Texas Instruments

I will preface this with an acknowledgment that your experience will be very contingent on your module, supervisor, experience in the semiconductor industry, and if you've been employed by other companies in the semiconductor industry. If all of the above are favorable for you, you may have a good time at TI.

Good salary, raises, and people to work with.

Good benefits and start bonuses.

Profit sharing is amazing.

Depending on your role, you may have varying degrees of flexibility working remotely, which makes sense. If you want to be on-site the majority of the time, apply for an Equipment Engineer or technician role. Otherwise, apply for a Process Engineer or technician role.

The above factors weren't all favorable for me. And if other companies in the semicon industry are more demanding, I don't even want to know.

24-hour manufacturing environment is brutal. My module is particularly nasty, losing a lot of engineers and technicians in the short time I've been here. Training is the worst part because of how hit-and-miss it is. Everyone is busy, especially your trainer, make no mistake about it.

Will say, training is getting better. Some of the official training won't line up with where you're at in terms of your career because of the limited offerings. On top of that, you'll be expected to do your regular job even if you're in a week-long training. Don't be surprised if you get a plethora of calls in the middle of them.

You'll get thrown into a "tool owner" role within 6 months. Hope you learn the toolset enough to direct daily action plans for people that have been working on the machines for scores of years. Does it sound ridiculous to have a New College Grad directing this activity when you have a tenuous grasp of how the machine works? It does to the technicians as well, and it shows.

The day shift will resent you if you're not in the fab, when you have 80 things keeping you away. The night shift will resent you if you're not available or engaged, but that's kind of a thing anywhere you go, actually. Be prepared for 40+ hour weeks and night & weekend calls because there's no mod time, and the fab priorities are relentless.

You'll be expected to work on arcane, outdated systems where you eyeball signals to see if they are acceptable instead of being able to perform any sort of sophisticated analysis. IT support is terrible for a leader in chip manufacturing technology. It's a shame because this could be a really fun company & industry to work for.

If the module is constantly burning through people, don't hire people in on rotation. Anything they learn, they take with them, losing any sort of institutional memory. Hire lots of people straight up and develop some experience that stays with the module.

Misc. blitz actions based on the flavor of the week take the tool & process owners away from the things that actually contribute. Stop wasting your employees' time.

Speaking of wasting time, get rid of the scores of different links & applications that aren't connected or don't work together. It's a miracle anything gets done.

Centralize parts, repairs, & calibrations. Having the tool owner manage all of that is insane.

Get rid of TIMS & SMS as soon as possible.

Follow this mantra when it comes to making your own software: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

ZUM is a joke. How can you seriously expect to have Zero Unplanned Maintenance on a machine you run 24 hours and run to fail?

If you're having this much trouble now, imagine how bad it's going to be with the impending expansions. Get ready for some growing pains.