S03-E10 Jason is a technician at Intel

Jason works as a technician at Intel. Jason worked as a freelance videographer, but wanted a more stable profession. He graduated from a 2-year community college program and secured a job in the semiconductor industry at Intel. Hear how Jason’s career as a technician has grown and how Intel supports his professional growth.

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:

The Micro Nano Technology Education Center (MNT-EC): https://micronanoeducation.org/

Careers at Intel: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/jobs/jobs-at-intel.html

Portland Community College CIS Program: https://www.pcc.edu/programs/computer-info/

Work Systems Scholarships: https://www.worksystems.org/

Episode Web Page: https://micronanoeducation.org/students-parents/talking-technicians-podcast/

Transcript

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 Jason. Jason works at Intel in Hillsboro, Oregon outside Portland. Jason, welcome to Talking Technicians.

Jason  0:50  
Hey Peter. Thanks for inviting me.

Peter Kazarinoff  0:52  
Thanks for coming today, Jason. So tell me a little bit about yourself. You work at Intel in Hillsboro in Hillsboro, Oregon, where do you live?

Jason  1:02  
I live in Portland on the east side. So it's a little bit of a commute. But I like my neighborhood. And I like my workplace. So that makes the drive worth it.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:11  
So a little bit of a drive out to Hillsboro. And we are chatting a little before we started about kids who else is in your household right now?

Jason  1:21  
So myself, my wife and my son who's nine, my daughter, who's five, and we have a newish puppy who's about eight months old. There's a lot going on. Yeah.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:34  
So what's it like working as a technician at Intel and having a family and family and a new little puppy?

Jason  1:41  
It is. I don't get a lot of spare time. Let's put it that way. And I'm also, as you know, I'm going to school right now also at PCC. So not a lot.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:53  
Right. So you're both working as a technician, your father, a husband, and you're currently a community college student. So could you describe a little bit about where you're currently going to community college and what you're working towards.

Jason  2:07  
So I am going to Portland Community College. And I am working towards an engineering degree most likely mechanical engineering. And part of my impetus, despite how busy I already am, but Intel is actually paying for my education. That's one of the benefits that they potentially offer. I mean, you have to meet certain requirements in order to qualify, but so far they're paying for my education, that was kind of too good an opportunity to pass up.

Peter Kazarinoff  2:39  
That's pretty amazing that Intel is both paying you to be a technician. And they're paying you to go to school to eventually become an engineer.

Jason  2:48  
Yeah, it's pretty great. I mean, I think there's no, no contract I signed, you know, some places are like you have to work here five years or whatever, after we've paid for your degree. But there's no strings attached, that I'm aware of, as far as Intel, I think they're just hoping on good faith that they get a qualified engineer out of the bargain.

Peter Kazarinoff  3:09  
And, Jason, once you finish your engineering degree, do you plan on continuing to work in the semiconductor industry?

Jason  3:16  
I mean, it's, it would make a lot of sense as far as just my experience and connections. And it is a pretty fascinating industry. And from what I can tell it's not going anywhere anytime soon, right?

Peter Kazarinoff  3:29  
And Jason, how long have you been a technician at Intel? And what did you do before that?

Jason  3:34  
I am coming up on seven years at Intel. Prior to that, I had sort of a circuitous route, I got a degree in journalism. Originally, while I was doing that degree, I worked in a lot of restaurants and sort of service jobs. After I got my degree, I worked in video production for a long time. And I was freelancing, and there was not a lot of security. I, you know, wasn't getting benefits just working for myself. And so eventually I kind of decided to look for something a little more stable and actually got a degree in Computer Information Systems. And as I was finishing up that degree, I had a sort of temporary job at a software company in Tualatin. doing sort of a short term project for them. And one of the other people that was working on that project told me that he was applying to Intel and that they were going through one of their massive hiring periods. So I went ahead and applied and even though I did not yet have the computer information, systems degree that I needed in order to work there, they hired me and allowed me to start as soon as I got the degree, so they hired me and then I had a few months of finishing up school before I actually started there.

Peter Kazarinoff  4:55  
And Jason, did you do the Computer Information Systems degree at Community College?

Jason  5:00  
Yeah, I got that at PCC also. And that one was also largely paid for by a federal program that I had just happened to kind of stumble across. After I had already started the CIS program, there was a federal grant through a local agency called work source. And I don't know if there's still if there's anything like this grant at work source currently, but I'm sure there's plenty of other opportunities to find paid tuition for training for this sort of program. Because, you know, it seems like we're perpetually short of trained technicians and people to go into these sorts of jobs. So if anyone is considering going this route and needs the degree, it's definitely worth looking around to see what kinds of federal grants or even state or local grants are are possible.

Peter Kazarinoff  5:57  
Jason, you mentioned that Intel seems to be looking for technicians a lot. What's your job title? And what do you do day to day at work?

Jason  6:04  
Well, first, I should qualify that we're currently I believe, in a hiring freeze due to the market conditions. But sure, let's you know, it's always an ups and downs kind of thing there. So that's, if you're considering it, I would go ahead and start to start down that path, especially if you have a couple of years of school first. And then as far as my job, I am, right now I'm on. We're called the track repair team. So I work in the lithography field. And lithography, basically, we take the wafers, coat them with various chemicals, send them into what's called a scanner, which prints the pattern on the wafers for each, each layer. And then the scanner sends it back out to the track, and we put developer solution on it or possibly other chemicals. And otherwise, get it ready, rinse it off, bake it. So that tool sets basically divided to the track and the scanner. And even though they are physically linked together, it's entirely separate teams who work on them. So I work on the track side, that's what I've been doing since I started. Initially, as a, we were called mot us at the time maintenance technicians. But at that time when I started basically just keeping an eye on the tools generally and making sure that there's no problems or alarms popping up. And we had to change a lot of bottles, because our machines use a lot of chemicals. And then we also ran tests on the machines just basically, health checks, make sure they're performing properly. Or if there's a any kind of issue with the way they're running that is noticed down the line because the wafers are inspected intermittently, just to make sure everything's healthy and going smoothly. So sometimes a problem might be traced back to one of our tools. So at that time, we would like run more extensive tests, see if we can rule out our tool as the source of the problem. And if it is the source of the problem, figure out which which chamber inside the tool might be the problem, that kind of thing. And after doing that, for a few years, I became an engineering technician, which does more like kind of more advanced, but still routine maintenance activities on the tool going actually inside the tools because when I say tool, I don't mean like something hammer size, I mean something like the size of a semi truck trailer, basically. So you can climb in there and crawl around. And there's a lot of things to clean a lot of things to, to fix a lot of things to break if you're not careful. And then after being an engineering technician for a while, I was asked to join a new team, they were starting in Hillsborough called track repair team, which does even more sort of higher level repairs or investigations, that kind of thing.

Peter Kazarinoff  9:25  
Jason, do you work in shifts? Or do you have a nine to five schedule five days a week?

Jason  9:31  
Well, I work in the fab and the fab runs 24/7 So the team that I'm on has people there 24/7 and actually all of the all of the groups that I've been a part of the, the MT's where I started the ET's where I was for a while and now the the TRT, the truck repair team, all have people on site 24 hours. So yeah, we work in, in shifts. I work shift on seven, which is a 12 hour shift, Thursday through Saturday and every other Wednesday. So, yeah, we hand off at the beginning and end of the shift with our night shift counterparts. So there's always some continuity as far as what jobs are being completed, or, here's what happened this week, here's what you should be aware of that kind of thing.

Peter Kazarinoff  10:22  
So while you work a lot, you also get quite a few days off in a row.

Jason  10:26  
Yeah, so that's, that's kind of one of the perks to having a three or four day weekend, every week. And also, you know, I have that long commute. And so one thing that kind of takes the edge off that as I am not doing it five times a week, I'm doing it three or four, right.

Peter Kazarinoff  10:40  
Jason, do you work alone? Or do you work in teams with other people?

Jason  10:46  
Generally, in teams, I mean, it's a lot of what we do, you're required to have one buddy, just for safety and quality issues, you know, you always have somebody watching your back like, and we're encouraged to sort of step in and stop one another. If we see like, Hey, before you do that, let's you know, check. Let's make sure that's not going to damage anything, or let's look at the condition of this first, or let's make sure that, that this source of hazardous energy is locked out so that the situation is safe. So we're encouraged to kind of watch each other's back like that. And then we also we've, my team has been together for most of us a couple of years, but all of us like at least a year working together. So we've got a pretty good rapport going right now. Or we can, you know, kind of tackle a problem in parts, or just kind of back off for a second and say, Hey, buddy, what do you think about this? How would you approach it? So it's always good to have a buddy there. I mean, there's some solo tasks, I have to like, run around the FAB, and like, grab measurement equipment, or tools, or spare parts, or whatever. So I spend a lot of time walking back and forth on my own or like doing, doing just training and other projects. But whenever we're actually working on the tool, there's at least a couple of us.

Peter Kazarinoff  12:18  
Jason, can you provide a ballpark salary for your job as a technician or your current position? What could somebody expect to make if they went into the semiconductor industry, and worked as a technician like you?

Jason  12:31  
I'm not sure what the starting pay would be now for, like the job that I did when I started, but I would, I'm guessing, like, mid 20s. But then if you if you work, a shift, like I do that 12 hours a day, a few days a week, that's a, that's overtime, pretty much every week. And then there's also a compressed work week differential, that that you get, I mean, it's not huge, but it does add up, you know, and then your long weeks, you're working for 12 hour days, it's 48 hours. So that's eight hours of overtime, plus the differential. And then also, if you work, the night shift, there's another night shift differential, this, I think, is another 16%, which is what draws a lot of people to work on the night shift. Plus, the benefits are pretty, pretty solid, we'd get health insurance, and sometimes they'll even pay for you to go to school and that kind of thing. Decent vacation options. The as far as the pay, I don't want to like put a number on it. But I think because I don't want to get called by HR. Like, why do you tell all these people were paid $50 an hour? But yeah, it's, uh, it's, I would call it pretty respectable.

Peter Kazarinoff  13:50  
So you mentioned that you get a bunch of benefits as part of your position. What kind of benefits does Intel help pay for?

Jason  13:59  
Like I said, they they've offered health insurance. I'm just on the, you know, they have like different a couple different tiers. I'm on the, basically, I'm not paying for the plan option. And it's still pretty decent. For my usually pretty limited medical needs. And I'm pretty happy. It's vision Dental. 401k you know, sort of your standard corporate benefits. One thing they do that's pretty nice, is uh, they offer the recognition program, which is basically if you see somebody doing something kind of above and beyond or just like, really appreciate how they helped you out to this day or whatever that you can log on it, send them a recognition of 10 bucks or 25 bucks and it gets put on sort of a like a prepaid debit card that everyone has in their name. So you know, if you do like a a Uh, if you remedy some sort of unsafe situation, or a couple of weeks ago, I had somebody who was at some wafers sort of stuck in a weird state on the tool, like the computer wasn't recognizing it properly. And I helped him take care of that, and get the waivers taken care of. And somebody I didn't know. But he got my name down and sent me a recognition. So that's sort of a nice little perk, you know, if you let it sit for a few months, you got enough for a nice dinner or something. And it's always also nice to just like, have those messages from your co workers.

Peter Kazarinoff  15:38  
Jason, we talked about how you're working towards an engineering degree, and that you went through a couple of different positions at Intel? Do a lot of people take opportunities for professional growth? And what have other folks done at Intel, in terms of growing their careers? 

Jason  15:56  
Yeah, a lot of people that I worked with, sort of at my same level, originally, when I started just doing what we call working the floor running the monitors on the tools, changing bottles, moving radicals around, sort of the almost like the grunt work of the fab. But you know, interesting grunt work for smart people, basically. But a lot of people that I started with, at that time, some become sort of, basically engineers, shift engineers, so they're sort of like the first points of contact for certain problems. Other people have become more management focused. Other people have kind of almost done their own thing. And like, sort of started doing special projects, that a lot of the engineers that I worked with originally have sort of moved up in the engineering hierarchy. And now like, are managing entire areas of litho, or, or that kind of thing. So yeah, there are a lot of opportunities. And some people I know, I've just like moved from lithography to other areas, if they didn't care for what they were doing, they might go and work in thin films or implant or dielectric. There's many, many options there. Because there's, it's a big fab. See if there are and we've had people from other modules who didn't care for what they were doing there, come over to litho. So yeah, there's a fair amount of movement around.

Peter Kazarinoff  17:35  
Jason, what did it feel like your first day at work at Intel in the fab? You mentioned, you came from a computer information systems degree, which is a lot of using computers and a little bit of programming and coding. But what did it feel like walking into the fab the first time.

Jason  17:55  
Oh it was a, it was a little intimidating. Well, my first week was spent in, in kind of, like, basic training and, and sort of getting all your accounts set up. And you know, they give you a phone and you got to get your phone set up, you got to kind of learn your way around campus. There's a lot of basic classes that you have to take your first week. But yeah, part of that is your first time putting on the iconic bunny suit. And going into the fab. And yeah, that was a, I did not know quite what to expect. I mean, I looked in the windows, and I'd seen videos and stuff, but just being in there, it's kind of loud. There's a lot of very strange machinery. There's people walking all over the place in a hurry. And especially there's the O H vs. the overhead voice vehicles which carry the wafers from tool to tool, but they basically run on tracks on the ceilings, there's just a stream of boxes driving on the ceiling above your head back and forth. And, you know, they have a pretty complex automation system that I couldn't even begin to tell you about. But it's like watching. It's like watching traffic on a highway work really well. Like they stop let the next OHP in. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. But there was pretty overstimulating when you first start, and that was in D, one C, which is the smaller fab. Now I work in D, one south, which has much taller ceilings, and you can see a lot farther and it still gets a little bit overstimulating after seven years.

Peter Kazarinoff  19:32  
So Jason, it sounds like the first day was a little bit intimidating. But from your community college experience in the CIS degree, did you kind of take with you to your job at Intel?

Jason  19:45  
It's interesting because I don't really use any of the specific skills that I acquired at CIS. What they were more looking for, for the position I was hired for was just problems. Solving. So basically, I think this is still the case don't, you know, don't take my word for it. But I think basically any associate's degree in some sort of science approach, sort of problem solving related field is a is acceptable. So, you know, people come from engineering or whatever, a lot of people come from sort of computer programming degrees. I know, one person who came from biology, I'm not sure if that's still acceptable, to be honest, but, and then a lot of people come from the military, cuz they have, you know, pretty robust experience with performing maintenance on really complicated machines. So there's a variety of paths to that will get you the experience to work there. But I don't necessarily use those CIS skills. But definitely just the fact that I was able to sort of look at a problem, which I had had plenty of practice with at CIS and take it apart and figure out the best approach. And that was part of the part of the interview process as well, they sort of asked me about just some basic science questions during the phone interview. Well, basically, they're asking me about plasma. So a little slightly above Basic, I guess. And then, during the sit down interview, they had some basically like puzzles to show me and they're like, here's a, here's a gear train, if this one's turning this speed in this direction, where's this gear 12 gears away turning. So you can just to make sure that you can sort of not get too stymied or frustrated and just kind of sit there and puzzle it out. I haven't had to do too many things that complicated. It's the cure, train in my actual job. But that's kind of what they're looking for.

Peter Kazarinoff  22:00  
Jason, what was the toughest part of school for you?

Jason  22:04  
Kind of just making the time because I've had, I had one child when I got the CIS degree, and now I've got two children. But other than that, I quite enjoy school. It's been moving pretty fast. The last couple terms have been taking a lot of advanced math and physics and that kind of thing from my engineering degree. So it's, it's been a lot. Not gonna lie. It's been kind of exhausting. But it's been very interesting as well. But yeah, just time management is something that I have gotten a lot better at. But I'm still not nearly good enough to make things go as smoothly as I would like.

Peter Kazarinoff  22:45  
Now, Jason, you mentioned that you work in a team? And how do you communicate with that team? Some people call these soft skills or in our personal skills, how are those kinds of things important in your work as a technician?

Jason  22:59  
Well, as far as communicating, we start every day with a with a meeting. So we all get together physically in a conference room. A lot of times our night shift counterparts, who are just finishing their shift will come and meet us as well. And they will sort of talk us through what they did during the night, what we what jobs are still left to be done, or what's kind of coming our way in the near future. And then after that, in person meeting, generally, we kind of go our separate ways, we might have assigned jobs that we go straight to and start working on, or we just, there's nothing immediately coming, we might just wait till we get a call, which always happens. And during the day, we largely communicate through Microsoft Teams, which is has been actually been quite good. It's far from perfect. And there's some frustrating features. But it's nice to be able to like start a chat with just the specific stakeholders for say, if a if a tool has an issue, then we can add to the chat like my manager, myself, the two technicians, I'm working with the engineer who's in charge of the tool and maybe their boss, so we can have sort of a contained ongoing conversation, just keep everybody up to date. And then if it goes into the night shift, we can add all of our night shift counterparts as well. So yeah, teams, definitely a lot of time on the phone when there's anything complex going on. Every tool has an engineer who's sort of we call the tool owner, they're sort of like the person mainly responsible for making sure that tool functions properly and is available for use, you know, it's not like constantly in a state of being repaired so they can be under a lot of pressure. And so part of our job is a as we're working on their tool to just sort of keep them abreast of what That's what's happening. What delays we're seeing, you know, if, if it's a bit of a mystery, what a problem is, we might give them some of our theories and see which way they want to take it. Or we can say, you know, here's we can get the tool back up and running and then limping along for a while, or we could spend the time to really fix the problem. And just depending on what kind of pressure they're under, they may try to push the repair down the road, or that kind of thing. So yes, as far as soft skills, like, there's many different routes of communication that you kind of have to be adept at, you know, we have to write up reports on our activities throughout the day. And those reports are all summarized and emailed out at the end of the shift. So you have to be kind of able to write that down concisely, but still have it be good useful information, because somebody might be, if they work on that tool a month from now, they might be searching through and see that, oh, these guys fixed this problem a month ago, let's see what they did. So we don't repeat their work for no reason, that kind of thing. So yeah, emails, summaries like that, communicating through teams and text constantly. And then phones, and then of course, just in person. And keeping in mind that a lot of time people are very, can be pretty stressed out, they're getting a lot of heat from the powers that be up above them. So being able to try to calm someone down. Sometimes it's a pretty important skill. And also just be able to calmly talk them through the issue and tell them, you know, not sugarcoat anything, but tell them what they can expect, like, hey, we need this part. And it's coming from Japan. So it's going to be like three days before he gets here. And that's the best we can do for you is kind of where it has to be sometimes.

Peter Kazarinoff  26:56  
So Jason, it sounds like relationships are important in your work as a technician, as well as communication and problem solving. Those things have seemed to come up a bunch of conversation so far.

Jason  27:09  
Yeah, absolutely. And when I first started, I worked in a, like I said, I worked on the smaller part of the FAB, and sort of on a smaller, more contained team. And I'm I miss being just on a first name basis with all the engineers, because there is only, you know, 10 or 12 engineers that I worked with. Now, even though I'm basically still working on the same tool set and working in the larger fab, and in a much more like, wider, wider set of groups of engineers. And there's also been a lot of hiring over the years, and people coming and going. And then with COVID A lot of people have just been off site. It's been a little frustrating not knowing not having real strong relationships with a lot of people. But you know, there's a handful of people that you talk to frequently and get to know. And then my teammates and I are all that pretty tight lately, so and then there's, you know, plenty of other technicians that come and help us out other ETS who might come and join us for part of a job or, or that kind of thing. So yeah, there's a lot of fostering relationships, for sure.

Peter Kazarinoff  28:21  
Jason, how did your life change when you became a technician? What's different now compared to when you're a student, and that cis two year program?

Jason  28:32  
I feel a lot more stable as far as just financially. And generally, you know, I was able to buy a house and not have to worry about my rent going up or anything like that. So yeah, a lot, a lot more stability, a lot more responsibility. Like when I was doing CIS, I mean, that's a fair amount of school, but I was more focused on work at the time, and just trying to make ends meet. As a freelance videographer is not always very easy. And I guess the other side of the coin is that as a freelancer, you can turn down a job, whereas now I have a job that I just have to be at. And I have to wake up very early on workdays. I've never been a fan of that. But you know, you get used to it. You do what you have to do. So. Yeah, just a little more stable and a little more grown up, I guess.

Peter Kazarinoff  29:33  
Jason, what advice would you give current students or people who want to transition their careers and work in the semiconductor industry like you do?

Jason  29:41  
Well, just kind of look at all your options if you're wanting to hurry up and get in there. I guess I said, I believe we are in a hiring freeze right now. But as soon as there's like, good economic news on the horizon, I'm sure that'll change. Plus, we're Bill We're now at a massive fab in Ohio. And I believe we have another one going in Arizona right now. So there's definitely going to be opportunities in those places. And I imagine that people from the Oregon sites are also to some degree going to migrate out to Ohio or Arizona, there has been a fair amount of transferring between fans, a couple of guys I work with now have come from the Arizona fabs. But other than that, just look, there's so many like, so many options, it seems like various interests are just trying to get people in the doors like into the FAB, I was looking around a little bit earlier, I was trying to find the the name of the program that I got the grant from, to do CIS originally. And I saw one of the Related Agencies there has like a, basically a 10 day training program for people to start working in the fab. That was from late last year. I don't know if it's happening currently. But I was sort of surprised by that. Because I was like, I had to have a two year degree and a seven day orientation. But now they've apparently cut it down to a 10 day orientation for some people. And there's other than just like fast tracking your way into the fab. I mean, there's, there's other jobs there. Excuse me. There's other jobs there until they're actually a temp services we use people from I think it's called Kelly, some kind of temporary services company. They have people in the fab who do pretty basic stuff, just changing bottles, moving radicals around, which are very important piece of equipment. But I work with several people now who started off as though in those roles through this outside agency. And I believe there's some sort of deal between Intel and the and the hiring agency. I'm sure that they can't Intel, it's probably not supposed to just hire somebody after a week. But I know people have done that for like a year or two and then become actual Intel employees. So that's, that's one route. And I don't know that they had, you know, the two year degrees or anything. So that's probably something that would be not too hard to do while you're doing doing school. I mean, it's the same shift, same 12 hour shift. But you know, there's, there's ways to make it happen. So yeah, there's always a, it's always worth looking for grants. There's probably a grant that's designed just for you just have to figure out what corner of the internet it's in. And if if schools not not an option currently, then there's probably other ways to get in the door at Intel or one of the other fabs.

Peter Kazarinoff  32:54  
Well, Jason, thank you so much for talking with me about your work as a technician, and especially talking about all the different ways that you communicate, and the kind of skills that you need in order to succeed in your job.

Jason  33:07  
Yeah, absolutely. Peter, I think you're doing a good thing with this podcast, we nned more technicians in the world, right?

Peter Kazarinoff  33:14  
Yeah, we certainly do. So thank you so much, and please keep in touch.

Jason  33:19  
Alright, thanks. Take care.

Peter Kazarinoff  33:20  
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.