S06-E06 Ed is a Clean Room Production Technician at New York Creates

Ed is a clean room production technician at New York Creates in Albany, New York. Ed describes his work as a technician including data collection, machine operation, and process streamlining. Ed shares his career progression from a level 1 operator to a clean room production technician in just over two years. He emphasizes the importance of soft skills and communication in the semiconductor industry. Ed also shares his non-traditional career path, starting in construction and customer service, and how his role at New York Creates has provided him with stability and independence.

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Talking Technicians on the Web: https://micronanoeducation.org/students-parents/talking-technicians-podcast/

NY Creates Workforce Development: https://ny-creates.org/workforce-development/

Transcript

Peter Kazarinoff  0:01  
From MNT-EC, the Micro Nanotechnology 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 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. And at the end of each episode, you'll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician too. In this episode, I'm really pleased that you're going to meet Ed. Ed is a clean room production technician at New York Creates in Albany, New York. Ed, welcome to the podcast.

Ed  0:43  
Appreciate it. Thank you, Peter. I'm glad to be here.

Peter Kazarinoff  0:46  
Thanks for coming on, Ed, and chatting with me both about your work at New York Creates, and then how you got there. But before we get started with all of that, New York Creates is in Albany, New York. Is that where you live too?

Ed  0:58  
It is.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:00  
And how long have you been in Albany for, and what brought you there?

Ed  1:03  
So, I moved around the Capital District for a while, but I've lived in Albany, near, for about two years, and originally from the area, but I moved out west for about six years to, I mean, enough, Washington State, and back here during the height of COVID, so it was nice to be back home close to family.

Peter Kazarinoff  1:21  
Oh, good, good. So, I'm glad you're back closer to family, and I'm really excited, Ed, to talk to you about your work as a clean room production technician. So, Ed, just very roughly, what do you do day to day at work?

Ed  1:36  
So, my tasks include quite a few things, but the standards are that every morning I shoot out a few emails to our team to collect data for location of what we do every day, we run WIP through our machines, and in order to emphasize as much efficiency as that as possible, we try to make sure that everybody's on the same page as soon as we start at 7am My day proceeds following that to a quick meeting to review anything that may be an issue for the fam, and to kind of do overviews of what we're currently working toward recovering or bringing those things back up, and then to come through, excuse me, go through the day to bring about the most efficiency possible. So my job as a whole is essentially to streamline processes the way they should be as an ABC, and then anything that comes abrupt is to essentially attack it, to bring it up as fast as possible, and then rounding the day off with a quick report to a few of our managers and a few other things to make sure that the next shift coming in is on par and left off with the best possible outcome,

Peter Kazarinoff  2:42  
Right. Ed, so you sort of go in there, you get the report out from the other shift, figure out what you're going to do for the day, then you do that day's work, and then at the end you make that report for the next shift. So Ed, can you provide just a ballpark salary for jobs working as a clean room production technician if someone's around opening New York, doing that sort of work?

Ed  3:03  
I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but I want to say it's somewhere in the 60 to 80 range, or some something around that corner, but you know that all varies on experience, and as what you're bringing to the table as you go,

Peter Kazarinoff  3:19  
Right. Right. That makes sense. So, Ed, are there opportunities for professional growth at New York Crates? You're currently working as a clean room production technician. Are there ways to move up within New York Creates?

Ed  3:32  
There are actually, so several. Funny enough, when I started here, I worked as what was known as a clean room operator one, or at that time, was actually a workstation operator, renamed my level one was exceeded to a level two in my second year here, and then starting at the end of my third year, I moved myself past a level three into my current position as a CPT, but the rules, the growth up to my position is actually several sections of a level three, so there's a level one, a level two, and a level three, which has a few sections to go, and then my position, and then I believe following me would be my manager's position. To above him, there's actually, I think, another three or four steps above that. The optional area is secondary to that fact that I'm an operations team member, which there are several avenues outside of operations within New York Creates that are also available to anyone that is willing to put the work in to get there.

Peter Kazarinoff  4:33  
And Ed, you mentioned that you moved up sort of that career ladder. How long did those steps take you to do?

Ed  4:41  
Funny enough, I'm not to toot my own horn, but a little faster for me than some. I was a really hard pusher when I first got in here, usually in the four years I started January 2021 here, and it took me about just a cusp of two years to get to level two, and then. In the end of my third year, which was December of 2024 I believe it was, or no, 2025 I hit my CPT role, so I'm getting there.

Peter Kazarinoff  5:11  
Wow, that's so that's that's pretty quick. Do you remember what it was like your first day of work? New York Creates has a lot of pretty impressive equipment in it. What did it feel like the first time you went into New York creates?

Ed  5:24  
Terrifying, honestly. I did start in January, so it was a New York East Coast winter. It was pretty cold, and it was dark at about 4o'clock so I do remember being very overwhelmed by how much information and how condensed everything seemed to be, and then you know, with the weather being not great, and then it being dark, it was a very hard time to pull all that in, and then try to just get past the initial shock of what you were shown. I used to joke with friends and people that come in here at their first step. I said, I know when you first look at it, it feels like you're trying to read Latin for the first time, but trust me, it gets easier, you'll start to see it. So it took a little bit, maybe about a month and a half, until I felt very at pace, like I belonged here at that point.

Peter Kazarinoff  6:12  
And Ed, what does it feel like now going into work after you got like a couple of years under your belt?

Ed  6:17  
Very good, actually. I now feeling well, knowing what I now know, and the experiences that I've had here have enabled me to be more of a mentor type to a lot of the other operators that work here. I do tend to try to make myself a bit more of a floor resource, so if you are feeling overwhelmed or not unsure, or you don't know what something means, I try to be as much of a come see me and we will figure it out together, even if I don't know, so I feel way more confident.

Peter Kazarinoff  6:46  
Well, good, good. So, Ed, we talked a little bit about your career progression within New York Creates. Let's kind of switch gears and talk about how did you get to where you are now. What was your work experience before you started at New York Creates?

Ed  7:03  
Funny enough, I came from almost a completely opposite industry. I'm coming into it, which is kind of a nice thing for a lot of folks that are new to the area and feeling they may not meet the criteria they need to get into this industry. I came from construction and customer service for several years, so I worked as a striper on the road, I worked in retail at Target and Hannaford years ago. I worked as a phone center operator for Charter Communications before they became Spectrum, to name a couple, and coming into New York Creates, it definitely was a bit of a.. I don't think I'm going to be able to do that, but I was able to get in, luckily, during a new time where it looked like we New York rates was in a bit of a hiring burp, and I jumped in and managed to get an interview, and I interviewed well enough that I believe that kind of spoke for itself.

Peter Kazarinoff  7:58  
Wow, Ed, I mean that sounds like you've lived almost multiple lives with all of those different job roles and careers. Can you talk to me a little bit about your education background, like from high school on? How did you get into all those different careers? What was your education background?

Ed  8:15  
So, funny enough, I finished high school and I started at Hudson Valley when I was 18, and I went in for sadly only two semesters. I went in for criminal justice, and after a few court sessions of sitting in, a few ride-alongs, and a few prison visits, I kind of thought that might not be the path for me at a very young age. I think I may have overwhelmed myself with how much of a different world that was, and kind of stepped back and said, this is not for me, but I also didn't know at that time what really I wanted to do with myself, so I chose to kind of start working just like was equal to at that time, and I dove right into my stepfather's business with striping, and he granted definitely a very rough job, much more than I was very familiar or used to, so it taught me a lot about how hard the workforce can be, and kind of like how much you might desire a job that doesn't require your back to break every day. So I've moved around a lot from that. As I said, I did move to the West Coast, I had lived here for a while, moving around jobs, trying to find a career path that suited me, always wanting to get back into education. Just sadly, I wasn't really directed at a particular vision of what it is that I was looking to do with myself. And after, funny enough, COVID had happened, of being on the West Coast and moving back home, I kind of started to see the world as a, you know, it's short, and why, you know, go crazy and do this to yourself every day, and why not try to find something that suits you a little more to have a healthier lifestyle mentally and physically, and that got me in the path of finding higher education, or a desire to want to do more in that way.

Peter Kazarinoff  10:02  
Yeah, so what kinds of things do you feel like you brought from those professional experiences? Because there could be technicians that are coming out of high school, going to a two year community college, and then right into the workforce, but you've had more of a non-traditional path with all of these different roles. What kind of things did you bring from that work experience into your job in New York creates?

Ed  10:26  
One of the bigger things, and honestly, I would stress this one, and a few few other meetings I've had with some of the professionals in this industry, and outside of this industry, in a similar field, soft skills is a big one, I think that today there are a lot of people with talent and a lot of knowledge coming out of school that have a hard time communicating that to other folks, and especially in this industry, I think that although we have PhD level candidates here and we have people that are fresh out of high school year, it can really make a difference if you're able to not only convey what it is you're trying to say, but also understand what's being said to you, and some of it is jargon that is appropriate to the workforce, but some of it also is just a matter of knowing what it is that you're trying to achieve, at least in sets of while you're in this industry, finding common ground with other folk, that to me is tremendous, and I think most of the other things you can learn as you would any other schooling, but tremendous to be able to be personable, understand how to talk to one another is a big one.

Peter Kazarinoff  11:29  
Right. Yeah. That makes sense, because we need both those technical skills, how to work on the equipment and keep everything running, but then also those interpersonal skills and communication skills to work with our coworkers, and then do those things like you mentioned, starting in your shift, ending in your shift, when you have to communicate what you've done. So, Ed, what's something unexpected about working as a technician at New York Creates that you only learned after you started? You had a lot of job roles, but what was something like unexpected about working at New York Creates?

Ed  12:05  
Ooh, good question. I would say realistically, as I said, there is a lot of interpersonal communication with a lot of folks here, but I think the one that kind of threw me the most was having to hard press into learning something that at the time to me was fairly foreign, so as you started, or rather I should say, as I started working here, a lot of what I was doing, a lot of what I was recording, a lot of the Microsoft tools that we were using, I was not super familiar with, to a degree, yes, but not overly so. So, coming in and kind of having to rise to meet need of what was required for working here was a bit of a wall, I guess you could say, to have to overcome, but in that, I think overall, although very intimidating at first, it did eventually yield kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, after a little bit of grinding, and I kind of continuing off the previous comment, coming from an industry of like construction and other things, I was kind of brought into this mindset of just go, go, go, bring next, next step, next step, always wanting the next thing, so I believe that also having a certain moxie to you would really help propel you, if that's what you could do.

Peter Kazarinoff  13:25  
Yeah, and Ed, you mentioned that you moved all the way across the country from the West Coast back to Albany, and you said also that you're moving closer to family. But how else did your life change when you became a technician. What was different before you worked at New York Creates compared to now?

Ed  13:46  
Honestly, because of my role in first starting off, it was, I mean, aside from a difference of structure for the job, getting into the position that I am in now, I've noticed even in my personal life that I have become very much more independent. I feel as though my career has given me a sense of more purpose, so when I'm out and about doing my daily days with my family, with my friends, I do feel a sense of, I'm not sure exactly how to phrase it, but stability, I guess, would be a better part. I do not feel as nervous or anxious as I did when I was younger, I feel confident where I'm at. I don't have any kind of thin ice or nerves racking at me anymore. So, in the day to day, and I do feel even more so just doing daily tasks, I feel more confident in when I'm going to do anything I normally do, from the grocery store to buying a new car, whatever it might be, I have a sense of I've accomplished something, so I feel more apt and ready to go when it comes to other scenarios, and that's been a big one for me.

Peter Kazarinoff  14:52  
Right, yeah, I mean, from what we were talking about earlier, Ed, that makes sense that you've got this like confidence and stability because you're at New York Creates. And there are different positions that you've moved up through, and there are other positions, and right now, like, your job position is stable, you've been in it at a long time, and so, like, that gives us the freedom to, like, make decisions - you know, change our lives, yeah, and do things like, you know, get cars, like, move apartments, stuff like that, so sort of to finish up today, Ed, I wanted to ask you about what kind of advice would you give current students, or maybe people who want to transition their careers and work in the sort of semiconductor industry like you do, or work as a process technician. What advice would you give them?

Ed  15:41  
Honestly, I would encourage you greatly, especially in this industry. I think even our president had once said that the greatest threat to semiconductors at this point in time is talent. At this point, we are a thriving industry. Semiconductors has been around. My mother actually worked at a Harris Semiconductor in Florida years ago, when she was in her 20s, and now it's funny to kind of feel like you, I got a pass torch in a small way, but the industry is ever growing, even at New York Creates, it's a phenomenal industry that is still bumping into the future and doing so very rapidly. It is matching with trades as of today, which is crazy to say, I mean, even when I was a kid, I believed that electricians, plumbing, and carpentry was the way to be, but it's moving into an industry that now it's available to more and more people. It is a growing industry that, honestly, if you even have a hint of it, I suggest it. It's just a tremendous industry to be in, and one that will take care of you for a long time, with a lot of stability and a lot of job security. I love that. So, I encourage it greatly.

Peter Kazarinoff  16:48  
Well, I think that's great advice, and like your non-traditional career path, that also illustrates that you don't have to get a master's degree or a PhD to work in the semiconductor industry, and once you start, then you can like move up within that industry as well. So, Ed, thank you so much for being on Talking Technicians today, and talking with me about your work at New York Creates.

Ed  17:13  
Thank you, Peter. I appreciate all your time, and thank you for other questions.

Peter Kazarinoff  17:17  
Yeah, please keep in touch.

Ed  17:19  
I will do it. Thank you.

Peter Kazarinoff  17:22  
Talking technicians is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nanotechnology 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.