How is Chipageddon affecting you?

[tom66]

I still get plenty of job ads and recruiters begging me to jump ship, so in so far as that microcosm of the market goes, I don't think it's all that dire right now.

But what you do as a contractor, I don't know.  I know some guys who jump back to perm in case of contract difficulties, but employers are wise to hiring people who used to be contractors in a downturn, as they may well just jump ship as soon as things pick up.

All in all, recessions are crap but rarely devastating for engineering.  For 2008, the statistic was 1 in 11 engineers out of work, which is "bad" but that's something that can be managed. (Especially if you look at general unemployment being about 1 in 25, to put that figure in perspective.) Either have a good emergency fund and ride it out, or have an insurance policy that can pay out (though these tend to be expensive for contractors.)

The jobs aren't gone (well, not usually), but employers are more cautious during a downturn.   So, it's just patience, picking up odd jobs here and there.

I guess it's just the risk of being a contractor - it's paid off by 2x higher pay per hour though. 

[coppice]

All in all, recessions are crap but rarely devastating for engineering.  For 2008, the statistic was 1 in 11 engineers out of work, which is "bad" but that's something that can be managed. (Especially if you look at general unemployment being about 1 in 25, to put that figure in perspective.) Either have a good emergency fund and ride it out, or have an insurance policy that can pay out (though these tend to be expensive for contractors.)

In the recession of the early 90s things were so bad in the UK that even the recruiters ended up with no jobs. I'm not sure how long that persisted. I gave up on the UK and moved out at that point. People told me it just went on and on. One of the reasons things didn't look so bad for engineering in the UK in downturns after that was so few people were joining the industry that the average age started to climb, and the ever more limited jobs were recruiting from an ever more limited pool.

[Kasper]

If you're in the design business, have you found yourself short of work lately? What are you doing to pass the time until - we presume - the supply chain starts to recover?

What will you do if it doesn't?

I'm at a startup, we've been short of investors for a while now and had a lot of turmoil.  I've kept ahead of shortages so far despite limited funding mostly thanks to our small build volume and the fact that we haven't gone through certification yet so changes are relatively painless.  I've been warning the bosses that we could have unforeseen costs and delays when we try making larger orders but they say we can't afford to hoard.  For now I'm just trying to design in some flexibility and hoping shortages don't ruin us when we're finally ready to ramp up.

One of the biggest challenges is we have multiple products and multiple applications and the bosses can't decide which to focus on.  They want to show a bunch of prototypes and see what gets the most attention.  The result is many half finished products sit at prototype phase while our priorities get changed and component supplies dry up.

If electronics dries up, I'll focus on renovating my home(s).  While the housing bubble inflated, that paid as well as HW/mech design and I found it much more enjoyable than sitting at a desk.  I've backed off a bit lately, waiting for historic interest rate increases to work their way through our housing market but I'm looking forward to getting back into it.  I probably should have focused on housing years ago but it's hard giving up this electronics career that I've put 20 years into. 

[IDEngineer]

If electronics dries up, I'll focus on renovating my home(s).  I probably should have focused on housing years ago but it's hard giving up this electronics career that I've put 20 years into.

Don't forget the toll that construction - even remodeling - takes on your body. My wife used to manage a construction company and said they had 40YO's that had the bodies of 70-80YO's. Creaky, in pain all the time, etc. My wife and I have done a lot of remodeling in our own homes but I'd not intentionally prioritize that over "indoor work with no heavy lifting".

On the other hand, we have a close friend who is a serial house flipper. He was doing that long before it became "cool". Does one house at a time, sells it, and buys the next. He absolutely loves it. He's in his 50's now but still going strong. Do what you love!

[Kasper]

If electronics dries up, I'll focus on renovating my home(s).  I probably should have focused on housing years ago but it's hard giving up this electronics career that I've put 20 years into.

Don't forget the toll that construction - even remodeling - takes on your body. My wife used to manage a construction company and said they had 40YO's that had the bodies of 70-80YO's. Creaky, in pain all the time, etc. My wife and I have done a lot of remodeling in our own homes but I'd not intentionally prioritize that over "indoor work with no heavy lifting".

On the other hand, we have a close friend who is a serial house flipper. He was doing that long before it became "cool". Does one house at a time, sells it, and buys the next. He absolutely loves it. He's in his 50's now but still going strong. Do what you love!

I do get sore from home renos but sitting all day is worse for me.  Too much of either is not good.  Ideally I'll be able to go back and forth at my leisure or at the whims of the markets.

[IDEngineer]

I do get sore from home renos but sitting all day is worse for me.  Too much of either is not good.  Ideally I'll be able to go back and forth at my leisure or at the whims of the markets.

Agreed. I don't sit well for long periods, not because of physical problems but because I need the variety! My primary lab is here at home, so I enjoy the ability to "run upstairs" every 30-60 minutes for whatever reason. Drinks, snacks, bathroom, UPS/FedEx at the door... lots of opportunities to keep moving all day.

[VK3DRB]

I am still working in electronics and keeping busy despite the likes of Texas Instruments abandoning SME's.

Am also doing my home reno as well on the side. Shower room floor boards rotten - strip it all down and rebuild. Saved $10K by doing it myself PLUS not paying the income tax to get that $10K. Maybe a saving of $16K or so all up. Total cost to me will be under $1K. I will do a better quality job than any slap/dash merchant tradesmen or plumber. Plus I get a sense of satisfaction. No sore muscles either because I was quite fit to start with - a culmination on 45 minutes good exercise every day which is paying off in a number of ways, especially in the cardio vascular area.

[Hydrawerk]

The PACE 1130-0532-p1 flat blade tip was ordered on 15/5/2022 and still not delievered from Farnell.

It is still the same on 17/09/2022. There is a notice:

Your order is on back order, awaiting further stock.

[BravoV]

Taiwan was hit by strong earthquake, early videos from social medias show collapsing buildings, bridge and etc.

If affecting the chip manufacturers, expecting chipageddon will getting worst.

[Ed.Kloonk]

 

[T3sl4co1l]

6.9, should be pretty mild by standards in that region??

Glancing across a few sources, looks like epicenter near Taipei?  Seems pretty gentle elsewhere on the island, but still at least a couple buildings or bridges collapsed, nearer the epicenter I suppose.  Hopefully low casualties, and mainly just, poorly constructed/inspected buildings, insurance will be having some stern words kind of thing..?

Tim

[fourfathom]

6.9, should be pretty mild by standards in that region??

6.9 isn't mild by any standard.  The 1969 Loma Prieta quake (San Francisco Bay area) was 6.9 and it caused 63 deaths and six billion dollars in damages ($6B in 1968, $13B today).

[T3sl4co1l]

Ah, fair. That sounds in line with the amount of damage then..

Tim

[tom66]

I would hope TSMC is built with earthquake resilience in mind.  The facility itself has to be seismically isolated, because it is so sensitive to normal geological vibrations. 

However, that doesn't help if work in progress is disrupted, or if there's a long term loss of power, water, or other services, or if employees can't get to work (or worse are injured / killed.)

Not good at all! 

[olkipukki]

On positive side, I started to receive orders have placed in 2021 Q2/Q3 , a few slipped into 90++ weeks lead time 

Also, noticed some recent orders have significantly cut off estimated delivery time , as example - used to be Jul 2023, now - Dec 2022.

[Halcyon]

First time poster in this thread.

So far, the chip shortage hasn't impacted me at all. However I'm needing to order some wireless access points and there seems to be a shortage of some of the Ubiquiti devices. Looks like I'll have to order from Europe. Curiously, on their website, they state: "Due to chip supply shortages, each UniFi6 AP LED has been limited to white and blue indicators". No more rainbow LEDs?

[SiliconWizard]

Things are getting worse and worse.
 

[IDEngineer]

On the bright side, we ordered 2400 units of a particular connector a couple of weeks ago. Quoted lead time was 20 weeks, putting delivery out into January.

All 2400 arrived a couple of days ago.

I'm not sure how to interpret that, but I did consider checking the lottery numbers that day.

...so some things are better.

[tom66]

This is a bug, right?     "The engineer who will design this chip hasn't yet been born."

(It's not Photoshopped: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/stmicroelectronics/LSM303AGRTR/6006100)

[IDEngineer]

Few segments of the IC market are worse than MEMS sensors. It was bad enough before COVID-19, in terms of technical unreliability (especially with certain vendors - hello ST). But then COVID-19 added inaccessibility to the parts that did work (hello Bosch Sensortec). And unlike other difficult parts such as CAN transceivers, there is very little package/pin compatibility and basically zero functional compatibility between MEMS parts and MEMS vendors.

MEMS is an awesome technology with plenty of promise but some of the decisions made in that industry are simply baffling. Like the concept that it's somehow acceptable to require an 8KB firmware download into a MEMS part on every single powerup (hello Bosch Sensortec)....

[tom66]

There's really very little second-source in the IC industry full stop. Outside of jellybean logic and common analog parts, common pinouts and packages are rare.

I'd really like organisations like JEDEC to come up with some common pinouts and packages.  For instance, here's the package for a 4x4mm buck converter with a figure-of-merit power (Vin*Iout) not exceeding 50W, it has enable pin, power good pin, feedback pin etc.

Then manufacturers would be able to compete on individual lines - TI could offer an 18V, 2A converter in that package, Linear could offer a 30V, 1A converter, there might be some variations in switch frequency and feedback voltage but with some minimal effort you could build a product that could have one of many different manufacturer parts fitted.

I suspect this won't happen because TI and the likes love vendor lock in -- it benefits them even when supplies are short.  But one can dream!

[coppice]

There's really very little second-source in the IC industry full stop. Outside of jellybean logic and common analog parts, common pinouts and packages are rare.

I'd really like organisations like JEDEC to come up with some common pinouts and packages.  For instance, here's the package for a 4x4mm buck converter with a figure-of-merit power (Vin*Iout) not exceeding 50W, it has enable pin, power good pin, feedback pin etc.

Then manufacturers would be able to compete on individual lines - TI could offer an 18V, 2A converter in that package, Linear could offer a 30V, 1A converter, there might be some variations in switch frequency and feedback voltage but with some minimal effort you could build a product that could have one of many different manufacturer parts fitted.

I suspect this won't happen because TI and the likes love vendor lock in -- it benefits them even when supplies are short.  But one can dream!

We used to have extensive multiple sourcing of semiconductor parts. Key customers demanded it. When they stopped demanding it, the practice died. Defence and telecoms becoming a smaller part of the market probably had a lot to do with that,

[mikeselectricstuff]

There's really very little second-source in the IC industry full stop. Outside of jellybean logic and common analog parts, common pinouts and packages are rare.

I'd really like organisations like JEDEC to come up with some common pinouts and packages.  For instance, here's the package for a 4x4mm buck converter with a figure-of-merit power (Vin*Iout) not exceeding 50W, it has enable pin, power good pin, feedback pin etc.

Then manufacturers would be able to compete on individual lines - TI could offer an 18V, 2A converter in that package, Linear could offer a 30V, 1A converter, there might be some variations in switch frequency and feedback voltage but with some minimal effort you could build a product that could have one of many different manufacturer parts fitted.

I suspect this won't happen because TI and the likes love vendor lock in -- it benefits them even when supplies are short.  But one can dream!

Yeah, I've lost count of how many different SO-8 buck regulators I've used over the years with near-identical functionality and circuitry around them but always a different pinout. 

[T3sl4co1l]

SOT-23-6 are surprisingly standardized, having merely two or three most common pinouts.  Probably, there is enough competition in that space that they're worth de facto standardizing on, allowing easy subs.  Or just that there aren't many logical placements for bond pads, plus relatively few permutations of 6 pins to begin with.

I'm not so familiar with 8+ pin versions though.  Let alone no-leads, or multi-chip modules (uModule etc.).

Tim

[IDEngineer]

I mentioned CAN PHY chips for a reason. We've been able to standardize on an 8-SOIC pinout that is supported by at least half a dozen manufacturers. And if you're willing to have a single jumper, it doubles the number of individual part numbers that can be substituted. So there are still examples of interchangeable parts out there... but not for MEMS, which often get reeeeeealy close but not quite on the package and pinout but are radically different in their programming interface. Grrrrr.