Semiconductor Engineers in a Global Economy

Brown and Linden (September 21, 2006) Draft for internal distribution and comments; do not quote or cite without permission. Semiconductor Engineers in a Global Economy Clair Brown and Greg Linden University of California, Berkeley This paper was prepared for the National Academy of Engineering, Workshop on the Offshoring of Engineering: Facts, Myths, Unknowns, and Implications, October 24-25, 2006, Washington, DC. It is based upon research conducted for our forthcoming book, Change is the Only Constant: How the Chip Industry Reinvents Itself. Acknowledgements: Clair Brown is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Work, Technology, and Society (IIR) at University of California, Berkeley; Greg Linden is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Work, Technology, and Society at UC Berkeley. Yongwook Paik provided excellent research assistance. The authors would like to thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Institute for Industrial Relations at UC Berkeley, and the Institute for Technology, Enterprise and Competitiveness (ITEC/COE) and Omron Fellowship at Doshisha University for funding. Bob Doering and Bill Spencer provided detailed and helpful comments on the workshop version of this paper. We are also grateful to Ben Campbell, David Ferrell, Michael Flynn, Gartner Dataquest, Ron Hira, Dave Hodges, Rob Leachman, Daya Nadamuni, Elena Obukhova, Devadas Pillai, Semiconductor Industry Association, Chintay Shih, Gary Smith, Strategic Marketing Associates, Yea-Huey Su, Tim Tredwell, and C-K Wang for their valuable contributions. Melissa Appleyard, Hank Chesbrough, Jason Dedrick, Rafiq Dossani, Richard Freeman, Deepak Gupta, Bradford Jensen, Ken Kraemer, Frank Levy, Jeff Macher, Dave Mowery, Tom Murtha, Tim Sturgeon, Michael Teitelbaum, and Eiichi Yamaguchi, as well as participants at the NAE Workshop on the Offshoring of Engineering, the 2005 Brookings Trade Forum on Offshoring of White-Collar Work, the Berkeley Innovation Seminar, and the Doshisha ITEC seminar series provided thoughtful discussions that improved the paper. We are especially grateful to Gail Pesyna at the Sloan Foundation for her long-running support of, and input into, our research. The authors are responsible for any errors.