The first thing that comes into view is always those attractive salary figures. 250000, 300000, 500000, or more. These figures, along with the corresponding job recruitment information, appear from time to time in the wechat group joined by Chen Tong. This is a chip industry exchange group, but its real role is to recruit students for a chip talent training course.
Author Bai Ning
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Yes, in recent years, China's chip industry, which is regarded as the Pearl of the crown of the science and technology industry, has also had its own accelerated training course for talents - because the industry is so short of people.
According to the talent development report of China's integrated circuit industry (2020-2021 Edition), in 2020, the scale of China's integrated circuit related graduates will be about 210000. It is expected that by 2023, the demand for talents in the whole industry will reach about 766500, of which the talent gap will reach 200000.
Figure source: supply and demand report of Q1 "core power" (integrated circuit semiconductor) market in 2021
The urgency of filling the gap can't wait to train subject class talents for several years. The industry needs a faster path, and individuals who are ready to move need a shortcut. The training course was born.
After the exciting salary data, the private chat news of customer service followed. They advised Chen Tong to make a decision as soon as possible:
"The golden period of joining the industry is only two years. After changing careers, the salary can be increased by almost 50%."
The words are almost the same. They all try to convey a message:
"The most important thing is to get into the industry quickly."
Chen Tong, a "layman", has long felt the temptation to change careers. Out of work needs, he has to make frequent contact with chip companies. In recent years, he has increasingly felt a great opportunity: he saw that the chip company he connected with offered twice his annual salary, but he still couldn't recruit anyone.
Then why can't you try it yourself?
He decided to sign up. After careful comparison, he finally chose a top 3 training course in the mouth of netizens, in which the curriculum is quite typical: it takes a total of six months, including four months for the study of theoretical knowledge such as Linux, digital circuit, Verilog, SV and UVM, and two months for project training and employment guidance. As for the selected development direction - IC Verification, similar to IC design, it is also one of the core posts in the chip design industry. The treatment is similar, but the demand is greater: the demand ratio of verification and design personnel is about 2:1 or even higher.
If you want to complete the knowledge and skill training of similar subject students in just a few months, the learning intensity is naturally very high and the difficulty is also high. Some students roast in relevant online discussions that they could keep up in the early stage, but in the later stage, the course would be as difficult as a Book of heaven. Many people agreed in the comments.
Therefore, in fact, the main participants of such training courses are students with relevant discipline backgrounds. In addition to the systematic training that makes the "laymen" envy, they also choose the "crash course" one after another. Their goal is equally clear, is to ensure that they can enter their ideal chip factory and "survive"
——After walking ten thousand miles, the last kilometer also needs a shortcut.
Chen Ming is a graduate student majoring in Physical Electronics in a 985 University in the north. After hesitating for several months, he finally made up his mind and clicked OK on the payment button of the chip training course. Let him make a decision is the IC Verification post offer received by a large chip manufacturer not long ago.
Before that, he once felt that he had little hope of finding his ideal job. In the past two years, he watched his peers abandon their original career planning and turn to the field of chip design. Approaching graduation, chip has also become his own employment goal.
"I didn't prepare for the autumn recruitment in September until August. The more conscious students will start to prepare in January and February, and basically prepare for the whole semester. They will choose to turn to chip design, and the threshold of design post is generally higher than that of verification post." Chen Ming said.
Dachang's offer was only received after his elder martial brother pushed it. Therefore, he felt that he was a pure fluke. He did not dare to rely entirely on the four-year scientific training. He hoped that with the help of several months of training, he could improve his possibility of smoothly passing the probation period.
The rapid development of the industry makes the students who learn fixed knowledge step by step in the school full of anxiety. Their missing career oriented skills need to be quickly supplemented through training courses. This is a very realistic need. Therefore, among the trainees of the endless training courses, there are a large number of graduate students from key universities such as Chen Ming.
Among them, many of them basically aim at large chip manufacturers. The salary offered by these companies may not be comparable to that of newly financed start-up companies, but the victory is stability - good development prospects and less overtime, so they have become the favorite of science students.
The competition here is also fierce.
"Especially after 2020, all schools are expanding their enrollment, and Fudan has expanded three times directly. Before, my senior sister applied for a job at the chip company under oppo, and people asked for double 211 when brushing her resume."
In order to win the competition, fresh students hope to gain the first chance by increasing their experience outside books.
In the opinion of headhunter Li Jie, under such a competitive idea, the training course is indeed a shortcut with high efficiency.
"First of all, look at the business. Even if the education is ordinary, but the business they have done is highly related and suitable for their business, they will also consider it." Li Jie said.
"It's not the people in the training course"
The most direct price Chen Tong and Chen Ming pay for these chip dreams is the high tuition fees: a few months of courses cost 20000 yuan.
This is not a cheap price. People who are determined to buy have figured out what they want. For Chen Tong, compared with his professional knowledge, what he cares more is the shortcut promised by the training course - including employment guidance, resume packaging and job recommendation.
In his eyes, the latter is enough to offset his training fee, especially in the context of constantly publicizing the rising salary of the chip industry, which seems to be more valuable.
According to the white paper on talents in China's integrated circuit industry (2020-2021), the average salary of the whole semiconductor industry increased by 4.75% year-on-year in 2020. The salary growth rate of China's integrated circuit industry is 8.0%. It is expected to maintain a high salary growth in 2021, and the growth rate is expected to reach 9.0%.
Miao Yi is a graduate student majoring in microelectronics at 211 university. She intuitively felt this growth: "the average number of people who came out of our school last year can get about 300000, and this year is about in their thirties and thirties."
However, in the face of expensive tuition fees, a large number of young people are deterred and suspicious.
"The training course is too expensive."
Miao Yi is following the courses of the training class recently, and her learning materials are purchased from second-hand websites at a price of less than one thousandth of the original. According to her observation, the sources of training videos used by others in her laboratory are similar to hers.
The combination of "training course" and chip is always suspicious, which not only makes it seem reasonable to buy piracy, but also attracts more criticism. Some netizens even posted: "the chip is really short of people, but it's not the people in the training class."
Some participants in the training course also said that once they graduate from the training course, they may find that on the one hand, they have mastered the contents taught in the training course and are indeed likely to pass the interview; On the other hand, they often need to hide their training experience during the interview.
Hr of a company once made it clear that once it was found that candidates came from a training course, they would be disqualified immediately, "because the people who had previously recruited from this training course suffered a great loss".
The training classes are also well aware of the pain of young people. Some immediately advertise "employment service package", and "full refund" if they can't. But looking closely, the standards for employment companies and salary treatment are vague - the confidence of training institutions is not as strong as they show.
Figure source: yiou think tank
In a slightly impetuous industry landscape based on high salary, the high cost makes the training class seem to be suspected of "cutting leeks" through anxiety. However, the practitioners of the chip training class feel that this is the most normal thing:
Senior practitioners said that all this is based on the pricing principle, and the main reason for the rise in tuition fees is the rise in industry wages. This year, the tuition fees of many training courses have been raised by about 10%, and the single course has basically reached more than 20000.
"The price of the course is basically calculated according to the monthly salary of the students in the next 1 ~ 2 years. So it was more than 10000 before, now it is more than 20000, and the price may rise in the future."
What makes the founders of the training course full of confidence is the increasing number of applicants year by year.
"In 2016, we can see that the recruitment mechanism of many companies has changed. In the process of contacting these companies, we found that the talent gap is actually a little big." Lai linhui said that he is the co-founder of E-class.
Initially, the main source of e-course training course participants was people who wanted to change careers.
"From 2016 to 2017, 80% of the students came from social recruitment. Generally, there are two types: one is to completely change an industry, for example, the former one who used to do machinery is now transferred to chip, and the other is the internal transformation in the industry, for example, the former one who used to do testing and manufacturing is now transferred to chip design, because he has a better understanding of the structure and design direction in the industry, so he has the power to change. ”
According to statistics, 106000 chip related enterprises were added in 2021, with a registration growth rate of 33.49%. Chip financing has also reached new highs. According to the data of eurobillion, as of December 31, 2021, 287 financing events had occurred in Chinese chip related enterprises, with a year-on-year increase of 67.8%; The total financing amount in the same period was 68.058 billion yuan, an increase of 40.7% year-on-year.
Figure source: annual meeting of integrated circuit design branch of China Semiconductor Industry Association
This makes the chip design industry creating another high salary myth after the Internet.
Later, fresh students and more people from different backgrounds were attracted by this myth.
"2021 is a year of explosive growth for us, and this situation continues this year. We have to open five classes every month. In the past, 30 people were recruited in each class, but now 30 people can't be put down, and the number has been adjusted to 40." Wang Hui said that he is the co-founder of IC Academy.
Lai linhui conducted a statistics: "the students deeply trained by our e-course network entered the employment after completing the course for 4 ~ 6 months. Last year, there were 2155 people, including more than 1000 students - which is about the total number of students deeply trained in 2020."
The surge in demand has also led to more pragmatic curriculum design.
Some training classes even opened special autumn recruitment classes. "At that time, some students came to consult and said that they wanted to catch up with the autumn recruitment, saying 'we are all students in school, can we make progress faster', and then we made a class for these college students and graduate students." Wang Hui said.
"Shift registration is not recommended"
In fact, in addition to the high salary image of the industry, another realistic reason for the rise in the cost of training courses is that the salaries of teachers in these institutions are also high.
Source: pexels
Different from the general impression of "training courses", the current mainstream chip industry training courses have begun to avoid the impression of "grass-roots team" and seek to be taught by people with rich experience in the industry.
Similarly, only when the salary is high to a certain extent can engineers willing to devote themselves to vocational education be attracted.
"At least more than the engineer's original income. We have to open 800000 for an engineer who is 500000 a year; we will give him at least 1 million for an engineer who is 800000. Our class fees have been rising, from hundreds to hundreds, and up to now, some are thousands. This cost is relatively high." Wang Hui said.
But even so, the right teacher is hard to recruit. First of all, the abilities required to be a teacher and a pure engineer are not exactly the same. Secondly, chip design is an industry with rapid iterative update of technology, which requires teachers not to be pure teachers. As teachers, they should also do chip design projects. Therefore, a large number of teachers in the training class come from part-time jobs.
"Now the ratio of full-time and part-time teachers in our group is about 4:6." Some practitioners specially analyzed the composition of teachers in their training classes.
The high unit price of the whole industry, the increasingly fierce competition and the evaluation criteria directly tied to the final employment results make the training courses with pursuit not only "burn money" on the teacher side, but also start to raise the threshold on the student side: school, education, major and graduation years are included in the assessment indicators.
"Students must major in science and engineering and have a good foundation in electrical modeling. If we had studied such courses before, we might think it is not a problem to learn. Now 70% of our students have master's degrees, doctors may account for about 1% ~ 2%, and undergraduates are nearly 30%. However, in the process of learning, we feel it is still very difficult. Later, we are lowering the threshold of the course." Wang Hui said.
More students, We also found out which specialty is more suitable for turning to chip: "Among the students, electronics related majors can account for 40% and materials 25%. The major of materials is very special. There are some directions, such as semiconductor process materials. It is actually a related major. It may be good to be a digital back-end, because the engineers at the back-end have to deal with manufacturers. The proportion of integrated circuits and microelectronics is 20%, but it belongs to the specialty, which is very suitable."
If you have entered the society, you'd better work for less than three years, and the shorter the better. In addition, different positions have different academic requirements. "Like those who study design and verification, we try to recruit masters. If the simulation layout is OK, ordinary undergraduates can. In fact, some college students also come to consult. I said that they can only learn the simulation layout, and the major must be electronics." Lai linhui said.
Some netizens reported that they were even directly discouraged when signing up for the road science verification for the chip verification post training. Because the educational background and major were not up to the standard, the success rate of career change was very low. The customer service directly said to him, "it is not recommended to apply for a class".
In many senses, today's chip training course industry is the epitome of the whole chip industry, with false fire, ambition, urgency and uncertain future:
It has an obvious meaning of existence - "we are short of people now, and many companies will dig each other if they can't supply talents from colleges and universities in the short term. This person is in this company today and will go to that company tomorrow. His salary has tripled and changed into three companies. In fact, this is a great waste of resources, lost money and didn't create much value for the company." Wang Hui said.
"The training course can save the emergency and alleviate the bad ecology of the industry."
But at the same time, as a product of the temporary imbalance between supply and demand, it seems unable to give itself a definite future - many people compare the talent demand of the chip industry today to the Internet many years ago, hoping to catch up with a new wave of wealth creation. However, Feng Xiao, a headhunter in the semiconductor industry, said that the industry is actually unstable and the technical threshold of chips is very high.
"Engineers are very experienced. Unlike the Internet, they can get a high salary just after graduation or a year or two." She said.
"When the chip industry is not so popular, the first to be eliminated is these training course students with less deep foundation."
However, such a crisis seems far away. Until then, the training course will only continue to grow, and the young people attracted by it will continue to place their chip dreams on it.