Rick works as a technician at the MTTC at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. He is an experienced technician and has worked at Phillips. Rick shares his professional journey including his time in the Navy and enrolling in community college. Hear how the role of a technician has evolved 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:
Rick works as a technician at the MTTC at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. He is an experienced technician and has worked at Phillips. Rick shares his professional journey including his time in the Navy and enrolling in community college. Hear how the role of a technician has evolved 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. I teach technicians and engineers that 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 Rick. Rick works at the MTTC, at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rick, welcome to Talking Technicians.
Rick 0:52
Hello, Peter. Thanks for having me.
Peter Kazarinoff 0:55
Thanks so much for being on the podcast today. So Rick, what is the MTTC? What does that stand for?
Rick 1:02
It stands for the Manufacturing Training and Technology Center here at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And it's an - it's a nice facility that we have away from the main campus. And it's mainly like a laboratory. So the students can do lab work in the semiconductor cleanroom environment.
Peter Kazarinoff 1:31
And how long have you been in Albuquerque, New Mexico?
Rick 1:35
I've been in Albuquerque, oh, I would say, you know, I went through school here - elementary school, middle school. So I consider myself a native even though I wasn't born here. You know, I'm, at this point in anyone's life, we can most likely choose to live anywhere in the world we want to, and I've picked Albuquerque to live in, make my home.
Peter Kazarinoff 2:03
What's dsomething people might not know about Albuquerque that you know, since you've been there for so long?
Rick 2:09
Well, it's it's definitely the West. And it's definitely sparsely populated, compared to the East Coast. And compared to California, the whole times I've been on the East Coast and in California, it becomes quite evident that I'm around, like a million people or something. And when you go somewhere on the weekends to Big Bear, you went to where - the other million people have went to get away from it all. And in New Mexico, when you leave the city of Albuquerque and you're trying to get away from it all. It doesn't take long, you're going to get into sparse areas, and no people, no population and stuff like that. So.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:02
Rick, is there anyone else in your household right now?
Rick 3:05
Um, no, not right - Not right now.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:09
So tell me about your job. What is your job title? And what do you do day to day at work?
Rick 3:14
My job title currently is a technician. And it's specifically a micro electronics technician. I don't know if that directly describes my job. But currently, I work at the University of New Mexico. I work for professors here. They're doctors - are all doctors. Me being a staff member here. I'm required to refer to them as doctor and professor when I speak to them, especially in front of students and stuff like that. And it's the same type of professional courtesy. When I was in the military, when we talked to the officers and said "Yes, Sir" and, and spoke to the officers in such a way. So I assist the professor's in their day to day needs and whatever that might be. But one thing to let you know is I have a lot of things that I do here at UNM, but the professors have made it more than clear to me I still only have three responsibilities, and that's safety, safety, safety. And nobody wants to send their, their kid to school or child to school and have them you know, get hurt with chemicals - get exposed to gases and whatnot. So we need to have them learn in a safe environment. You know.
Peter Kazarinoff 4:49
Has there ever been an opportunity to grow professionally at UNM, the University of New Mexico?
Rick 4:55
Oh, yes, very much so. Of course they are just like every other big company that will offer you, you know, tuition reimbursement and whatnot. And of course, d work being here, you can, you know, make time to just walk over a few classrooms and go to class and whatnot. And, but, you know, we're at a level here where we're pretty much catering to the master's degree, doctorial students, you know, people in grad school. We have very few undergrads who come into our lab, and it's usually farther on in their education before they do these, these levels of laboratory experiments.
Peter Kazarinoff 5:50
What ways do you communicate with professors and students? Is it a lot of face-to-face verbal communication? Or do you use other electronic means?
Rick 6:01
All of the above, in and of course, there comes a time when we have have to actually execute what they're wanting to try. So we'll go into the lab with them. So besides the professors, who are students, and of course, that's our main role here is to educate our students here at UNM. You know, we have research professors, I think they call it we're a tier one, a research institution. And so you know, we have also post doctorates. And also we have customers that come in and use our facility. Us being a nonprofit, you know, we're not charging outrageous amounts or whatnot, but just kind of to help keep the operation going. But of course, our local semiconductor manufacturers are not going to open their facility to let the startups and stuff come in and use these, these machines that they can't afford as a new startup company. So you know, we open our doors, we let them come in, we cater to them. And then of course, we have to ensure their proprietary development of their product or whatever they're developing and stuff. And that can overlap quite a bit with the people that we get in here.
Peter Kazarinoff 7:25
What types of machines and equipment do you help manage?
Rick 7:30
Well, they're cleanroom equipment, there's semiconductor manufacturing equipment. So because of our budget, and whatnot, where a lot of our equipment has been donated to us many years ago, from the semiconductor industry. So Albuquerque used to be very rich in the workforce here for semiconductors, and not so much now. But we were given equipment and the equipment that was given to us, and we maintain and keep it running, some of the old equipment is literally almost like bulletproof. You know, it just stays running and stays running. And it's a lot easier to keep running, then something very high tack, usually, you know, and very able to get off the shelf parts to make repairs and whatnot. But it's been quite a challenge, because a very large number of our pieces of equipment that you don't have anybody to call anymore, to request, a higher level of service from the factory or whatnot.
Peter Kazarinoff 8:43
You mentioned that there's some bigger companies in your area. Wdhat kind of semiconductor companies around Albuquerque that you work with?
Rick 8:53
Well, there's a number of companies and I don't know if I want to go into who uses our facility or not. But of course, the huge big names, they have their own facilities. And they're the ones who were, you know, very generous in allowing us to, to receive this equipment. Now, it was a big education for me on how to deal in this manner. And I had to be be educated. So there's one of the educations I had to come up on is that this is a nonprofit school. And, essentially, you know, we can't sell things in a certain way. We can't receive things in a certain way we can't. So so I have to put things up for auction, if we're going to get rid of it. So I had a whole warehouse full of equipment. And because it was donated to us, I had to put it up for a public auction and handle it in a certain way. And of course this is government you just me University in New Mexico's property, and has to be handled in a certain way. And whatever, though that way is we want to accommodate whatever legal obligations we've made by receiving this. So if they were nice enough to donate it to us to begin with, there's usually stipulations that we can go sell it for a million dollars tomorrow and pocket the million dollars. It has to be used for our education purposes, you know, right here in the state. And of course, that factory is still going, you know, across the river there now Albuquerque, so they're kind of expecting to have a pool of applicants coming from the University of New Mexico, who are qualified, who understand the industry jargon, you know, and, and then that's part of the purpose of them wanting to donate to a local school.
Peter Kazarinoff 10:59
How long have you been at the MTTC?
Rick 11:02
I've been here six years now. And I was with the world's largest, or the maybe the US is largest manufacturer at Intel before I came here. So I have probably 30 years in computer chip manufacturing operations. Different companies work for Philips semiconductors. And this is back when you turned on a computer and it did nothing. It just came up with a C prompt, and you had to type windows and enter to even get it to launch windows and stuff. So there's been a long, long history with me. And and Dr. Pleil, my director here, me and Dr. Pleil work together back in the early 90s, at Phillips semiconductor. So what a small world it is now.
Peter Kazarinoff 12:00
Did you work as a technician at Intel, and at Philips?
Rick 12:04
I was a field service engineer at Intel. So I worked in robotics and automation. And also I worked at Philips as a technician for 15 years there. And also, before that, I went to local community college, which was the best 20 bucks I ever spent in my life. And it was once again to education, there to understand that it's 20 bucks. But this essentially, this program is paid for by your property taxes, you know, so you could see the line items. And you can see when they're, you know, increasing some bond Levy, they're going to do a mill levy on a bond. So this money is going to go to the local community college, that's how you pay 20 bucks to go to school is because it's, it's paid for in another way. You know, and I'm all for that I'm all for local governments really assisting in the educational system, because it's a public education system, just like a high school, just like in elementary school. But they've cut and cut the budget so much that we have to charge tuition, we have to charge lab fees, we have to charge all of this stuff now. So the people get disconnected and think we're like, Yale or some, some private. No, we're still just like any public school in New Mexico, we're funded just the same way. And my professor kind of gets away from the lab work and does have to go to Santa Fe to stand in front of the governor and the state senators and ask for funding against somebody who wants a new ambulance down in Cloudcroft, New Mexico or something. So.
Peter Kazarinoff 14:09
What part of your technician training program at community college do you still use day to day in your job?
Rick 14:15
Well, I use every aspect of my education I think it's it's something that's an accumulative thing through your lifetime. So I anytime I'm in a situation but something's got to work something you got to fix something. You can only stare at it so long before you have to just try something. So you pull in all of the knowledge you've had ever since the fixing your bicycle, fixing your mom's little air conditioner on the roof, fix whatever it takes to get this thing to work. You're gonna get it to work, you know? So, you know, of course when you're at the community college, that's when I was studying, you know, MOSFETs. And just normal transistors, normal bipolar transistors. So that kind of helps with the science of what we're doing here now. So I don't think a lot of people go in in depth into the semiconductors the way that not everybody has to go that far in depth to work and make a good career in this industry.
Peter Kazarinoff 15:37
Do you remember what was the toughest part of your education for ya?
Rick 15:41
You know, in this is a good question, because I had to steer away from software. I was not a coder, I could not I knew I was more of a hardware kind of guy. I like when I was in the Navy, I worked on helicopters. That was satisfaction and watching the helicopter takeoff inland and you know, you worked on it, you knew you fixed it. And it's the same with like, the robotics that I worked on, you know, the robots not moving until you fix it. You say go and there it's running again. But I just could not sit there with basic or some Fortran and just code. In yet I had friends who were in others, fellow students who would sit there with a big ol Mountain Dew all night long and go to 4am just typing away typing away. And that's, that's what was for them. You know,
Peter Kazarinoff 16:45
Rick, you mentioned that you were in the Navy. How did your military experience figure into your personal and professional story?
Rick 16:54
For me, I think I needed the discipline. I think it still benefits me to this day. You know, I need for anyone to function in any job. The alarm clocks going to go off, you need to get up and out of bed. And you need to get to work. You need to be on time you need so of course this was all right from when I was 18 going into the military. You know, there's no alarm clock going off. There's somebody screaming revelry, revelry, revelry, and, you know, so you get into this, these habits that are gonna benefit you in life. You know, and I think it was just the best thing for me, but I will admit, it might not be the best thing for everybody. But you know, for anybody who has a job, anybody who's going to work in this high tech industry, there are certain demands, there are certain expectations. And and there's a lot of competition in this world right now. So if you're not on the top of the game, I don't think the factory is going to want you. I mean, it's almost like pro sports, almost like Hollywood, almost like, do they want to work with you? You know, do you have you show up on time? Do you get along with your coworkers? Do you have a smile on your face in the morning and say, Good morning, you know, or do you come in? You know, so this is definitely affects a lot in your life and in your work, you know?
Peter Kazarinoff 18:50
Yeah, usually we call those professional skills and I love the way that you call those out and how they're important. Can you tell me a little bit about your transition from the military into civilian life? How did you find out about technician work when you left the Navy?
Rick 19:10
The whole purpose of me joining the Navy was to acquire money so I could go to school. I think. To me, I think it was my duty, everybody's duty out there to try to get as much education in this lifetime as you can. You know, and I owe that to myself to go back to school. That was the whole purpose. I couldn't reenlisted stayed in. I wanted to go to school, and kind of like stealing from Bill Gates a little bit since like the early 80s. And if you don't do it, now, you're gonna miss this boat of computer chips. The computer industry coming up, and I can see it just like everybody else. Consider, if you're not getting in now you're not getting in on the ground floor. And you're not seeing how this stuff works. And just like everybody who lived through it, it was the most exciting, exciting time in professional geekness Geekdom of computer guys and doing stuff like this in all admitted, I just love this stuff I made sure I did sports. Sure I did the military, I, there was no seen the future when computers came out, no one knew where this was going to end. And me and Dr. Pile talked about, well, if it wasn't for memory, it would have ended pretty quick. And because we developed the memory, in teraflops and everything. Now, that's the only thing that got us where we are now. But it's been a great, great adventure. And to see a phone pocket you now when you say, hey series, it's just even to me even starting off, and hitting Ctrl Alt Delete to now it's utterly amazed, you know, and I couldn't even imagine, and foresee where it's going from here. You know,
Peter Kazarinoff 21:18
What's something unexpected about working as a technician that you now know, but didn't know when you started?
Rick 21:25
Well, I think the main thing I wanted to maybe interject right now is is as a technician, you still have to stay in tune that this is a customer service type thing, right? Whether it's my mom, hiring the guy to come in to look at the TV set, and we don't get the cable, or are somebody at Intel, having a field service engineer come in a whole team of engineers come in and address a problem, it's still about customer service, and identifying who your customer is. So it might not always be the engineer, it might not always be the professor, you know, it could very well be the operator that's running the machine that you finally get an interview with and you say, what do you think can make this machine run more efficiently, get more throughput through the machine. While everything she'll tell you every time I do this, I have to go measure this, I have to go do this. So you kind of solve those bottlenecks and make life better for her. And then when she's your customer, now you go back to the main engineers, and they tell you we have it. We weren't getting 100 wafers a day. Now we're getting 100 wafers.
Peter Kazarinoff 23:04
Rick, how did your life change when you became a technician? What's different now, compared to when you were in community college?
Rick 23:12
Well, I think one of the realizations is I suppose I'm just like I was just saying about customer service. You know, it's kind of like a doctor. When When people find out your doctor, people start telling the doctor, you know, my elbows, just stop. So if it says the same with a technician, when you inform somebody, you have a skill set that you can fix this and fix that. You understand computers, you fix computers at this company, you help people. So now you're gonna have people saying, You know what, I am having trouble with this. And I'm Amit. So if this kind of bothers you, maybe it's not a good fit for you. Because that's going to start right from when you can change a fuse, all the way up to reprogramming a PLC controller. Right, people are gonna know you have these skills. And for me, that's been a roller coaster ride. It's been bittersweet, but now I'm at the point I accept it. And I'm happy I have something I can offer and I can help somebody with you know, and and provide some service just like you would want that for yourself and when you need help, somebody could come and explain something and be nice and give you that service. And it was one way at the factory at the big factory and stuff. And then now of course with the students. It's it's a yet a different way. And one of the things cuz that was told to me by the professors early on and it hit home. They said, You know, you talked about chemistry, like you've been doing this for 30 years, because you have, and none of them have been doing this for 30 years. So, you know, you need to explain to them, you know, the basis, solvents, acids, how, you know, you don't mix chemicals up, and, you know, inform them of what they're going to be using at that facility. And of course, we're very much alive lab. So when we use sulfuric acid, it's real sulfuric acid, you know, there is no fake sulfuric acid. So in one of the things I stress is, like, we use hydrogen peroxide, well, your mom uses hydrogen peroxide, when you cut your finger and you put some, but that's like 5%, my volume from the, from the local pharmacy, the stuff we use is industrial strength, chemical that's 30% by volume. So even if you just touch this hydrogen peroxide, it's going to bleach your finger, you know, no, you woman would use it to bleach your hair, or anything like that it's like, very, very much going to be, you know, corrosive, and be harmful upon contact with your skin stuff. So,
Peter Kazarinoff 26:32
Rick, what advice would you give current students or people who want to transition their careers and work as a technician?
Rick 26:39
Well, I think, you know, mainly, it's going to be physical work, it's going to be a lot of diagnosing, of failed components, and replacing those components. So now, with modern day equipment, there's a lot of things you plug in, and it'll come up with an error code. Nowadays, the hot modern stuff will just flat out tell you, you know, this module is bad change the p3 module out, you know, versus something just telling, you know, signal has been mad, waiting for temperature to come up. So we can have a technical problem, where it's not going to just like every computer, it's going to wait for something to happen before it goes on to the next line item. So you could be waiting for some temperature to come up. And you're just one degree lower than the temperature. So you have to go address it and say, Why is this not making temperature, or someone forgot to close the door, so you have to go close the door on it, then the heat builds up again, then it sees that event in with modern day computers, only then will it move on to the next step. Because it won't want to go, it might not be safe to go to the next step. Unless the machines at like 1000 degrees C or something like that.
Peter Kazarinoff 28:11
Rick, you've had a lot of success working as a technician. If somebody started out working as a technician today, do you anticipate that they'd have a bright future ahead of them?
Rick 28:22
I would, I would say they are going to have an outstanding future ahead of them. Like I said, just not so much in these big factories. But there's a ton of tech jobs out there. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning jobs, you know, auto working on cars gonna always be there. And mechanical things, they're always going to break, they're always going to need some service. And it's very nice if you don't like certain type of jobs. Like they said, it wasn't for me to sit in front of a computer all day. I do plenty of stuff behind a computer. But it's it's well balanced. And a lot of the guys I deal with I we can only do so much maintenance here at University of New Mexico. And we're only allowed to do so much I'm not allowed to do heavy electrical work. So of course I have to call in vendors just like everybody else and bring them in, do work up to code up to a certain level. When the work is complete, I'm satisfied with their work, we pay off, you know what we owe them and our contract and stuff. So we got to I have to watch a budget now. So that's something very different than working at a big factory. Somebody else is watching the budget and some of these big huge companies um, I've been called into the office of the, of the site manager. And they're telling me what's wrong with this machine, we need this machine. And well, it needs this, it needs it, there's no part in that machine that costs as much is having this machine broken. Right, whatever this costs, you need to get this in here now, because by having this machine broken, it's costing us way more than that. You know, so they will stress that to you. And so that was one of the balancing acts with the factory, is there was an engineering group, they're concerned about quality. And you could imagine if you're buying a product as a consumer, and you're, we're going on your wireless remote control, and now your button doesn't work. So that company is going to get a reputation that they're not making quality stuff. And that's kind of on the engineering. And then there's, of course, the manufacturing people that tell you, we need to make X number of these a month. Or it doesn't matter if you're an engineer, a technician or we're on you're just gonna have to close the doors and go home, because we're not making any money. And then there's the technician, who's kind of trapped in the middle of this paradox, where the engineers say, No, I want it quality. I want this now to work perfect. 10 times out of 10. And yet you have the manufacturing guy say, yeah, 10 times out of 10. Get it working now, you know, and so you have to create that balance and that your role is to try to fix the machine, make it safe. Sometimes, just shut down the robot, put on the acid gear yourself. Let's get this product through here. I'll move it through with my hand. And we'll get it out. And now we have time to fix the machine. And we'll fix it right. We've gotten the product out that we need. But it's almost like it gets to the point like you think of NASCAR. Right? The cars are out making laps and making laps. When it comes in for a pitstop. That's me coming up. These guys in these factories don't want this machine down. They want it to be like a Formula One pitstop where the tires come off the new tires. Come on, you do that. In a perfect world. That would be great if we can do that kind of maintenance. But unfortunately, it's not. You know, and we just tried to do the balancing act the best we can. And we're happy when it works. You know.
Peter Kazarinoff 32:54
Rick, thank you so much for being on Talking Technicians and sharing your story.
Rick 32:59
All right, thank you very much.
Peter Kazarinoff 33:01
Please keep in touch.
Rick 33:03
Thank you, I will.
Peter Kazarinoff 33:09
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.