IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Fall 2020 - 49

They regularly top the most admired
companies lists, drawing in poten-
tial talent. Further, with the rise of
well-documented open source soft-
ware systems, the barrier to entry
for learning how to program cuttingedge software is incredibly low, given
time and determination.
But familiarity is not the only fac-
tor drawing students in, based on sur-
veys of generational preferences when
it comes to work and careers. A recent
poll of people belonging to Genera-
tion Z, which is currently entering the
workforce, shows a prioritization of
salary and job stability when choos-
ing careers and companies [3]. Com-
paring salaries between software and
hardware engineering roles, a quick
poll of large software and semicon-
ductor companies on Glassdoor shows
that application-specified IC (ASIC)
design engineers out-earn software
engineers, on average. Yet this only
scratches the surface of the issue, as
ASIC design typically requires post-
graduate education, while software
engineers can enter the job market
with only an undergraduate degree in
computer science. This opportunity
cost can be visualized using sites such
as www.levels.fyi that enable a direct

4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000

20
0

9
20
10
20
11
20
12
20
13
20
14
20
15
20
16
20
17
20
18
20
19

7,000
6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0

9
20
10
20
11
20
12
20
13
20
14
20
15
20
16
20
17
20
18
20
19

5,000

8,000

6,000

Year
University of California, Los Angeles

comparison of compensation levels
across major companies. The avail-
ability and the scale of information
that can now be used to make career
decisions are staggering. Combining
this information with the perception
of technology scaling stagnation in the
semiconductor industry, the stability
of the career path as it exists today
also comes into question.
What information can be gleaned
about circuit design careers and their
outlooks? Surveying job advertise-
ments from a variety of top semicon-
ductor and software companies with
ASIC design divisions, we observe an
interesting trend in the desired skills,
tools, and languages requested in these
postings. Figure 2 breaks down the
skills mentioned as desirable across
50 job postings with descriptions
including " ASIC design engineer " and
" circuit design. " Skills highlighted in
red are (traditionally) more aligned
with software design, while those
shaded blue are customary in circuit
design. Much industrial-level chip
design has shifted from Spice and Vir-
tuoso toward automation techniques
and higher-level modeling of cir-
cuits; this trend is particularly true for
digital designers. We also see a move

20
0

7,000

20
0

Number of Undergraduate Students

8,000

Number of Undergraduate Students

that have prominent engineering pro-
grams (and data readily available from
their registrars). At some universi-
ties, computer science programs are
now so competitive that even register-
ing for classes has become cutthroat
[1]. Similar observations were made
around the dot-com bubble in the late
1990s and early 2000s as start-ups
in the software space saw sky-high
valuations. After the bubble burst, stu-
dents promptly began to reject com-
puter science in favor of other majors,
indicating that a shift in the market
impacted their choices [2].
During the past decade, history
has repeated itself, with a rise in startup valuations of more than US$1 bil-
lion prompting speculation that this
could be another tech bubble; how-
ever, the environment and attitudes
around technology are different this
time. We are now 20 years past the
dot-com bubble burst, with comput-
ing, automation, and machine learn-
ing pervasive in multiple fields of
study and with no signs of a change
in momentum. Adding to this, com-
panies such as Google, Facebook, and
Amazon are household names, with
software-based core product lines
that people interact with every day.

Year
North Carolina State University

The Ohio State University

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Michigan
Stanford University
(a)

(b)

FIGURE 1: Undergraduate enrollment in (a) computer science and (b) electrical engineering programs at universities across the United States
during the past decade.

IEEE SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS MAGAZINE

FA L L 2 0 2 0

http://www.levels.fyi

IEEE Solid-States Circuits Magazine - Fall 2020

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