This all started in 2020!
In 2020 and 2021, despite the impact of the pandemic causing various industries to suffer, the transition to chip design and chip verification reached its peak!
At that time, the entire semiconductor industry was thriving. Under the dual influence of substantial national subsidies and U.S. sanctions, the number of chip startups grew like mushrooms after rain, and the market was extremely short of talent.
Various training programs emerged, primarily focused on transitioning to chip design and chip verification roles, while mid to back-end positions were overlooked. With a more inclusive educational background, even graduates from non-prestigious universities could complete a few months of training and land a job in chip design or verification, often receiving offers with salaries much higher than those of traditional engineering graduates who studied for four years!
Those from prestigious schools had an even greater advantage. Graduates from 985 universities could transition to chip roles without needing training programs. If they wanted to pursue chip design or verification, they could simply submit their resumes and receive offers, as many companies were willing to train them. Zheku even launched a ‘Sailor Program’ specifically to recruit talented individuals from good schools looking to switch careers, providing targeted training and offering salaries significantly higher than their original fields.
As the saying goes, the bigger the waves, the more fish there are. Everyone wants to be a trendsetter of the times, rushing to the forefront of the waves. Standing at the right spot, anyone could catch a lot of fish and shrimp… However, this will only lead to an early depletion of resources and a premature exhaustion of the future chip market.
By 2022, the tide began to recede. Companies that had successfully caught fish and shrimp were now struggling, while those that failed to catch anything went bankrupt. Those who were ‘bare swimming’ and fishing in murky waters were all caught and laid off. After Zheku collapsed, thousands of people were released. The ‘sailors’ trained by the company had not yet transitioned to higher roles and were forced to find new jobs after just learning the basics. They could not return to materials, and those who had seen the big fish and shrimp in the waves no longer valued the salaries of their original professions.
In 2022, transitioning to chip design or verification became very difficult. Ironically, those training programs that didn’t require hands-on experience and only taught fishing profited immensely and exited the scene. Seeing that front-end roles were no longer viable, they began to promote back-end roles, swinging their scythes towards the back-end…
In 2023, it became almost impossible to switch careers. Companies explicitly required candidates to have degrees in electronic information, microelectronics, or related fields. However, there were still loopholes. At that time, I taught everyone how to exploit these loopholes: materials graduates could apply to microelectronics programs because many schools’ microelectronics research focused on materials. By listing microelectronics on their resumes and finding an open-source project online or purchasing someone else’s project, they could study it thoroughly. Who would know they were originally from materials? This way, offers would come in…
By 2024 and 2025, even those loopholes would be closed. Just having a degree in microelectronics wouldn’t suffice; campus recruitment had become precise down to the research direction of the thesis…
Editor’s Note
In 2022, I joined the crowd in ‘bare swimming’ into the industry, only to find the tide receding as soon as I entered. Over the past three years of transitioning from materials to chips, I have worked overtime, been diligent, and have not dared to resist! I fear the layoff knife falling on my head! Now I have become a servant of two surnames: one surname is materials, which I cannot return to, and the other surname is chips, where no one wants to hire me! The path from materials to chips has been completely blocked. Those looking to switch careers should quickly seek the next wave and dive into AI and artificial intelligence. Like me, who has already ‘bare swum’ into the industry, let’s strive to survive!