In fact, it is relatively easy to do IC design in the entire technological field. Pay attention to this category: the field of technology research and development. If you can't compare the work pressure with the aunt of the neighborhood committee, then you must not be as leisurely as her.
However, those who do IC design, especially the IC design department, because the cost of tape-out is too expensive, the entire development cycle is very long. A project, from front-end to back-end, often takes a long time to prepare, and it may only go to tape-out once a year or two. Such a long cycle makes the work rhythm of IC design engineers not so fast. Especially in some foreign companies and state-owned companies, working in them is often a radish and a pit, leaving get off work on time and rarely working overtime.
In the field of IC design, the intensity depends on the company.
In some start-up design companies, such as oppo, vivo, etc., because there are many projects, there may be more overtime.
But compared with software, it is even easier. Software can be compiled and debugged all day long. In theory, if you have been working 7*24 hours, the software can always make progress.
So the software is very bitter, and there is no cost for debugging, so it is naturally driven to death to catch up with the progress. You can’t just look at how much Internet code farmers earn. They earn a lot, but they also work a lot of overtime. The speed of product iteration and update is very fast. Engineer high. From this perspective, the cost performance of being an ic engineer is very high.
The same is true for working at Huawei. Although HiSilicon is making chips, most of the rest of Huawei are working on products and projects. Those people fly around, travel all day, and work overtime all day long.
Therefore, in the entire industry, doing IC design is relatively leisurely, and the income per unit time is relatively high. If you can be admitted to a master's degree, it is still a very good choice to be a chip design engineer after graduation.
Is ic design eating youth food?
Eating youth meals refers to the development group, excluding IC design engineers. See if there are any 35-year-old digital IC design engineers around you, are they unemployed? It is still the target of various companies, of course, the premise is that you don't have a mixed mentality from 25 to 35.
The cost of IC trial and error is too high, and the cost of using a novice to make mistakes is too high, so in this industry, the old will always bring the new, and it will be fine on the road. The design, validation, and backend are all the same.
Finally, objectively speaking, IC design is not a programmer in the strict sense, but a designer and maintainer of digital circuits. Under the condition of keeping thinking forever, the digital IC position is not a meal of youth, but a meal of experience.