Semiconductor

Trying to create more gender parity in your organization is a tough but worthwhile goal. Unfortunately, gender bias— even if it’s not intended— is quite common in the tech and chip industry, where organizations tend to promote and favor masculine actions and behavior. Negative peer pressure, harassment, and skewed representation of women who pursue careers in STEM fields are also major problems in workplaces and the culture at large. There’s no denying that women face and experience unique barriers to success. But many are making strides that shatter the glass ceiling and prove that female engineers, developers, or scientists are crucial to innovation and creative problem-solving.

Sometimes things don’t go quite as planned. You commit to checking off a few tasks for the day, and suddenly a change to the budget or revision in the project brief takes you back to square one. What was supposed to be a clear and straightforward project now requires longer development times, more resources, or aggressive deadlines. The productive day you wished for took a turn didn’t expect. This phenomenon, called scope creep, happens to the best of us.

Chip engineers in small teams are often knee-deep in a wide range of different tasks and projects. From client management and design layout to data analysis and testing, they have their work cut out for them. The mantra “do more with less” has become a popular strategy for running lean teams in many semiconductor companies. While this approach saves time and money, engineers may risk quality, productivity, and performance.

This scenario plays out all too often in high-performing design teams when engineering leaders lose sight of purpose, processes, and people. Deadlines get aggressive, development times are uncertain, and the results become questionable. The price to pay is immense, and companies can’t afford to fall short on testing, especially when pattern generation (PG) is on the line. So what do you do?