Jeb works as a technician at Intel in Hillsboro, OR. Jeb was working at a supermarket before he went to a community college and gained the technical and professional skills he needed to work at one of the most cutting-edge companies in America. Hear Jeb's story in this episode.
The Talking Technicians podcast is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program.
Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.
Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org.
Links from the show:
Jeb works as a technician at Intel in Hillsboro, OR. Jeb was working at a supermarket before he went to a community college and gained the technical and professional skills he needed to work at one of the most cutting-edge companies in America. Hear Jeb's story in this episode.
The Talking Technicians podcast is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program.
Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation.
Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org.
Links from the show:
Peter Kazarinoff 0:02
From MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center. This is Talking Technicians, the podcast about technicians: who they are, what they do, and where they come from. I'm your host, Peter Kazarinoff. Iat teach technicians and engineers at Portland Community College. In each episode, you'll meet a working technician and hear their story. That means real interviews with real technicians about real jobs. At the end of each episode, you'll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician too. In this episode, you'll meet Jeb. Jeb works at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon outside Portland. Jeb welcome, welcome to Talking technicians.
Jeb 0:51
Thanks, Peter. Good to be here.
Peter Kazarinoff 0:53
Jeb, tell me a little bit about yourself. Where do you live? And how long have you been there for?
Jeb 0:58
I currently reside in St. Helens, Oregon. I have lived in my house now for six years, six and a half years. And yeah, I happen to be a grandparent. Got four kids, all of which are adults. Like to get them out of my house. But they're working progress we're getting there.
Peter Kazarinoff 1:22
Have you lived in St. Helens your whole life?
Jeb 1:25
No. I grew up in Lewis County, Washington. It's - I say Lewis County because I lived in Chehalis which is on the west side of the county for up until I was about 11. And then I moved from there to Morton, which is more central county. And that's where I graduated from high school.
Peter Kazarinoff 1:48
And you mentioned that there's some kids in your household. Anyone else in your household right now?
Jeb 1:53
My wife.
Peter Kazarinoff 1:55
Do you have a lot of space out in St. Helens?
Jeb 1:58
Not really I mean, it's - it's a decent size lot that I'm on so I have I have plenty of room I got a garden and I get plenty of sunshine. I throw up my pool in the springtime, summertime. And yeah, I got I got some room but not not as much as I grew up with. I grew up on a dairy farm. So I'm used to, you know, room being like 35 acres, I have point two acre. You know.
Peter Kazarinoff 2:26
So tell me about where you work. What's your job title? And what do you do day to day?
Jeb 2:31
So I work up at Intel, I am an engineering technician. I work with a team of people in a - one of our smaller factories. And I - my day to day is a lot of troubleshooting. That's most of my job is troubleshooting issues. Once we figure out what the actual issue is, it's pretty quick to fix. But it - a lot of times will take a while to dial down where that actual issue is. So it's a lot of troubleshooting. I like to tell people I babysit and repair robots. Mostly because outside of the industry, going into details about the different software's and technical things that we have to deal with is well, it bores most people, quite honestly. My wife being one of them. If I come home and start talking to her about my day, if I don't mention something about my friends, she gets really annoyed with me because she does not care about the actual work. That's that's what I enjoy. So.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:43
So picking up on that, what kinds of different roles do you work with at Intel? Do you just work with other technicians? Or do you interface with scientists and engineers?
Jeb 3:54
I mostly work with - I have engineers that I work with regularly on a daily basis. Very, the group I'm currently in is very hands on with the engineers, the engineers are usually on site with me. The last group I was in, the engineers were able to do a lot of their work from home. Due to COVID. And everything else, they were able to remote access most of what they needed, so they weren't on site as much. I like - I like the newer group that I'm in better in the aspect that I get more of that interaction. My previous group I was on nights, so that also made it a lot more difficult to interact with the engineers as opposed to days. So going to days was nice, but it's definitely one of those things that it's - the interactions are what you make of them. You know, most of them are really positive. You know, but we're working together troubleshooting tools, bouncing ideas off of each other. It's a very collaborative and environment that I'm in right now, which I like.
Peter Kazarinoff 5:02
So I want to dig into some of the things that you just mentioned. Do you work in a team? Or do you mostly work alone?
Jeb 5:08
I work on a team. Um, there's, I'm trying to remember how many we're up to now. My team is growing. So it's, it's in flux quite often. I think we have five of us on the team. And we all work together to process what we need to process.
Peter Kazarinoff 5:30
You also mentioned that you used to work nights, do you work shifts? Or do you have a regular nine-to-five schedule a five days a week.
Jeb 5:38
It's shifts for most of us as far as technicians at Intel, there's a few of them that have the nine-to-five type jobs. But most of us work, like, I currently work a 12 and a half hours shift, I - four days on four days, three days off, three days on, four days off. And that that's how most of us run is that 12 hour shift. Which one hand is - means when you're working, that's all you're doing that day, you're you're going to work and that's it. That's all you got. On the days off, though, you have more days off to get caught up on like the chores and stuff like but for example, this morning, I got up this morning, I got coffee, and then I came home and dishes, swept, mopped, cleaned my stove and started laundry. Um, all before 11 o'clock. So it's nice having that extra - extra time to where you can get caught up on some of the housework that you haven't been able to keep up on, you know, while you're working. And it makes it - I don't know - I like having the extra days off. Those are nice.
Peter Kazarinoff 6:55
So let's talk a little bit about compensation and amenities. How much did you make when you first started as a technician? And how long have you been working as one?
Jeb 7:05
So I started in 2013. The first year I made just over $60,000. And before that I was working as a clerk at Safeway for minimum wage. So that that was a substantial. Somewhere in my memories on Facebook, it pops up every year that when I realized I had paid more in taxes than I had actually made previously to any other profession I'd been in.
Peter Kazarinoff 7:36
And you've been working at Intel for a while, are there opportunities for professional growth?
Jeb 7:41
Absolutely. In fact, it's encouraged. Most of us, we find where we want to go fairly quickly within the company. Some people have more ambition than others, obviously. Some people they they're happy where they're at. And that's that's okay, too. But it's like I started off as a Manufacturing Technician. Worked my way up to a Manufacturing Equipment Technician, and now I'm an Engineering Technician. So I've advanced through three different job title promotions. So that's - that, to me is definitely signs of growth. There's also help with like going back to school and getting a higher education if you so choose. If you wanted to work your way into to, that's how you would work your way into like going into engineering and things like that, at least at at Intel.
Peter Kazarinoff 8:36
In addition to compensation. Are there any benefits like health care or retirement as part of your job at Intel?
Jeb 8:45
Oh, absolutely! 401k, health insurance. There's several different options for what you actually want to do. Several different programs for vision, medical, dental. You really do get to choose your your your you get to take the ownership of your medical insurance issues. You know, you get to choose your plan and build on that. Versus just, you know, here's here's the only thing you get offered. You know - that - that's what a lot of - some of the companies I've worked for in the past is this is the only thing we can offer you. Versus Intel, where I actually got to choose and go through everything. So that was nice.
Peter Kazarinoff 9:30
Jeb, what did it feel like your first day at work at Intel?
Jeb 9:34
Overwhelming. It was definitely overwhelming because again, I come from a very small town. A lot of people will not even know where Morton, Washington is. Let alone having any idea how big it is or isn't. But it is - ah - it was exciting. The first day I went to the wrong building on my first day cause I was showing up like I thought I was supposed to. And I went to go in and I told him where I was there from there like you're in the wrong building you need to go... And they gave me the map on how to get over to the other other factory. And I was like, oh, okay, so getting lost on my very first day was definitely a fun adventure. I did have four classmates from my class at Centralia College that were with me on that day. So four of us got jobs right out of college, we got our announcement on - on graduation day, like I was grabbing my cap and gown and getting ready to head out the door, when I got the phone call telling me I got the job. The first day in the factory was definitely the most exciting for me. And that was, you know, I, they they do a factory tour so that you get to go through and see everything and, and and that's hard enough as it is because you're so distracted by everything flying around you and just everything going on. There's so much automation going on in there. It's - it's just amazingly impressive. And then you go from that into getting into your daily routine at your job at your new job and stuff like that, and it grows on you, you know, you get to the point where the OHV's, you just kind of have to keep yourself from not zoning out on them, you know, they're there. They're a distraction, because they're so cool. And just how fast they go and everything. It's just it's so overwhelming and how much you see, when you first go in, and most of it you do not understand at all. And that's okay. They'll teach you. They'll teach you the ins and outs of what you need to know.
Peter Kazarinoff 11:58
So tell me a little bit about how you got to where you are now, what was your work experience before you started at Intel?
Jeb 12:06
My work experience before Intel was, as I said earlier, I was working at Safeway, that was the job previous to Intel. I also was volunteering to teach while I was in college, going through the program I went through I was offering to - I was helping out seventh graders with their Lego robots. We're not - it wasn't officially Lego League, so I can't use that term. But they definitely were excited about it. But we were using the NXT's that they use for the Lego League. So that was that was a lot of fun. But before that it was a lot of customer service based type jobs that I did not enjoy. There was some McDonald's there was some Papa John's there was a ink and toner refill recycling place. I grew up on a farm. I've worked hard enough physically, I don't mean to have a physical job anymore. That was that was my thought process. But - but yeah, it was just a whole bunch of crappy minimum wage jobs and on and off unemployment as you bounce in between different basically crap jobs. That's where I went. My path to getting into this Centrailia College program that I went through. It started with a friend of my wife's actually. He had gone through the program, and it started down at Intel. And then over the years because he was one of my wife's best friends in college, and we're still really good friends now. But over the years, he kept bugging me like dude, you you can play video games, you can work at Intel. Like it's not, it's not that hard because I had the same thought process that that that a lot of people have, I'm sure about going into the tech industry is like you got to be super smart at that you have to have like excellent math skills and things like that. And I mean you do have to have good mathematics skills that's - that isn't - it's not really a need. It's a work - you can work around it. I mean, we have the technology. Use a calculator. They're on every's cell phone. But - but that's just it was it took him probably three years to convince me to finally go back to school and then I found out I couldn't go back to school for a while because of an outstanding debt. And it took me a while to get that cleared up. Once that was cleared up, though, I was able to get enrolled again at Centralia Community College. I went through their electronics, robotics and automation program. And - which was a general basic overview of all three disciplines. So I got a pretty basic overview of robotics electronics and - and how to build and run automation. So it was a really nice broad program, which I really liked. And it was part of the selling point on the program was the fact that even if I didn't get my job at Intel that I was going for, I had a whole new set of skills to market towards all sorts of different places. Not you know, Honeywell, Boeing, any factory anywhere anymore has automation in it. You know, having a general basic understanding of automation, you can go in on an entry level position in an automation field. And it's an exciting career. I mean, who doesn't want to fix robots? I mean, realistically at the end of the day that's what I get to do. I get to work in science fiction. You know, that's fantastic to me.
Peter Kazarinoff 15:53
What parts of your two-year degree at Centralia College helped you in your job?
Jeb 15:59
The parts that helped me the most were the - the troubleshooting things. Specifically, because I do work so much with robots. The robotics portion of it has probably helped me the most, the electronics portion, not as much. Not that that knowledge wasn't great. It was fantastic. And I love it. And I still occasionally we'll cluj together some stuff to make blinky lights and whatnot. But it was everything is so small now. We're not on a component level. And lot of that education was component level education, which going forward as an engineer and knowing how that stuff works makes it a lot easier to understand when the engineers - because when, because we get so many different types of engineers at Intel. We have chemists, we have mechanical engineers, we have electronic engineers that I've had every different type of PhD other than medical and legal walk through those doors and work with me. I kid you not. It is insane as far as the engineering end of things. And yeah, they all look at things differently and talk differently to you. So it's fascinating to me to have that. But the back to the actual question. The automation has helped a lot with the understanding how that flows, and what is all being communicated how much is being communicated. A lot of people don't understand, you know, they'll see they'll look at it, and they'll be like, Oh, that's so cool. They don't understand how much coding is, has been written for that system to work together. And on top of it all has to work together. And a lot of times, it's making split second decisions almost as fast as our brain does when we get into fight or flight mode. You know, like, That's how quick these things are making choices and decisions like that. And it's, it's mind boggling when you really start thinking about it. It's just absolutely mind boggling how far we've come. And I mean, in just the last 120 years, I mean, it wasn't that long ago, we finally figured out how to fly, you know? Now look at what we got, you know, we got probes driving around and flying on Mars, like, that's insane that we went that fast. So with just so much advancement so quickly. And the I don't think a lot of people truly understand the gravity of all of that, you know, it's an amazing theme, when you look at it that way, you know, it makes the world? Well, to me, it makes the world a brighter place. You know, there's a lot of negative nonsense going on out there. And that's something that we can look at and go look at what we have accomplished as a society, not just as an individual, just as a society as a whole. We went from being stuck on the ground, to being able to go to another and things to another planet - in less than 150 years. That's just - it's crazy. How fast technology changes and moves and it's exciting to be in that kind of a field.
Peter Kazarinoff 19:15
Jeb, tell me about how your life changed when you became a technician. What's different now compared to when you were in community college?
Jeb 19:23
Money. I have it. I mean, I don't have an excessive amount of it. But I have enough - I again - I not. My stress is now instead of: am I going to be able to buy food for my kids? Are now: I need to clean out my pantry. There's too much food in my pantry. You know, like the - the frustrations that I have are generally not financial, per se. I mean, they're financial in the fact that I spend money in ways that I probably shouldn't more often And then not. But again, that's part of that just being poor growing up, he, you get used to not having money, you know, you can survive without it. So when you get a big influx of money, you go out and you buy stuff. Not that you need it, you just go out and buy stuff because you can. Which is very rewarding at times. And then you start realizing I don't need stuff, I need to get rid of stuff. That's when you start, start reeling back some of that. But, but I mean, just like, I never thought I'd be able to go on like a Caribbean cruise or go like at the end of this month, it's October, at the end of October. I'm going to Savannah, Georgia to visit a friend of mine. And then we're going to - me and the wife, we're driving down to Florida, and we're going to Disney World to see the Star Wars Experience. So like, I would never have thought to be able to do that before college. Now I'm like, oh, yeah, I should do that. Now. I'm like, oh, let's do a Caribbean cruise. Let's plan that out. And we can do it. Like that kind of freedom is now available to me. You know, that was something I never thought I was going to ever be able to achieve. And I love it.
Peter Kazarinoff 21:18
Jeb, do you have a final call to action for students or people who want to transition their careers? And is Intel and the semiconductor industry hiring right now?
Jeb 21:29
Oh, gosh, yes! There is not a single aspect of the semiconductor industry that is not frantically looking for people right now. Now is a great time to apply and come in. I will try to get the link to get people to apply from outside up. So you can have that for for for them to go into. It's inspiring to see people from so many different backgrounds. And then you also have so many different military members that end up in the tech industry. So I mean, there are so many different ways people can - can navigate to get into the tech industry without having to go through formal education. So start off with your your local college. If that doesn't feel right to you talk to a recruiter. You know, I mean, I don't I don't encourage military actions. But at the same time, there's an opportunity there to learn with a hands-on approach. You know, I mean, I work with guys, they worked on helicopters, while they were in the military, the high end helicopters - like the Apaches and things like that. These guys are now working at Intel after they retire. Like - it's insane at how those skills transfer so much. So, yeah, just the you know, everybody knows at least one person who works in tech. I have a - it's like six degrees of separation. All right. You everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who works in tech, I guarantee it. It's a thing. Find that person, figure out how to get into it and get into it. If you are at all interested. It is an amazingly beautiful, chaotic, sometimes frustrating ride, but it is definitely worth it.
Peter Kazarinoff 23:24
So Jeb, thank you so much for sharing - sharing your story. And please keep in touch.
Jeb 23:29
Will do. Will do.
Peter Kazarinoff 23:30
Bye now.
Jeb 23:31
Bye.
Peter Kazarinoff 23:31
Talking Technicians is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program. Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. Join the conversation. If you are working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org. We're always looking out for great guests to share more stories with you.