Lessons I Learned from Talking with Semiconductor Engineers in Silicon Valley As a semiconductor engineer, there is one thing I want to say about technological progress. Almost every semiconductor engineer I have met in Korea and the US, regardless of the company they work for, says surprisingly similar things. “Ssibal, How is this even working?” Tight schedules, missed spec validations, ECO issues that should have been resolved already, and countless workarounds patched in along the way. Talk to engineers at almost any major semiconductor company you can think of, and you will probably hear the same thing. “You’re telling me this actually works after we built it like this?” “Shouldn’t this be much more systematic?” And yet, surprisingly, this is how the semiconductor industry has progressed for decades. And it will probably continue this way. The point I want to make is this. “Can this technology really work?” “There are so many constraints. Can they really solve all of them and make this happen?” Technologies that look almost impossible from inside the industry often do eventually get built. If the original plan does not work, engineers find another architecture. If that does not work, they find a workaround. Somehow, the product eventually reaches a form that satisfies the requirements of that moment. So especially if you are an engineer, I think it is important to be cautious about the skepticism that comes from your own expertise. Technology is rarely a perfect success, and it is rarely a complete failure. In the end, the technology that an era demands simply gets implemented at the time it is needed, in a form that delivers sufficient performance and makes economic sense.