Mark has over 25 years experience working as a technician. He worked as a technician at Intel in many different areas including hiring and training. Currently, Mark works as a technician at the MTTC at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. Hear how technicians can do more than maintain and fix equipment; Mark’s career shows how far being a technician can take you.
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:
Mark has over 25 years experience working as a technician. He worked as a technician at Intel in many different areas including hiring and training. Currently, Mark works as a technician at the MTTC at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM. Hear how technicians can do more than maintain and fix equipment; Mark’s career shows how far being a technician can take you.
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 Mark, Mark works in the M T. T. C, the manufacturing training and Technology Center at the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Mark, welcome to Talking technicians.
Mark 0:57
Thank you, Peter. It's nice to be here.
Peter Kazarinoff 0:59
So let's start kinda with a sense of place, where do you live? And how long have you been there for?
Mark 1:05
So I live in a suburb just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico called Rio Rancho. And I've lived there for the past 25-27 years.
Peter Kazarinoff 1:16
And is there anyone else in your household?
Mark 1:18
I have a wife and a daughter who's currently going to college at the University of New Mexico?
Peter Kazarinoff 1:23
Well, congratulations. Thank you. So tell me about where you work. What's your job title? And what do you do day to day?
Mark 1:32
My job title is micro electronics technician, which is a fancy word for we do at all. We have a cleanroom here that we can do. Mills with on silicone and some other substrates. And I have a co worker, he and I manage the whole cleanroom We do everything from cleaning the floors to working on the equipment or bringing contractors in if it's something that we can't do ourselves, we handle all of the chemicals, all the gases, all the materials, all of the consumables. So we've pretty much covered all between the two of us. There's a lot of responsibility in that.
Peter Kazarinoff 2:13
Mark, you mentioned that the MTTC makes MEMS devices, what is a MEMS device? What does that stand for?
Mark 2:20
It's a micro electronic machines, okay, it will actually have some moving parts, you know, when you're driving in your car and the new ones, and it has a little sensor that tells you you're getting out of your lane or something like that, well, those are little MEMS devices that actually pick that kind of stuff up. And since it a lot of times they're used for sensors, and there's a lot of other little things they do with them. Los Alamos National Lab of the Sandia National Labs, do a lot of MEMS work with very sophisticated types of MEMS.
Peter Kazarinoff 2:50
And do you work mostly with PhD researchers, engineers or with other technicians?
Mark 2:56
Yes, we work with all of them. We work with grad students, we work with professors, we work with engineers from companies that come in and use our cleanroom. So we get a nice wide scan of all of it. And they're all professional, and they're all very nice to work with.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:12
And would you say you work individually or that you work in a team?
Mark 3:16
Well, as I stated before, I have a coworker and he and I pretty much do everything. We have a manager, we have a director and a couple of admins. That's our whole big team right there.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:27
And are there any professional growth opportunities at the MTTC? Do you continue learning things?
Mark 3:32
Yes, I learned something new, just about every day, I'm always running across something I haven't seen before, or some kind of an issue or a problem that a grad student has or something like that. So we get challenges, as far as growth opportunities, and what kind of solidified in our job here. But as I said before, it encompasses a lot. So you know, it's always different day to day.
Peter Kazarinoff 3:59
Do you remember what it felt like your first day of work going into the MTTC?
Mark 4:05
Overwhelming
Peter Kazarinoff 4:07
Why did it feel overwhelming?
Mark 4:09
There's just so much to deal with. And so many things were broken when I first got here. And it was overwhelming to see a cleanroom that was not taking care of the way that it needed to be. And so over the years, my coworker and I knew interviewed him also have brought this cleanroom up to an outstanding level and we take a lot of pride in it.
Peter Kazarinoff 4:34
Mark, you mentioned that you work in a cleanroom then you got a lot of pride in that cleanroom. Can you explain a little bit about what is a cleanroom?
Mark 4:41
So a cleanroom is it's like a laboratory and we have laminar flow air. So our air is filtered through a half micron filter coming in. So there's, you know, literally almost no particles. We're considered a class 1000 cleanroom, which is 1000 articles per million. But in reality, we're much cleaner than that we're closer to a class 100 cleanroom.
Peter Kazarinoff 5:06
And is there special personal protective equipment that you need to wear when you go to work?
Mark 5:12
Absolutely. As soon as you get in the gown room, you're gonna put on a hair cover or head cover, a face cover with me, not really beard covered, it's a big face cover. And then we were a smock, we have to wear protective gloves, either nitrile or latex. And then we were protected booties on our shoes, kind of like balloons, you were to go see a new house showing or something. And that's to keep the particles down inside the cleanroom. Because humans are the biggest particle generator in there.
Peter Kazarinoff 5:42
If everybody's wearing the same thing in the cleanroom, how do you tell each other apart?
Mark 5:48
Well, it's not that tough, you can still see faces, you know, we do wear safety glasses also. So you can see each other now when I worked for Intel, I worked for Intel for 25 years as a technician, it was a little tougher, because we're in full bunny suits. And the only thing you could see was people's eyes. You learn who people were, by the way they walked and how they had their balance and what their eyes looked like.
Peter Kazarinoff 6:16
So Mark, you mentioned that you worked at Intel for a while. Can you talk about your experience working as a technician there? What did you learn? And how did it help in your current role?
Mark 6:26
Oh, it was what allowed me to have the experiences that they needed here to get this job without working at Intel, I never would have been able to get this job. I was there for 25 years, I actually retired as a senior Equipment Technician out there and lead for the chemical vapor deposition tungsten tools. I started out as an operator, and then six months went to a technician position and stayed in the technician world. For the rest of the 25 years. I absolutely loved it. I like working with equipment. I like troubleshooting, I like to analyze, you know, the different processes in the equipment. So for me, it was very fulfilling, working there. I went through a lot of different areas, some people stay in one area their whole time, I went through the whole set of areas that I could, so I could be well rounded, you know, be very marketable as a technician.
Peter Kazarinoff 7:21
And besides doing technician type work, such as repairing equipment, what other kinds of things did you do at Intel?
Mark 7:30
Oh, I was a trainer. I was a developer of programs for training for different sets of equipment. I was also what took over the position fulfilled engineers from other companies for the tungsten tools, saving the company over a million dollars a year in technical and field service engineering costs. I went through all the field service engineer classes I covered for engineering, a lot of times when they're on vacation. Just a lot lot of paperwork, you know, well, it's all on computer, but a lot of paperwork, a lot of things that you're responsible for the responsibilities very heavy. But also, you know, when you're working with the most sophisticated equipment in the world, it's pretty neat. It's pretty neat.
Peter Kazarinoff 8:21
How is your job different at the MTTC compared to your work as a technician at Intel?
Mark 8:26
Oh, well, I don't have near as much responsibility here. Even though I cover more areas of stuff. We're not production here. You know, we're research and development. So it's a whole different frame of mind with production. It's always when is the equipment going to be up? How much can you put out on your shift? You know, and you need to have those answers, at least to the best of your ability. And if you don't, then let the engineers know I'll find out let you know. Here. It's it's not as there's not as much pressure. What they want you to do is they want you to get it right. However long it takes. So there's a difference there. Intel wanted it right and they wanted it right now. But I loved working out there. I really did. But I figured after 25 years, that wasn't enough, I was ready to move to another place.
Peter Kazarinoff 9:18
Mark, you mentioned that you did some training of other technicians. Can you talk a little bit about that experience at Intel?
Mark 9:25
Sure, sure. So because I was the lead tech and the tool owner for the tungsten deposition tools. I went to a lot of classes, I went out of state to a lot of different classes and got a lot of training and then I was expected to come back and be able to train the other technicians in what I'd learned so I would have to write up procedures. Sometimes they were actual books, and teach them how to use the robots teach him how to set up the robots teach him the proper ways to set up a vacuum chamber and how to clean it, how to remove parts how to put them back up. Everything had to be documented as Somebody had to write those documents, and I was the lucky one to be able to do that.
Peter Kazarinoff 10:04
And did you participate in things like hiring or interviewing?
Mark 10:09
I did. Early on when I was working in lithography. And before I moved to the tungsten tool, I was not completely happy with some of the quality of Texas they were hiring in and, and I went, I asked my supervisors, I says, How do I have a say in who you hire, they said, you get on the interviewing team. And so I started taking the steps and got on the interviewing team, and was an interviewer for 18 years. They started me out on phone interviews, and then they took me off of them because nobody made it past the phony reviews. So they put me on person to person interviews. And
Peter Kazarinoff 10:45
What are some of the things that you learned interviewing for other technicians?
Mark 10:51
Well you learn a lot about the levels of knowledge for these people that are interviewing. And and it's a big thing, because you'll get some people that are very knowledgeable. And then when you ask them, and they give you sick questions, you have to ask everybody the same questions. And when you ask him the questions, and then ask them to elaborate some elaborate real well, and some don't know how, you know, they just, they can answer the question, but they don't know where to go with the information after that. So you kind of know, Okay, this one's, you know, going to be a first time Junior tech coming in some of the other ones or maybe be in the middle and some of them come walk right into senior technicians, because I really know what they're talking about. And that's how you have to kind of classify them as to what level they are and where they need to come in and where they might fit the best within the company.
Peter Kazarinoff 11:40
What are one or two tips that you'd have for current community college students who want to be technicians like you are?
Mark 11:47
So when you get ready to put a resume out to accompany find out what the company is about, and texture your resume to what they do? Say they build windows, okay? So what you want to do is you want to find out everything that you know, that they can use about building those windows and put it in your resume, you know, you just do bullets, because they'll ask you questions about it later. So you always text your your resume to the company that you're going to submit it to, and do a little research, so you're prepared to answer their questions.
Peter Kazarinoff 12:21
So you had a long career at Intel and then moved on to the University of New Mexico? How did you get that first job at Intel? What was your education or work experience before that?
Mark 12:33
Well, I was a professional mechanic for about 12 years. And before and after the Air Force. I got - I went to DeVry for a while. And then I got some very in depth technical training in the Air Force, I worked on the F 15 fighter jets on the avionics. And that's what really kind of gave me an edge into electronics. And thanks to our actually got an interview, it took me two years of resumes with Intel to actually get an interview, I have a stack of Thank you, but we don't have a position for you letters that I look back at every once in a while just to make me smile. You know, cuz you gotta realize you're gonna get some rejection. Don't, you know, don't stop putting out resumes are putting into a company you want to work for. Just because you got to know thank you letter. You know, redo your resume, try again. Until it all except one every six months or every six months, I was dropping Alinea.
Peter Kazarinoff 13:32
Mark, you mentioned that you had some experience in the Air Force. What parts of your work in the Air Force were useful for you when you worked as a technician?
Mark 13:40
So I worked on avionics, I worked on the radar and the computer systems, the navigation systems, and a lot of the interface with the other systems. With that I had knowledge of computers and interface and stuff like that, which is something Intel was looking for. Also, you know, good electrical knowledge, basic electrical knowledge, a little bit of in depth, because they did ask questions about that, you know, and I was able to answer the questions. And that's what really helped me out a lot.
Peter Kazarinoff 14:09
What type of reporting or communication do you do as a technician?
Mark 14:15
Well, as a technician, I do I take care of the scheduling for the equipment for the people that want to use it inside the lab, we have a calendar set up where they can schedule it and and make sure there's no conflicts of interest and make sure the equipment is going to be able to do what they need it to do. So I have to communicate with the different engineers and PhDs and the PhD students as to what they're trying to do, you know, make sure that there's not going to be any contamination in a certain piece of equipment or something like that. So a lot of communication with the people that want to use the lab. You know, not too much with my boss. All he does is come in and say "is everything good?", "Yeah", "OK. Thank you."
Peter Kazarinoff 14:58
What was something unexpected about working at Intel that you only found out once you started as a technician there?
Mark 15:04
Ah, going to the defect metrology meetings. Defects are huge thing when you're working with semiconductors. And I did not expect the just straight blunk request questioning and you know, the engineers, we just confront you straight up about what's going on what's your equipment doing this and that stuff. And they expected answers. And if you didn't have the answer, you had to let them know. Okay, this is when I'll have an answer for you if I can get the information. And they were, I would say almost cutthroat but not really, they're just very straight to the point there was no messing around, there's, you know, no community talking or anything, it's just figure this out and fix it. So I was little surprised at how blunt that was. After a while you kind of get used to it and your skin gets thicker and never take personally what's aimed at you professionally.
Peter Kazarinoff 16:02
Mark, you mentioned that this was in defect metrology. What did those two words mean? What is defect metrology?
Mark 16:08
OK, so metrology is where they analyze the different steps of the process, when they're making chips on a wafer, okay, defect metrology are the guys that come out and say, Look, you're killing our dye, we're only getting this percentage of dye out of a wafer. It's not acceptable. And so it's, they have a lot of power within the whole organization, because they're the guys that are trying to get you to figure out how to fix a problem. So a lot, a lot of pressure from those guys, you know, to get things right and stuff. And once you kind of figure out how it works, it's not so bad. In the beginning, I felt like they were walking all over me. But after a little while, like I said, I learned to keep my feet solid and got a little bit thicker skin and did pretty well.
Peter Kazarinoff 16:54
What was something unexpected about moving from industry, when you're working at Intel, to working at a research lab at the University of New Mexico?
Mark 17:03
I guess the people that I work with, I was very surprised because I knew I was coming into an area where, you know, we have students here that don't know anything about the cleanroom until they're exposed to it. But their eagerness to learn, surprised me, you know, their eagerness to absorb what they were taught. And some of the intelligent questions they asked us like, Boy, these guys are asking questions, just like if they've been doing this for a while. So really surprised me about the intelligence of the people that I'm working with now. Very refreshing.
Peter Kazarinoff 17:32
Mark, how did your life change when you became a technician? And what do you feel like you accomplished over those 25 years?
Mark 17:41
Well, again, a lot of knowledge about things I had no idea about in the beginning. There's things I know now that I can talk to that completely go over most people's heads, you know, so a knowledge base is incredible. Also, because I did it for as long as I did, and I did well, I've always been a go getter. And I've always tried to, you know, hustle and get it done right the first time and move on to something else. I was able to progress you know, through the ranks and stuff, paid off my house got a nice vehicle, a hot air balloon pilot, I could afford a hot air balloon, things like that. So those are some of the nice things about it. You know, it really made my life better as far as creature comforts go.
Peter Kazarinoff 18:27
How do you feel like your career or the industry has developed since you started working as a technician?
Mark 18:37
So, when I first started with Intel, as a technician, the chips were about the size of a quarter. Now they're about the size of a pinhead. Big changes in the dimensions and what they can do and the size they can do it and just amazing. I understand how it all works. And it's still kind of magic.
Peter Kazarinoff 18:59
What advice would you give current students or people who want to transition careers and work like and work as a technician like you do?
Mark 19:08
Well get some schooling, you know what you want to do? Try and find a course that will kind of give you lead in time like we have here at the university. Make sure that your math is, you know, pretty decent. I use math a lot all the time. algebras is a big one. I don't use trigonometry too often. And I don't use calculus at all. But I do use algebra on a semi regular basis and I use a lot of just normal math.
Peter Kazarinoff 19:41
Do you feel like there's an opportunity for technicians to join the workforce right now?
Mark 19:46
We are so short technicians right now in the workforce. Yes, it's it's wide open. I get job offers daily. And I'm not young. I'm not a young man out there anymore and I'm still getting job offers Daley from these headhunters and stuff, you know, it's, there's some satisfaction in that. And although I really like where I'm working, so I don't have any wants to change. But there's a lot of technician jobs out there that real short on so now is a prime time.
Peter Kazarinoff 20:15
How much do you think entry level technicians make when they start?
Mark 20:19
Well, that's a good question. A lot of it is regional, it depends on what the cost of living where the company they want to go to work for is, but it's always better than minimum wage, it's, it's always, you know, at least, you're gonna start out at least 30 to $40,000. You know, as a technician, within a decent company, if you're going for a smaller company, it might be less. But those are pretty much starting wages when you go in, you know, it took me a long time to get up there. But when I first started minimum wage was $4.85 an hour. And that's what I started at Intel with, but also got a lot of benefits and bonuses and all kinds of stuff. I made quite a bit more than that when I left.
Peter Kazarinoff 21:02
You did mention that there were benefits and bonuses associated with working as a technician. What kind of benefits did you enjoy?
Mark 21:10
So insurances, you know, Intel had one of the best insurance packages out there, they worked 12 hour shifts for the compressed workweek four days on three days off three days, on four days off, it was like having a vacation every week. That was kind of a nice one. Like I said, the pay scales a little better than most things for technicians. And every so often, if the company was making money, we did too, we would get stock options for the company, and 401 K matching. So I mean, that's hard to be.
Peter Kazarinoff 21:47
So Mark, do you have a final call to action for students or people who want to transition careers and work as a technician like you?
Mark 21:55
Well, like I said, you know, do your homework, look into the company you want to go to work for find out what they're about so that you can talk to, you know, from what you think you can do for their company, and they'll ask you, you know, why do you want to go to work for our company, make sure you know why you want to go to work for them. And like I said, you know if you can get any electronics training or semiconductor training or whatever kind of technician training you want to go into, it's always a plus, you know, if it's the difference between somebody that doesn't have it, and you do, you'll be the one they'll put on the workforce.
Peter Kazarinoff 22:34
Mark, thank you so much for talking with me about your role as a technician and your work in the industry. I really enjoyed speaking to you today.
Mark 22:42
Well, thank you, Peter. It's been my pleasure.
Peter Kazarinoff 22:44
Bye now
Mark 22:46
Bye
Peter Kazarinoff 22:52
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 a 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.