Industry Squibs

Whether you are interested in startups or want to make sure you get the most out of your career, be it semiconductors or another field, it is better for you to live in a city that is teaming with energy rather than a sleepy small-town, at least according to FastCompany.  There is little doubt that living in a city that is a hub for what you might be interested in can be an advantage. Taking it a step farther, if you are deciding on a college it might be a good idea to apply the same principle, since local candidates usually have an advantage in at least landing an interview and your professors are likely to have better industry connections as well. But with millions of cities to choose from, picking one can quickly become a daunting task, especially if you are not interested in one of the regular destinations like San Francisco and the nearby Silicon Valley. Lucky for you, FastCompany just published their list of Fast Cities 2007. The criteria for the list included the creativity, innovation, and energy of a city. For a short discussion of the criteria, take a look at their article here. The actual list is broken down into many categories including some rather unusual ones such as unexpected oases and creative-class meccas. They’ve also provided a nice little map that locates the cities visually on a map. Additionally, cities that are simply slow or too-fast for their own good are also briefly mentioned. The nice thing about the list is that it is global and thus there should be something for everyone on it.

It is hard to stay on top of news in most industries. Thus it is nice when one comes across a site that pulls a lot of information from different sources and presents them in a nice and readable format. Case in point is SemiTrends.com, a nicely laid out news aggregator of semiconductor related news. It does look like the news is posted manually, but don’t worry, the site is updated several times a day and always contains plenty of reading material. Actually, some of the manual filtering might be of value, eliminating articles that have marginal content. All posts are tagged, allowing you to click on a tag and read posts that have been tagged similarly. One can also browse the posts by categories; however, the number of categories is simply staggering, and thus hard to navigate. The authors of the site might want to consider some alphabetical binning, especially when it comes to company names. The search functionality is located below all the categories – just in case you had a hard time finding it. Overall though, it is a great site, and definitely beats surfing from one site to another to get your daily fill of semiconductor news.

EETimes.com has a fairly entertaining and interesting read titled “How to keep engineers happy.” Why is it entertaining? For one, while some of the quotes seem right on, a few are questionable at best and a few others promote old and mostly ineffective management doctrines. Take, for example, the following quote by Andrew Iserson that is mentioned in the article: “Most workers would rather not change jobs,” unless influenced by external factors. A terrible generalization by any means, but especially inaccurate when applied to younger workers that have graduated in the last ten years or so. Most young engineers that I have encountered in my career don’t see any problems changing companies. As a matter of fact, the majority views changing companies as one of the best ways to obtain a significant salary boost, gain new skills as well as experience, and to broaden their professional network. This is especially true for engineers that are not tied down by families or are located in booming economies.  Furthermore, many younger engineers have witnessed major semiconductor companies cut down on pension plans and other benefits, at a time when startup companies in related fields such as computer-science and bio-engineering were luring workers with significant perks, thus further decreasing employee loyalty. This leads directly to one of the major points that the article fails to address: nobody wants to work for a “cheap” company. There is a proper time and place for cost-cutting, but if a company’s major plan for increasing profits is cost-cutting of office supplies and coffee stirrers, and not a good strategic roadmap for future products, the company should really not be surprised if their top talent decides to jump ship. Anyhow, be sure to check out the charts that accompany the article as well, since they yield some interesting information about general hiring practices.