[nurspouse]

Having worked at Intel, I can tell you that the process side of Intel has similar work hours. This, in particular, rings true for Intel:

> Different positions may have different requirements, so work hours vary, according to the principal engineer. “An equipment engineer might start work at 8 o’clock in the morning and leave around 9 o’clock at night, but is it normal? This may happen two or three days a week. On a production line, the equipment must be maintained.

> “If you are a process engineer, it will be more stable. Maybe you can start work at 8:30 a.m.and leave before 7:30 p.m. If there are some urgent matters, you may have to stay later.”

At Intel, process engineers had to attend a daily meeting at 7:40am (mandatory), and would rarely leave before 6pm (meetings scheduled at 5 or 6pm were common). I sometimes would wander around in that part of the building at 7pm and a significant fraction of cubicles would be filled.

Almost all Intel process engineers have PhDs.

[Aperocky]

How much are Intel process engineers paid to withstand that?

[nwiswell]

Very well for Oregon.

But it's a little more nuanced than pay for two reasons.

1) Intel is a little like proto-Amazon. There is a preference for hiring people directly out of grad school and inducting them into the cult while they are still naive, so that's just what they come to expect for work-life balance.

2) The whole semiconductor industry is like this, and particularly so for production fabs. If you have domain expertise, you have no alternative work-life balance choice short of a career change.

[nurspouse]

> There is a preference for hiring people directly out of grad school and inducting them into the cult while they are still naive, so that's just what they come to expect for work-life balance.

Heh. I once interviewed for an internal SW position that dealt with fab automation. I openly told them in the interview that I knew about their work culture and that was of great concern to me.

Interviewer: I know what you mean, and I promise the org has been working to improve the conditions. It's not as bad as it was.

Me: Great! However, for me the comparison isn't the "old you" but the rest of Intel.

<Back and forth>

Interviewer: Look, you're not going to get a 40 hour/week job anywhere in the SW industry!

Me: Umm... All my SW engineer roles at Intel were 40 hour/week jobs. I haven't worked on weekends in years. <Proceed to list friends at big name SW companies who also don't work more than 40 hours/week>

Interviewer: OK. We normally interview people straight out of college who don't know any better.

Needless to say, I didn't take that job.

[selimthegrim]

When I was a green badge SWE at Intel all my (blue badge) coworkers were 15-20 years older than me. No one my age stuck around.

[nurspouse]

I assume that's because of pay. Working conditions for SW folks is fairly decent at most of the company, except possibly for firmware folks.

I suppose some people didn't like their status in a HW company.

[selimthegrim]

I was in Validation.

[nurspouse]

Good in terms of process engineers, poor compared to FAANG SW Engineers.