How hard is it to land a job at such places like Intel/AMD/ATI/NVIDIA ?

[Eskimo]

Originally posted by: Throwmeabone
Would these kind of companies need people with chemical engineering degrees?

Any hope of getting a job with these companies as a mechanical engineer? I know they do hire some mechanical engineers, I'm just wondering what those jobs would be.

Yes, like borealiss said both of these degrees are in high demand on the manufacturing side of the semiconductor industry. The new plants being built today are much more automated than ever before which means a greater emphasis on robotics and industrial engineering. As antedotal evidence my company is interviewing 300+ new grads during Feb and March and the distribution is fairly evenly split between ChemE's, EE's and Mechanical Engineers. If your a chemical engineer i'd say your far more likely to work in a process engineering position than product engineering type jobs like borealiss spoke of.

Only downside is that the manufacturing side of the business is generally less glamorous and sometimes under appreciated in my opinion. The best designed chip is only as good as the fab process it's made on. Depends on the corporate culture of the company you end up working at, i've had mixed experiences. And just so you don't have to find out the hard way like me the suits you wear into the clean room don't usually come in cool neon colors and there isn't a lot of music and disco dancing... stupid deceptive Intel ads

 

[kobymu]

as one that know 2 people in intel, 1 in microsoft, 4 in comverse, 1 on ibm, 2in cisco, and... ammm... dont remember all of them but a fair amount of others I would say its 70% LUCK 30% skills/greads freash from college, 50% LUCK 50% experience for experienced (AT LEAST 5 YEARS).