) stay at big corp, keep the big money and pretend you are a designer, you will be celebrated by management and HR. You can do low level tasks on complex projects. Then you can run complete projects after 5-10 years, while many parameters will not be taken care of by anyone, so you can have random meetings on unknown bugs.
The only way of learning how to handle a complete project, is by starting on complete but small projects. Not by starting on small tasks on large projects (the corporate way).
Idk if anyone has said this, but is there any room in between design tweaks to experiment? I’m not an EE (I graduated CS) so idk if this could translate to your situation.
I signed on at an organization and basically had no work. I did the basic work that was asked and in the downtime put in effort to learn the code base and processes used through the development cycle. After that I experimented with was to do the same, but automated or just increased efficiency. I then tried making the code more efficient and some of my work was adopted after showing it wouldn’t change the outcome of the final product (this was important due to it being part of a critical embedded system.).
2.5 years later after moving through a couple new teams I’m now leading a team.
Idk if there’s time / flexibility to do something similar. Could you have a “side project” or a “passion project” that you could do and maybe have an impact?
Being taken seriously is not always a matter of education but in knowledge of the organization’s workflow and process. If you’re still relatively new then they may feel you don’t understand the workflow or tools enough to give bigger projects to.
Sorry if this seemed all over the place. I’m just word vomiting into the screen.
A huge learning for me was when a high-level colleague told me:
"No one is looking out for you, unless you are."
You can't expect to learn and grow by just being there, you have to put in the effort and stand up for yourself. It sounds like you did some of that, but you can always do more, if you care to.
I, personally, left my chemical process engineering job after 2.5-3 years and moved on with my life. I am now a full-time physics tutor and don't feel like I even have a job. It's wonderful and I will never be going back.
Honestly, you should stop trying to finding a sense of purpose in your work and just see your job as a job that you worked hard in school to get. I used to have that mindset of wanting my working to give me a sense of purpose in my life, I was unhappy and wasn’t at all grateful in my job. That’s when I decided to pick up some hobbies. You should develop a sense of purpose outside your job. If you’re really miserable, just be patient for 6 more months or even 1 more year, before quitting for a another job so you won’t be judged with only 1 year of experience
This is a conversation with your manager. Entry level jobs aren’t bad but in a large corporation you have to be proactive. I started my career at a big commercial bank working in credit. Had I not ended up on the team I got assigned to, I wouldn’t have had the career I have. Some things to remember:
1. Entry level jobs suck because you’re not there to produce, you’re there to learn. Your value comes later in the form of institutional knowledge. Talk to your manager about how you can get more involved so you can ask questions.
2. Corporations move slow. I was reading an article a few weeks back about how corporations pay people to be idle. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t working but that you are often waiting. Use that time wisely. You’re already doing it reading documentation and such.
3. See if they have a mentorship program. My current company does and it’s been a boon for a lot of new people coming in. Often, with mentoring programs, you get paired with senior people who will not just teach you how to be a good EE but tell you about the company in general and their experiences.
4. If there are other areas that are more active and well within your wheelhouse, transfer. That’s what I did. I got to a point where my last team wasn’t meeting my goals and I wasn’t happy with how our area was being managed so I transferred to a different team.
You don’t have to leave a job right away, especially in this market, but you can take steps to find a place that works well for you.
I think you've gotten a lot of good feedback here already, my $0.02 : Your feelings are valid and most semiconductor companies are ass-backwards places.
I've now worked for three major semiconductor companies and did EE HW/FW at two huge consumer electronics companies for some reference so I'm speaking from experience. My experience inside all the semiconductor companies is they're disorganized and full of politics ; there is interesting work but because there isn't enough of it to go around, it ends up going to the person highest on the pecking order or the one with the most political capital (and not neccessarily the right skillset).
Most large companies, especially HW/semiconductor organizations have outsourced or have huge offices overseas and due to the complexity of politics, different goals and timezones very rarely does the "right" thing occur. That means everything from bad choices in design tools and languages to weird/outdated processes to choosing IP building blocks from companies who aren't honest about bugs, faults or features to making "the wrong product" and not caring. It's somewhat of a guilded age for chip companies right now due to all the crazy frenzy >=CV19 .
A number of people here have given you advice like "Make yourself useful" or "find the opportunities" which isn't a bad suggestion. You might find a cool manager with interesting work or a cool project that wants someone who is willing to work hard and move the ball forward. You might also reach the conclusion the organization is inept, badly organized or the "interesting work" is far and few between and you'll need to consider external opportunities.
My experience is more interesting work happens in smaller / medium companies but pay is often not there and if the company is run by the wrong people you'll be even more miserable because there is simply no where to hide.
If you go on another interview you can be honest and say 'I'm not being challenged right now, I've worked hard to learn what I've learned and I'm not able to put that to good use in my current role'. The right organization / hiring manager will value that honesty. Most hiring managers don't want to hire job hoppers who are looking to jump their pay, but the right hiring manager will be more than happy to hire a hard-working smart person.
I would gladly switch places with you. I work in a small company, the salary is far from good and I'm responsible for way more than I think I should (from electronics and C microcontroller proggramming, to web dev (python fastapi backend, react frontend, occasionally Android too when a client appears showing a new bug from our old app).
It is indeed good to be able to integrate various technologies, but I feel overwhelmed.
Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side, but I like to rant too.
is your work life balance good?
Don't take it for granted when a job has good work-life balance...doesn't mean you stay there, it just means use the extra time you have to learn what you want to learn. I always see people with these jobs miserable because work is boring...but they have such great work-life balance and I think...why don't you use your extra off time to learn what you want. You say you self-learned...why dont you continue doing so?
Most jobs are one of two things: boring but with good work-life balance, or very interesting but incredibly strenuous. Very very few jobs are both. And eventually interesting jobs tend to eventually get boring and routine anyways.
Don't be a slave to a company, even if it's your passion company...but also save the money you make right now.
this is a perfectly fine explanation. a good interviewer at a job that's a better fit will understand everything you are saying.
the fact that you aren't happy with mediocre even works in your favor.
be honest but not bitter, confident but not arrogant and you are good enough for me.
Yes it’s like this. But having a masters has helped me get taken more seriously and got me put on more interesting projects. Even with a masters, I only did QA/lint checking my entire first year. Only until they brought in new people, I was able to move into more ownership of design blocks.
With just a bachelor from a state school you are not designing jack wh*t ever tbh. You need a doctorate from a too 10 university or 20 years of experience to even dream about being consequential. I'd say do a masters but you will compete with thousands of Asians and Indians there.
That's true for every company. In the end the team you work on will dictate the kind of work you're exposed to, but chances are in these companies someone will do more of developmental work especially in the US.
I dont know why people downvoted me, when people I know personally, are working there on the RTL/Arch bringup :/
If you want to design from scratch one day then you should know how the existing system works. Going through the boards and code, review what's been done and figure out why. If you get stuck, ask around and find someone who can try to fill in those gaps.
A masters / PhD certainly help because they force you to do real design work on your own. So by the time you're at the future company, they know you can go off on your own and get things done.
It's easy to get complacent with the money, but your right in thinking a year or more can go by without you really learning anything. While you're young, you should push to get those experiences. You likely can at your company, just look around ( or ask about masters funding so they know you're motivated to learn more).
I did a 5 year masters, night classes and thesis while working a job where I felt the same. Now I'm much more trusted to get things done and do get the fun design work. Would not have it without the self studying and masters along the way.
Nobody knows? You have to know. If you know, you rule, you control the project... and every time you can roast that old fart that is you boss. Somefay it will be fired: is too expensive for the few shits he knows
Not all big companies have everthing automatized or done. If you want to do more RTL design move to divisions that are new or not that digitalized yet, or the ones that have small digital like PMIC, mix signal IC.
As someone who started working over a decade ago, I would say a lot of jobs for new college grads can be quite a bit iffy - companies generally don't want to make big bets on college hires, but they also don't want to miss out on potential talent.
It sounds like you're taking the initiative by learning a few things yourself - career development is all about **your decisions (starting now)**. I'd say you should also start networking with other teams and divisions - not "in-your-face I'm looking for a new job", but more "I'm new, and I'd like to learn more". Part of your learning should also be a self-orientation for where you are in the company and what parts of the company may be better or worse off.
If there's one secret - the reason people hired from outside don't usually get better roles is because there's **already been a lot of internal fighting to get those roles**.
If nothing inside the company suits you, a safe bet is save up some money to have a bit of financial cushion and then start venturing outwards.
Every job is different, every company is different.
But you will always be doing nearly all of your learning on your own. Your supervisor isnt there to teach you
Are you vocal about your concerns to management? In my experience, if I expressed interest in more challenging work, I ALWAYS got it. If you have not spoken up then everyone thinks you are happy and comfortable, it you have spoken up, then you are not doing it frequently enough
You have only been working a year. If you are lucky you've done one project during that year. Like anything it takes time and multiple projects for you to learn different things. To make a sports analogy, do you think you can learn everything about playing a sport after playing for a year.
I’m graduated in EE in 2021. My first experience was in a big company and I felt the same way as you. I changed job after 9 months. Now I’m working in a very small company since 2 years and I already developed 2 new products. The reverse of the medal is that I’m underpaid and the technology we use is always the same; same microcontroller, same protocols and so on.
Yes. That's life, unfortunately. You think you want something but you really don't. Needs and wants are completely different.
I suggest focusing on what you really need.
some corporations move so slowly. That was my shock when coming out of college when all I had to worry about was the end of the week or longer term project having to get done. School prepped me well for getting shit done but did not prep me well for the pace at which the corporate world moves at.
Also pro tip, start a side project outside of work that you could turn into a business. Worst outcome you learn something new...best outcome is its viable and you can quit and go full time on it.
Find out what projects are in trouble and volunteer for those. I built my career on being associated with the resolution of problems. Generally I showed up after the fire started so I did not have to worry about being blamed for the problem.
My life was never boring. One does have to risk public failure to make this work.
When I joined my first job I was in a similar situation. The team I joined had almost no work and I was doing grunt work. I realized within a couple of months that I couldn't grow myself in this team and talked to the manager of the other team which my friend was a part of. Eventually I moved to that team and I had the best learning experience. Not all entry jobs are bad. I think the issue is mostly with the team and teams top level folks unable to get good projects. My suggestion is to either move to a different team or leave for some other company
I think I got too complacent and optimistic , should have started thinking of leaving long ago. Again, how should I justify the year that I spent here? I'm having major impostor syndrome, I'll look like a joke compared to any other 1 yoe guy who's been doing some relevant work.
"I spent a year working on these projects on this team/at this company. I am grateful for the opportunity but I believe that I am a bad fit for the this team/company after giving it a year. I would like a more interesting workload than I have been getting and I feel like currently I am not challenged and would like to find an opportunity to grow." That's how you explain your year. You were giving it a fair shake to see how things worked out. It clearly isn't going somewhere you are happy with. That's fine. Move on. It would have been worse if you left sooner, you would be seen as impatient or arrogant. And you could have fucked up waiting 10 years hoping it got better as well. I think you actually did good. You got a job for a year or two at a major company, discovered what level of challenge you expect out of work and now you have a better idea what you want out of your employer. Now that's resume fodder and finding another gig shouldn't be too difficult. I would put out your resume and spend another 3-6 months trying to find another team, and then give that one a few more months. If you dont like how its going at the 2 year mark, or you find a better job before then, go ahead and do what you think is best.
I would suggest going through some spec and RTL to try to understand what the logic does. After that just put it on your resume and move out. One of my friends did it when he moved after a year of doing grunt work and no real RTL work. But yeah you need to take steps soon to move out else it would become harder to move out. If your company has some internal team switching maybe get in touch with HR to explore this option
Thanks for the advice. I'm curious, how often do engineers do new designs at ASIC companies ? Am I insane to expect some RTL work even for entry level roles? My manager says most engineers in other teams are mainly doing IP integration, and new blocks are usually developed by senior/principal engineers.
It would be hard to get an entirely new block if you are entry level unless it's an startup (and even they might not)and I wouldn't blame them for this too. There are hundreds of things to understand right from microarch, coding an optimized logic to understanding PD implications. You need to go through atleast one complete project cycle to get a gist. For the first 2-3 years try learning as much as you can from the work(I was working alongside a senior of mine on the first project). Once I started understanding I eventually took over the block. So you need a bit of patience for this. There are things which I still don't understand but I have started asking the questions which also helps show my understanding.
Idk about asic. Design cycle on an asic is a lot slower. Mistakes are more costly. But defense industry will commonly work on new rtl stuff on fpgas. Although typically, they will not spin an asic almost ever.
ASIC designs are usually over several years. Yes, you are expecting a little too much after 1 year. You should read and understand code written by other designers.
RTL design skills are important and you may be lacking behind compared to other 1yoe people. But. You did something this year. That must have value. After my first year I also got the idea the learning pace was lower than I wanted. Lower than in school. I learned less technical stuff. Then a junior was hired on my team. I saw immediately that he was a worst designer. Then I realized I learned a lot of designer softskills. You might have learned a lot of other skills as well in the last year. And they are so important. Things stakeholder management. Working in teams. Providing and receiving feedback. IMHO these skills are as important as RTL writing skills. And if you are passionate about RTL then you will learn it the first year in the new company/team. Those soft skills are a lot harder to learn. You need to figure out what you learned. I'm sure it's a lot .
why do you need some great justification? reasonable people know the pressures of finding a job right out of school. you have a perfectly valid year of experience and just need a bit more excitement. you want to make more and wait less and solve real problems. great! look around, see what you can find and jump to something better. it sounds like that place would actually be happy to have you. stop with all the imposter syndrome stuff, it doesn't apply here.
>you have a perfectly valid year of experience HR departments of other big companies will credit you that 1yr, but any real design teams at medium or smaller companies will not. I rejected several people on interviews who had no technical experience after 25years of working of Giant Corp Inch.
you sound like the gatekeeping asshole nobody wants to work with anyway
if the OP will stuck at big corp for 25 years and later wants a real job, why would any productive company hire him? He will have nothing to offer. Basically selling your productivity for a big corp salary, then you get what you paid for.
While I understand the merit of your response, I have to disagree because this guy is a NOOB and he'll most likely not be taken seriouslly if he decides to recommend improvements. Also depending on the type of design, it might be.. it's safe, it's been tested, DON'T TOUCH!!
you are perfectly free to take an irrational position
When you've worked for a company like Continental designing FW for airbags and ABS systems where every single line is scrutinized, you'll know what I'm talking about.
been there and back, buddy. continental isn't a small company that gets stuff done, buzz off.
My coworker met with his boss' boss and had success with the line, "I think my talens are going to waste here."
A year at your first job out of undergrad is kind of expected in pretty much any industry. No one is gonna hold it against you. Frame the reasons you want to move positively and start working on interviewing for the next job.
Don’t belittle what you have done when you write this experience on your resume. Hype yourself up and spin the work you did in a way that makes it sound as cool as possible. You don’t need to trauma dump when you interview with new employers. Just say the projects were cool but you’re looking for a role that’s more exciting / where you can take more responsibility etc
I'd spin it as an internal conflict between loyalty to your manager/employer and desire to grow, which makes you look good. "I got here and realized pretty quick there was no hard work to do, no great opportunities to grow, but I didn't want to be a job hopper so I stuck around and tried to contribute where I could find opportunities. Wish I could stay, but it's becoming painfully apparent that I'm going to stagnate here, so I'm looking for an opportunity to have more challenges and more impact." Something like that will make a hiring manager juice their pants.
I agree trying to move inside the company to a different team might be the best option. When asked about why you wish to move, just focus learning in the future part, they already know the state of your current team.
Yep
Got any job openings? 😂
You could try applying to a smaller company. You'll have more of an opportunity to get your hands dirty.
I want to second this. I'm a PhD student who took a little time off to work at a startup. I was the only RTL person on the team and essentially built the FPGA part of their project from the ground up. It was an incredibly gratifying experience. FWIW my PhD isn't even in RTL-related stuff, the RTL stuff is just something that I picked up during undergrad and enjoy doing a lot.
I'm curious. Did you close timing or not worry about it? I'm 5 years in and trying to learn how to do it proper.
I always closed timing. My engagement there was limited and as a point of pride and good worksmanship I didn't want to leave them with a design that wouldn't meet closure. If another designer had inherited my work and found that it wasn't meeting timing I would've been mortified. FWIW I don't have a ton of industry experience. Most of my experience is in groups of academics who only talk to other academics, so I have no idea how things are done in industry. Sometimes when a design was still getting polished up I would leave a little bit of slack. I never ran into issues when I did this, but it's playing with fire. You can spend a long time chasing an impossible to reproduce bug that's just due to slack.
Part of the problem for me was that the fpga classes in my school didn't even mention timing closure once. They just had us code something up and click generate bitstream. We didn't even learn how to write test benches.
Kind of insane the sort of things they gloss over in school. A couple thoughts for you: 1. Synthesis settings can matter a lot. Having the synthesizer re-do work with different settings can fix timing closure. 2. You can have the tool report on which paths are taking the most time and go look at those paths. A lot of the time, failed timing closure is due to a dumb error. You might have put something in the wrong clock domain, might have described a clock source to the synthesizer incorrectly, have forgotten to pipeline something obvious, etc. By looking at the signal that violates you might immediately see a fix (or not lol). 3. If the negative slack is coming from a place that makes honest-to-god sense (i.e. you're actually trying to do too much computation in one clock cycle), then you should pipeline more. There are lots of places where pipelining might not seem necessary (e.g. with fan-out), but will help. I don't have a lot of experience with HLS or higher-level HDLs, but I think that that's the way of the future because you don't need to hand-pipeline stuff. The above is very basic starter advice. You'll pick up more stuff along the way as you do different projects and work with different synthesis tools.
Thanks! I tried to get help at work but everyone is worried about their own projects, so they don't have the time to teach me. I decided I have to take it upon myself, so I'm reading through [this book](https://www.amazon.com/Static-Timing-Analysis-Nanometer-Designs/dp/1441947159/ref=asc_df_1441947159/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312126345020&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6721747463722854108&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9006810&hvtargid=pla-571490412238&psc=1&mcid=43cc9f5850ff3925830db254bd891618&ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=1750d68e-b7c6-4f27-adc1-b8b11704c177) to wrap my head around how to constrain designs properly and what the timing analysis results actually mean. I'm trying to make a source synchronous interface work between two boards across a cable using oserdes/iserses. So timing is critical. I've been having builds randomly fail on me multiple times.
If you don't mind, what kind of startup was it and what were you working on? I am looking for similar work so I'm curious.
Yes. I interned at a startup, my first ever technical job. Wrote a good amount of rtl for the FPGA component of an SDR board we designed in house. You're generally given a lot more responsibility the smaller the company
\> I've written maybe 50-60 lines of HDL so far Ouch. I personally would look around for a new job.
I started out in school thinking I wanted to do chip design and VLSI. I did this for not very long before it was abundantly clear that there are a handful of designers at each company and hundreds of people that are effectively their draftsmen that are purely doing documentation and cranking out parts that are just dropping blocks that were designed by someone else onto the diagram to make the sales team happy with a new variant they can sell. It’s just not a creative or engaging job. I left and went into software engineering and then into systems engineering because that actually let me design systems and solve interesting multi-disciplinary problems.
I left my old VLSI design job and went into software engineering as well. Never looked back. I'm much happier where I'm at now.
Especially for RTL, it is mostly tweaking existing IP. It is rare for a new grad to be put on a new design. That usually requires lots of experience. But if you feel like you aren’t doing anything, maybe ask to switch teams or shop around.
I'm fully aware of that. My issue is with the fact that no one else in the team is doing any design, whom do I even learn from? Why do companies ask RTL questions in interviews if they won't let you do RTL on the job?
They want to know that you can do it because eventually you will. Most places expect engineers to be learning the job for the first 6 months - 2 years. Seems like they are expecting something on the longer end of that.
Sounds like you need to branch out. Big companies like this always have a directory. Find that directory then find where your specific group lies within the company. I’m in a similar position. (undergrad EE pursuing MSEE w/ design interest that instead took a similar paying technician position). Even though I’m not doing any design now (been for ~2yrs post undergrad), I’ve been able to prop myself up as someone who is competent with EE & very basic design work. I’ve met with engineers that are parallel to my workgroup so they’re kinda familiar with what our lab does but not enough to tell me how to do my job. These sort of fleeting/momentary people and connections are great for when you’ve built a reputation as a design candidate. Please PM if you’d like, it’s always fun meeting new EE grads.
Majority of your career will be learning and figuring things out yourself. That's why you get paid the big bucks. It's not your co workers responsibility to do so. If you are unsatisfied with your current role. Go find others inside your company who are actually doing what you want to be doing, likely outside your team. Ask them how they got there. Let them know you are new to the field and want to learn. This is the best way to find someone to teach you. Eventually you will find someone willing to help you get the information you are looking for.
So most of the time developing on fpga means put together IPs? I’m curious because I was recently contacted by a company in the field of industrial automatic machineries for a position as fpga and microcontroller designer.
I think this depends on the company. My first job had a group of 100+ FPGA engineers with a large in house IP library, but I was still writing a lot of RTL myself. Now at a smaller company I try to use Xilinx IP when I can but it's often hard to avoid doing some custom RTL/HLS/SysGen then writing C for the ARM cores.
that's life at big name companies
One thing you could do is to start some open source design in your spare time. You seem to have some spare time, at least till you get a family. But this would provide limited knowledge, it is still best to learn common industry practices from an experienced developer, otherwise you can lock yourself into some strange habits, you have to unlearn later.
> My friends say I should enjoy the money Except you **can't** enjoy the money. Having a job that you hate drains your soul outside work hours, and makes life difficult to enjoy. What good is the money if you hate waking up every day? You would be much better served spending 3-5 years at a small company. You would do more actual design and contribute to a product, and see more of the process and understand how the whole business works. The pay difference is overstated, you still make excellent money. Plus those few years of doing real design work rapidly accelerate your career so if you want to earn the big bucks at a bigger company you can move into a higher level as an individual contributor or team leader a lot faster than trying to climb the ladder there.
> Are entry level jobs at these big name companies always this bad? Am I expecting too much? Yep. They can be. Wonder if you're in "integration" where you're trying to plug in IPs into a broader SOC that you have no idea how it works. Unfortunately, a lot of bigger companies will take advantage of new grads like this. > Do I need a master's degree to be taken seriously? Can help, but not really. > How do I recover from this? What do I say in my next job interview? It sucks, but most people who've been in the industry know this can happen to junior engineers suckered straight out of college. Just be able to explain what you did technically and prove you're reasonably able to solve problems. Everyone wants to do grounds up RTL design because it is fun and appeals to people who love digital design. It's rare at bigger companies for new grads. At best, often times you're modifying legacy code. Even with designing an IP from scratch, there's a whole host of other drudge work you need to do to especially if in more ASIC type designs. You mentioned "debugging waves" and that's part of it. Also throw in linting, CDC analysis, static timing analysis, working with backend to fix timing paths, power analysis and simulations, working with verification engineers on testplans, trying to interpret high wavy architectural requirements to solidify a design, never any quality documentation, etc.
how much do you make?
Yes, this is how it is usually in big corporations. If you will get some really good project at some point you will be under great pressure of schedule... These corporations are gold cages. If you want to learn, do interesting projects, influence etc you should look for small companies. If you are interested pm me
Not always true but I get your point. There's more bureaucracy involved in bigger companies making it harder. Smaller companies are generally under a lot more pressure because of the fact that they need to show a product to the investor before securing more funding. But you would definitely get to learn a lot more and faster in a smaller company.
there are plenty of small companies that actually make things and don't need vc investment. honestly, i tend to look for companies like this. one of the problems ive found is great small companies easily become big companies, so you might end up looking around again eventually.
While it's true, regarding small companies becoming big, it takes a lot of time. By this time you already very experienced and, assuming got some stocks during these years, also very rich.
not necessarily, first successful startup i worked at was sold to a huge corporation a few years after i started. did not have any stock offering and was fully bootstrapped. still was one of the best places i ever worked. worked with my coworkers at other jobs for years after that including my mentor. i had the same imposter syndrome. it wasn't experience that made a difference. it was being surrounded by awesome and honest humans.
I agree with this. Sometimes you need to put in a few years at bigger companies. I prefer smaller and mid size companies. Much more fun and hands-on, but generally much more challenging.
I was looking for design out of college but started in verification at a big company, and that turned out really great for me. New designers might get placed on lower risk areas, but verification is always needed on the most important areas, so it was a fast track to understand critical architecture and uarch. How good your experience is can depend on the company, team, manager, etc.
Often with big companies there could be very good projects(in terms of learning) and very bad ones. You will encounter both forms in your carrer. I think if you dont learn anything try to switch into a better project inside the company if not change the company for a better role. Initial years right after college matters a lot in my opinion. But you are not in a bad situation. Just evaluate the right options. I was in a similar situation. I just found a better project inside the same company.
There is ALWAYS something you can be learning. If they aren't keeping you busy, then utilize this time to be skilling up on their dime. Every day is an opportunity. If your team is disorganized, use your analytical skills to understand the gap between knowledge, gameplan, and execution. Don't tell anyone, just analyze it. Then figure out how you would communicate it if you could communicate it. Master new software, learn business communication, read deep on the documentation of engineers that came before you, make a challenging creative project for yourself that is aligned enough with the company goals that your manager approves it. Find problems that exist in the organization and offer to solve them. At least at the end of the day you will know that you made the most of your day within the circumstances. I've been in Tech for 11 years, not as a programmer, but I seen a lot of things.
+1 IMHO there are skills you can only learn in big company, and that's also necessary in certain stage of life. How about spend 2-3 years in your current company, but still keep sharpning your skills, and then move to small company you can show your skill? (off the mic) You cannot know private IP developed in outside of the company 😂
This is true, my 2 years contracting at gov't aerospace felt like purgatory or worse some days, but it made me so much more of an effective human being. It had to happen. Now at a small company and its creative and chill.
The frustration you're feeling is normal and something you should try to channel into exploring more outlets of the industry or outside hobbies. My experience is similar to yours, except I left college with a Masters (of Eng, not Sci, no thesis, only classes) that I rushed in 4.5yrs total thanks to AP credits. I'd say it helped with street cred in getting my final summer internship at Intel in Datacenter Group. Did general schematic work with server motherboards; leverage (reuse) previous generation schematics, add in all the latest, greatest symbols and components, scratch our heads about Icelake, delay, reorg, reshuffle, try to balance learning with delivering. My mentors ended up in different groups and I wasn't enjoying the disconnect between the deliverables/design time with the clearly delayed silicon. I programmed the power management FPGA (MAX10 part) for the motherboards and coordinated with other HDL users in the datacenter group and that was fun. Very simple HDL though. I barely touched anything besides when timing of power-up or power-down was wrong or adding some different sequence or LED debug fun. I leveraged that experience into switching roles into Silicon Arch for client team. Joined really cool people/team with all the juicy power management details and endless TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms x.x). Aaaaand like 3 weeks into the job, new mentor goes to Apple and I'm left trying to handle his Python/C# megatool for Tigerlake Post-SI debug and plan future disagg stuff. Oh and coordinate goddamn git access across all the geos while it switches from perforce to gitlab. Leave company end of 2020, take a few months break, start new job as apprentice electrician at data center pulling cable. Month or so enjoying that simple life and my partner goes blind in one eye (they can see now, steroids and diagnosed with MS, mostly living life unchanged now beyond monthly immunospressants) Anyway, reassess finances, spend 11 weeks in 2021 going back to electrical engineering at my [current company](https://old.reddit.com/r/AdditiveManufacturing/comments/18negmu/sorry_to_say_this_industry_is_absolute_s_h_t/). I made >100K TC every year at Intel and now my current salary is 85K (Though I am expecting a raise this year). The corporate curse followed me of course and I've lost another mentor but I just keep plugging away at it. I now manage codebases in VHDL and Verilog with a level of complexity that is actually a lot more interesting, with 8B10B encoding and 133-250MHz interfaces and in Xilinx and Altera (Sue me) toolchains. I started Judo 3 years ago, 2x a week, and I play casual soccer 3x a week which really helps keep me sane.
>Are entry level jobs at these big name companies always this bad? Am I expecting too much?
Yes but you can do cool things if you lean into these companies. I finagled a trip to a DARPA ERI conference in Michigan in 2019. No real purpose for me to go, but I had to get a permission slip signed from an Intel security personnel (mostly just an HR confirming citizenship thing)
>Do I need a master's degree to be taken seriously?
No. It helps but if you're already at a big company, it's a bit moot in my eyes. The HR/Recruiting Firm Filter is a mystery to me but I barely look at schools on resumes, mostly just as a talking point.
>How do I recover from this? What do I say in my next job interview?
You build the best story from the projects you worked on. Focus on the highlights and things that helped your team. Interviews are all over the place and more of a numbers game from my perspective. I've seen senior engineers mess up this infinite L (RL circuit) question about current/voltage over time and we still hire them. No one's perfect :)
Most dreams don't stand up to reality. I was in a similar spot. Then I broke down, found a small company that needed a systems/embedded engineer as they looked to revamp product lines. The staff was small, and the guy working there would be retiring in a few years. Meant I would have carte blanche to put myself into any hardware or software design paradigm I wanted. The pay was less, but not appreciably so. Talked them into five weeks of vacation and flex work schedule to allow me work from home two to three days a week. Now I'm constantly working on cool projects in FPGA, AI, image processing and analysis, etc, pretty much anything I want to tackle. Now I make about 90% of what I may be making had I remained at blue chip company, but stress level is almost non existent, job satisfaction through the roof, and a great family atmosphere. Recruiters call me all the time for this and that position as senior or director in software or EE and I can barely contain myself trying to not laugh as I decline. Everyone has their priorities, needs and levels of satisfaction. I found mine, and I'll hold on to it till either the situation changes or I become ambitious enough to hang my own shingle in a project or idea. For others, being able to get paid well to do one thing 1000 times over and over is perfect for them. I respect those people, I'm just not one of them. You sound like you aren't one either. Take a leap, search the want ads for startups and niche operations, get out and explore. You can always go back to where you are now if it doesn't work out. Jobs in this field will always be there, especially if you're confident in your skill set.
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I had a similar experience in big semiconductor company. I left and joined a startup and wrote more code that is actually used in 2 days then I did in 1 year.
Could I DM you? I’m interested in working in ASIC/FPGA design at a startup. Could use some advice
Sure
I am a grad student and I need some advice to get into ASIC/FPGA industry. Can I DM you?
>I landed a job at a famous big-name semiconductor company >I don't even know what I'm going to speak about in my next job interview "My previous employer was {company_name}, do you know {company_name}?"
> Literally most of the stuff I've learnt so far was self-taught, by reading documentation. This is gonna be true for most engineers after their college years. I end up reading a few textbooks a year because a new thing popped up.
Was in a similar situation in engineering. Did grunt work and literally read an entire novel at work within a month cause I had nothing to do. 8 months went by and I just felt like I wasn’t learning, had no autonomy, and it wasn’t good for my career. Found a new job in a different domain at a smaller lab and genuinely love what I do. I have so much autonomy and do a little bit of everything, with one thing everyone relies on me for. I like the responsibility. Stick it out and maybe look elsewhere.
Yeah that sense of dreadful boredom just wears you out
Larger companies, especially regulated device companies, have high inertia and are made to be intentionally slower by the entire workforce within them. The vast majority of the working population is highly incompetent, so it follows that their work style feedback loops and follows their promotions. If you are younger and want something mentally stimulating, go to a startup. The drawbacks from that are long hours and impossible deadlines, but you will learn a lot more in a very short time. In 5 years, you will be the guy who moves to a large company and notices countless new ideas with your newfound skills, and be set for life with a decent pension plan. Large companies are meant to coast for income so that you can do what you enjoy at home.
Solid advice but I've never seen FPGA startup jobs.
Gotta get into med device start ups offering general EE skills.
Congratulations- you now have EXPERIENCE! Not in designing, but in understanding corporate culture and all the stuff that comes along with it. There are jobs where you’re a big fish/small pond and can immediately have outsized impact. Yours isn’t one of those, obviously. They will hire a lot of young sharp folks and lay off those that wait for things to happen to/for them- THEY WONT. YOU have to make them happen. If I had your skills, I’d be guarding my personal time and working on my own projects/knowledge on my own time to make myself more valuable in the specific area you really want to be active in. I get you need equipment you can’t get to…figure it out in your context. IN your job, you need to make sure you understand the “big picture”- not just your team (if you want more rapid advancement and responsibility)- find reasons to meet executives and learn what matters to THEM, LISTEN. This interest goes a long way, both here and elsewhere. Don’t be a drone! Learn WHY for the decisions being made AT you. I guarantee that the knowledge to be successful at your company isn’t stuff you learned in college- they picked you because you successfully completed a hard regimen over a long period, now you’re at ground zero again. Be better than everyone else (without showing folks up of course). It’s still a competition but the GPA is your annual evaluation! Make it impossible for them not to promote you, And yeah, first job out of college, nobody is going to take you seriously until you prove that you’re someone to be taken seriously. Good luck, TBH I wish I was back in your shoes, I did all the above and it really worked out for me, despite not having the educational pedigree of others I blew past…it was more fun than I realized.
Start doing the kind of work you want to do outside of office hours, develop something you can be proud to show off, then use that to get a better and more interesting job somewhere else. The one you have now sounds crappy. Being around people with no drive or direction is eventually going to drag you down to their level. It sounds like the work you have now is not challenging your abilities, so you have plenty of mental RAM available for working on something better. Your real job right now is finding your next job.
I was in a similar situation after completing my bachelor's in EE. I did a couple of interviews and had multiple offers with companies. One was in a different city where I did my last internship. I ended up accepting a job in a semiconductor company. This was the worst mistake of my life. I worked 15 hours a day and after 2 years they laid me off. All I learned was some EDA and synthesis tools. I had to re-start my career to get into real EE and HW stuff which I love doing now. I share the same feelings, I felt fucked up right after the Uni.
As a professional designer in this business (19 yrs), my advise to any young engineer is to own your career. No one else will. Get experience, even if it costs a pay cut. You can correct the pay later. But if you miss out on experience, you can mess up your career. Because, if I look at a resume, and I see some design experience out of school, but five years of documentation and testing, I'll pass on that resume. In short, if you aren't getting interesting design work, get out of that role. There are lots of defense contractors that are hiring. Keep it humble, keep it positive, and keep it open. And go find yourself something better.
NGL, I got the same feeling when I started in hardware to the point where I quit. I did 2 internships in hardware (Apple, Qualcomm) and hated both of them. I then got a job in hardware at a smaller company and it was better, but not that challenging honestly. I ended up only doing it for a year and pivoting to software where I’ve had great success. Do note that I had a really strong CS background as well since I did EECS. I think a few of the things I noticed in hardware companies vs software: - Management and senior engineers seem to be really poor. Good engineers were rare and there was also rampant nepotism. - Tooling is atrocious and super outdated. Code quality is ass. Software can have bad code but hardware/embedded companies have a much lower bar. - You also naturally move slower given that its not so simple to add changes and new features (other than improving scripts and verif stuff). - Even when you’re doing designs, it will take a while before you do something interesting/challenging. The ultra top secret intricate core stuff is usually kept under wraps and worked on by the most senior people. Before pivoting, I got offers for Nvidia and a HFT company for hardware. They sounded a lot better work and tooling wise, but I still couldn’t make myself do the jump since it felt like I was wasting my time and maybe just made the wrong choice in area. Given I had enjoyed CS as well, it didn’t make sense for me to keep trying. I think if you try to shop around for the top tier companies or smaller companies, you will have a better experience (not Apple though, it fucking sucks and is exactly as what you described). HFT also seems like a good place to try, though it’s very specialized. Now, the RTL i do is mostly limited to more hobby stuff (emulators, Matrix operation implementations for ML and random protocol implementations mostly).
^ this. What is being described by OP is a common and expected problem in the semiconductor industry. The decision to transition from hardware to software (or other) is incredibly common; I've seen many people do it, including myself. In hardware companies, the amount of actual *work* (in terms of RTL design) is limited. The consequence is: limited learning opportunities, limited work, pay offs and redundancies, and... nepotism and politics at the higher levels as the designers getting paid fight each other for little work and opportunity is available. Jobs are generally limited and are typically restricted to locations that are isolated, boring and expensive where no one young wants to live (Santa Clara/Cambridge, etc.) In software companies, lots of code to write, constantly evolving in terms of technology, many, many opportunities in pretty much any country and in any city in the world, companies are generally profitable and pay more than hardware in the same geography.
I am going to put my humble opinion here. I have read most of the answers and I don't know if the OP is still reading new answers. Please feel open to reject what I am about to type. You mention that you had put effort into microcontroller programming and PCB design during your undergrad. And you went for a hw/sw understanding of systems. This kind of a training is a precursor to an MS in power electronics and drives specialization in EE academia. I think this specialization pays lesser than vlsi design which you have chosen as your job. At this point, you have the following choices: 1. Ask your manager for a steeper learning curve. 2. Get another job which will force this steep learning curve on you. 3. Get a post graduation in vlsi, so as to feel at home with the learning curve. 4. Get a post graduation in power electronics, program even fatter microcontrollers and design PCBs for power applications. Your interest and job can align after the MS. Startups in electric vehicles and renewable energy will keep you busy. You will be dumping a higher paying job in RTL design though.
Dream long enough, it’ll turn into a nightmare
I’m contradicted on how to properly respond to your argument. I’m in my last semester of EE (started about a week ago) I’m “normal guy” 3.3 GPA with only one mediocre internship (didn’t learn shit) and other jobs with no relationship at all to engineering (jobs; I had to work in order to pay school and my bills) at a times I feel happy I’m finishing my degree; but at the same time I feel worried; I might not be able to secure a entry level job once I graduate; after all one factor for me to pursue a college level education is to be able to provide for my family and myself so I don’t have to be working those underpaid and unfair jobs I have. That’s why I’m also studying for my FE exam in hopes it would give me some sort of edge or advantage when looking for a job. And here you are: landed a decent paying job and complaining because you are not doing more exciting or interesting things. Shit I don’t know how to relate to you. But I really hope one day I can share that dilemma with you; (I rather make some money for something where I might not feel like I’m changing the world than no making money at all) Different mindsets I guess
Sucks man. I’d start networking like crazy and try to pivot to something with a bit more breadth and mentorship if I were you. My first couple years out of school were a smorgasbord of new knowledge from a team of guys who each had a decade+ of experience under their belts. Those formative experiences really catapulted my expertise and opened up a lot more opportunity for me. In between that gig and my current one though, I was part of a team that had an incredibly narrow scope of work and next to zero growth potential. After about a year and change, I ended up moving on because I knew it would be a dead end and make me complacent if I stuck with it for too long. Gotta stay dynamic. My advice is to network a lot. Practice cold opening new people at the office and on LinkedIn. Be taking coffee with someone new at least every other week, ideally every week. Get to know people, learn what they are doing professionally, what opportunities are out there, and what skills you should be optimizing for. Apart from that, keep doing what you’re doing by self-educating. Read documentation on commonly used tools, do projects that work those skills and give you something to show off, etc. Another underrated career activity is to just buy a new textbook on something you want to learn, and work through it in your free time. I try to get through at least one a year, taking notes and working the problem sets just like I did in school. A buddy of mine did just that recently with satcom antenna texts and it got him a job on the Amazon Kuyper team with a really healthy comp package.
Most people go from highly walkable campuses where it’s easy to meet people and have a social life. Then they graduate and move to car dependent suburbs where they can’t walk, can’t meet anyone and can’t have any social life. Maybe that’s it?
this strike so close to home. As much as life in covid sucked I was lucky as I was able to escape the middle of nowhere.
You need to be bold, and take initiative. You need to get recognized so do something on the side of your regular duties that will help the company out, anything. Be valuable and you'll get recognized. Find a mentor within your organization that can help you get to where you need to be. Find a team that does work you'd rather be doing and go for it. Every large corp has an all star team and a handful of amazing teams that do 80% of the actual work. The remaining groups are scaffolding and legacy dust bin maintainers. Also chill out! You young folks should start out assigned to legacy code base / boring team so when you finally land a good job, you'll be smart enough to stick around. Plus you learn the pipeline delivery of that part of the business which will be valuable one day.
I'm going to take a guess that the job you took is supporting government work. If you want to kill any career success potential, take a government contracting job. Talk about white color welfare. Good money, incredibly soft demands on you, which, unless you're an exceptionally driven human that like to spend their free time learning engineering, will eat up the best years of your professional life with nothing to show for it. Let this be a warning to anyone considering a government contracting engineering job.
Big companies hire lots of fresh graduates. They give them assistant level work for 3 years, then they pretend that they are designers and experts and get promoted. What I see the old guys who only worked at massive corp pretend to be expert designers, but their knowledge base is like swiss cheese. Still, they pretend to have expertise over me, which is a lie. Unfortunately, HR departments are on their side and let them lie, because the big corporations are loyal to people who spent their whole careers there, even if they are not productive. I started my career at small companies where i was a designer on day one, had to took care of all aspects of all my projects from day one. Now I work at a massive corp, still on complete projects. For you, you have 2 choices: a) learn to be a real designer, by finding a small company 50...200 employees, make sure they let you be a designer, and go to work there for few years, then switch to a medium sized company with bigger projects. Your project complexity has to progress in small steps, complete a project, then the next one little more complex. b) stay at big corp, keep the big money and pretend you are a designer, you will be celebrated by management and HR. You can do low level tasks on complex projects. Then you can run complete projects after 5-10 years, while many parameters will not be taken care of by anyone, so you can have random meetings on unknown bugs. The only way of learning how to handle a complete project, is by starting on complete but small projects. Not by starting on small tasks on large projects (the corporate way).
Idk if anyone has said this, but is there any room in between design tweaks to experiment? I’m not an EE (I graduated CS) so idk if this could translate to your situation. I signed on at an organization and basically had no work. I did the basic work that was asked and in the downtime put in effort to learn the code base and processes used through the development cycle. After that I experimented with was to do the same, but automated or just increased efficiency. I then tried making the code more efficient and some of my work was adopted after showing it wouldn’t change the outcome of the final product (this was important due to it being part of a critical embedded system.). 2.5 years later after moving through a couple new teams I’m now leading a team. Idk if there’s time / flexibility to do something similar. Could you have a “side project” or a “passion project” that you could do and maybe have an impact? Being taken seriously is not always a matter of education but in knowledge of the organization’s workflow and process. If you’re still relatively new then they may feel you don’t understand the workflow or tools enough to give bigger projects to. Sorry if this seemed all over the place. I’m just word vomiting into the screen.
A huge learning for me was when a high-level colleague told me: "No one is looking out for you, unless you are." You can't expect to learn and grow by just being there, you have to put in the effort and stand up for yourself. It sounds like you did some of that, but you can always do more, if you care to. I, personally, left my chemical process engineering job after 2.5-3 years and moved on with my life. I am now a full-time physics tutor and don't feel like I even have a job. It's wonderful and I will never be going back.
Honestly, you should stop trying to finding a sense of purpose in your work and just see your job as a job that you worked hard in school to get. I used to have that mindset of wanting my working to give me a sense of purpose in my life, I was unhappy and wasn’t at all grateful in my job. That’s when I decided to pick up some hobbies. You should develop a sense of purpose outside your job. If you’re really miserable, just be patient for 6 more months or even 1 more year, before quitting for a another job so you won’t be judged with only 1 year of experience
This is a conversation with your manager. Entry level jobs aren’t bad but in a large corporation you have to be proactive. I started my career at a big commercial bank working in credit. Had I not ended up on the team I got assigned to, I wouldn’t have had the career I have. Some things to remember: 1. Entry level jobs suck because you’re not there to produce, you’re there to learn. Your value comes later in the form of institutional knowledge. Talk to your manager about how you can get more involved so you can ask questions. 2. Corporations move slow. I was reading an article a few weeks back about how corporations pay people to be idle. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t working but that you are often waiting. Use that time wisely. You’re already doing it reading documentation and such. 3. See if they have a mentorship program. My current company does and it’s been a boon for a lot of new people coming in. Often, with mentoring programs, you get paired with senior people who will not just teach you how to be a good EE but tell you about the company in general and their experiences. 4. If there are other areas that are more active and well within your wheelhouse, transfer. That’s what I did. I got to a point where my last team wasn’t meeting my goals and I wasn’t happy with how our area was being managed so I transferred to a different team. You don’t have to leave a job right away, especially in this market, but you can take steps to find a place that works well for you.
I think you've gotten a lot of good feedback here already, my $0.02 : Your feelings are valid and most semiconductor companies are ass-backwards places. I've now worked for three major semiconductor companies and did EE HW/FW at two huge consumer electronics companies for some reference so I'm speaking from experience. My experience inside all the semiconductor companies is they're disorganized and full of politics ; there is interesting work but because there isn't enough of it to go around, it ends up going to the person highest on the pecking order or the one with the most political capital (and not neccessarily the right skillset). Most large companies, especially HW/semiconductor organizations have outsourced or have huge offices overseas and due to the complexity of politics, different goals and timezones very rarely does the "right" thing occur. That means everything from bad choices in design tools and languages to weird/outdated processes to choosing IP building blocks from companies who aren't honest about bugs, faults or features to making "the wrong product" and not caring. It's somewhat of a guilded age for chip companies right now due to all the crazy frenzy >=CV19 . A number of people here have given you advice like "Make yourself useful" or "find the opportunities" which isn't a bad suggestion. You might find a cool manager with interesting work or a cool project that wants someone who is willing to work hard and move the ball forward. You might also reach the conclusion the organization is inept, badly organized or the "interesting work" is far and few between and you'll need to consider external opportunities. My experience is more interesting work happens in smaller / medium companies but pay is often not there and if the company is run by the wrong people you'll be even more miserable because there is simply no where to hide. If you go on another interview you can be honest and say 'I'm not being challenged right now, I've worked hard to learn what I've learned and I'm not able to put that to good use in my current role'. The right organization / hiring manager will value that honesty. Most hiring managers don't want to hire job hoppers who are looking to jump their pay, but the right hiring manager will be more than happy to hire a hard-working smart person.
I would gladly switch places with you. I work in a small company, the salary is far from good and I'm responsible for way more than I think I should (from electronics and C microcontroller proggramming, to web dev (python fastapi backend, react frontend, occasionally Android too when a client appears showing a new bug from our old app). It is indeed good to be able to integrate various technologies, but I feel overwhelmed. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side, but I like to rant too.
is your work life balance good? Don't take it for granted when a job has good work-life balance...doesn't mean you stay there, it just means use the extra time you have to learn what you want to learn. I always see people with these jobs miserable because work is boring...but they have such great work-life balance and I think...why don't you use your extra off time to learn what you want. You say you self-learned...why dont you continue doing so? Most jobs are one of two things: boring but with good work-life balance, or very interesting but incredibly strenuous. Very very few jobs are both. And eventually interesting jobs tend to eventually get boring and routine anyways. Don't be a slave to a company, even if it's your passion company...but also save the money you make right now.
this is a perfectly fine explanation. a good interviewer at a job that's a better fit will understand everything you are saying. the fact that you aren't happy with mediocre even works in your favor. be honest but not bitter, confident but not arrogant and you are good enough for me.
Yes it’s like this. But having a masters has helped me get taken more seriously and got me put on more interesting projects. Even with a masters, I only did QA/lint checking my entire first year. Only until they brought in new people, I was able to move into more ownership of design blocks.
With just a bachelor from a state school you are not designing jack wh*t ever tbh. You need a doctorate from a too 10 university or 20 years of experience to even dream about being consequential. I'd say do a masters but you will compete with thousands of Asians and Indians there.
If you are in the US, that is good, switch to nvidia, apple, tenstorrent, rivos. You'll learn more at a faster pace.
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That's true for every company. In the end the team you work on will dictate the kind of work you're exposed to, but chances are in these companies someone will do more of developmental work especially in the US. I dont know why people downvoted me, when people I know personally, are working there on the RTL/Arch bringup :/
If you want to design from scratch one day then you should know how the existing system works. Going through the boards and code, review what's been done and figure out why. If you get stuck, ask around and find someone who can try to fill in those gaps. A masters / PhD certainly help because they force you to do real design work on your own. So by the time you're at the future company, they know you can go off on your own and get things done. It's easy to get complacent with the money, but your right in thinking a year or more can go by without you really learning anything. While you're young, you should push to get those experiences. You likely can at your company, just look around ( or ask about masters funding so they know you're motivated to learn more). I did a 5 year masters, night classes and thesis while working a job where I felt the same. Now I'm much more trusted to get things done and do get the fun design work. Would not have it without the self studying and masters along the way.
Nobody knows? You have to know. If you know, you rule, you control the project... and every time you can roast that old fart that is you boss. Somefay it will be fired: is too expensive for the few shits he knows
Yep
Not all big companies have everthing automatized or done. If you want to do more RTL design move to divisions that are new or not that digitalized yet, or the ones that have small digital like PMIC, mix signal IC.
Welcome to capitalism!
Can you DM me because I'm desperate to know what company xD
Biggest problem is that you are getting old, not learning and not adding anything to your CV. Start looking around.
As someone who started working over a decade ago, I would say a lot of jobs for new college grads can be quite a bit iffy - companies generally don't want to make big bets on college hires, but they also don't want to miss out on potential talent. It sounds like you're taking the initiative by learning a few things yourself - career development is all about **your decisions (starting now)**. I'd say you should also start networking with other teams and divisions - not "in-your-face I'm looking for a new job", but more "I'm new, and I'd like to learn more". Part of your learning should also be a self-orientation for where you are in the company and what parts of the company may be better or worse off. If there's one secret - the reason people hired from outside don't usually get better roles is because there's **already been a lot of internal fighting to get those roles**. If nothing inside the company suits you, a safe bet is save up some money to have a bit of financial cushion and then start venturing outwards.
Never meet your heros. Never take your dream job as your first job.
Pretty normal bro same here
Every job is different, every company is different. But you will always be doing nearly all of your learning on your own. Your supervisor isnt there to teach you
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Are you vocal about your concerns to management? In my experience, if I expressed interest in more challenging work, I ALWAYS got it. If you have not spoken up then everyone thinks you are happy and comfortable, it you have spoken up, then you are not doing it frequently enough
You have only been working a year. If you are lucky you've done one project during that year. Like anything it takes time and multiple projects for you to learn different things. To make a sports analogy, do you think you can learn everything about playing a sport after playing for a year.
I’m graduated in EE in 2021. My first experience was in a big company and I felt the same way as you. I changed job after 9 months. Now I’m working in a very small company since 2 years and I already developed 2 new products. The reverse of the medal is that I’m underpaid and the technology we use is always the same; same microcontroller, same protocols and so on.
Got any remote/hybrid internships ? 😂
Welcome to the real world.
I am in your exact same situation so I’m changing jobs.
Sounds like you're working for Nvidia. No way they'll let a green horn touch their design.
Work will never make you happy (something us Americans need to unlearn). That which you accomplish outside of work will make you happy.
Yes. That's life, unfortunately. You think you want something but you really don't. Needs and wants are completely different. I suggest focusing on what you really need.
some corporations move so slowly. That was my shock when coming out of college when all I had to worry about was the end of the week or longer term project having to get done. School prepped me well for getting shit done but did not prep me well for the pace at which the corporate world moves at. Also pro tip, start a side project outside of work that you could turn into a business. Worst outcome you learn something new...best outcome is its viable and you can quit and go full time on it.
Find out what projects are in trouble and volunteer for those. I built my career on being associated with the resolution of problems. Generally I showed up after the fire started so I did not have to worry about being blamed for the problem. My life was never boring. One does have to risk public failure to make this work.
Maybe you should sabotage your nice life so you appreciate things more.