Semicon in Singapore

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I agree it is perfecting "prata flipping" but on a higher lvl. Actually technicians are the ones handling the manufacturing machines. Engineers are sitting in aircon office deciding whether to vary the temperature, pressure, flow rate, concentrate of chemicals, etc. After deciding they pass info to technicians to execute. They keep varying these attributes till they get the optimum product.

It seems not much transferrable skills are acquired as a process engineer since the process is vey specific.
In the event of retrenchment, can a process engineer working in mircon for 10yrs find a similar job in other semicon firm with same level of pay (assuming around 6k - typical engineer pay at senior level)?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It seems not much transferrable skills are acquired as a process engineer since the process is vey specific.
In the event of retrenchment, can a process engineer working in mircon for 10yrs find a similar job in other semicon firm with same level of pay (assuming around 6k - typical engineer pay at senior level)?

A retrenched engineer in late 30s are more likely than not to be driving taxi

interesting read here..

seems like the above only applies to ops/engineering side..what about those corporate side. Are the starting salaries the same, or at least somewhere near?

Btw FOUR rounds of interviews really demanding

fresh grads are hired to run the production line (i.e. routine work, trouble shooting)
Projects, especially the high visibility ones.....u won't even get close. Haha.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is it like factory operations and not much creative thinking is needed? In other words, is it more "ops" than "projects"?

[poor and stupid]

Please go for micron, and not GF. Why? ask the pay hahahahaha

Originally Posted by poor and stupid

Please go for micron, and not GF. Why? ask the pay hahahahaha

micron and GF , the starting pay for 2nd lower degree is how much?

assume the starting is $3000

then 5 years down the road, what should be the basic salary?

[jobhunter1234]

Hoping more ppl / current employees could provide more info on micron. Thanks.

People always go around saying things like the wafer industry is a sunset industry but I call ********. How can that be true? You mean all the latest phones, laptops, game consoles and the likes have gone extinct? If anything, sales of these products are going up every year.

However, I have this theory that it this industry is vulnerable to shifting out of Sg. The wafer industry is highly competitive has very low profit margin. They have to keep up with the changes in microfabrication process which requires very expensive investments. I think the reason why they set up shop in sg is because of the stability and we had an educated labour pool to fill up those technician posts cheaply(relatively). And so they stayed on to recover the costs of their investments.

But our neighboring countries are catching up, they will soon be able to offer an even cheaper pool of labour to fill these technician positions. My guess that in due time this industry will completely shift out of sg, even faster should an extreme recession occur.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

People always go around saying things like the wafer industry is a sunset industry but I call ********. How can that be true? You mean all the latest phones, laptops, game consoles and the likes have gone extinct? If anything, sales of these products are going up every year.

However, I have this theory that it this industry is vulnerable to shifting out of Sg. The wafer industry is highly competitive has very low profit margin. They have to keep up with the changes in microfabrication process which requires very expensive investments. I think the reason why they set up shop in sg is because of the stability and we had an educated labour pool to fill up those technician posts cheaply(relatively). And so they stayed on to recover the costs of their investments.

But our neighboring countries are catching up, they will soon be able to offer an even cheaper pool of labour to fill these technician positions. My guess that in due time this industry will completely shift out of sg, even faster should an extreme recession occur.

more likely its considered "sunset" in SG. yes, it would be true that SG is no longer cheap. in fact, coys like micron have been making losses over quaters.

Is that the plant in woodlands which was the previous TECH semiconductor? As a process engineer, you are likely to jump around the few wafer fab in sg. Job wise there is really little transferable skill sets. Engineering plus manufacturing is going to be a challenge in sg to sustain for the long haul.