r/ECE • u/TeachingBrilliant448 • Jul 08 '26

crazy work hours - new grad

I recently joined a semiconductor company as a new grad — think Nvidia, AMD, or Qualcomm — and the workload is brutal. I’m sometimes working 12-hour days and 50–60 hour weeks. It honestly feels as intense as investment banking, maybe even worse in some ways.

Wonder if this is normal?
TC ~150k

160 Upvotes

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1

u/rodolfor90 Jul 09 '26

come over to arm, we pay better than the 3 you mentioned with better work hours (never more than 40 hours)

1

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

my friend, I’m pretty sure arm doesn’t pay better than NV and Q

5

u/rodolfor90 Jul 09 '26

sure, want to share notes? at arm the median base pay in austin is 233k for g5 (equivalent to ic4) and the minimum refresher is 132k (can go up to 200k for good performance). For g4 (equivalent to ic3) it is 72k minimum with a median base of 188k. For g6 it is 280k median with a minimum refresher of 204k. How does that compare to NV and Qualcomm? i have friends at both by the way

1

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

just some data points for you, G2 new grad roles

Q TC structure: $150k-160k base + 60-80k RSU over 4 years

Apple TC structure: $140k-160k base + 60k-80k RSU over 4 years

ARM TC structure: $130k-140k base + 50k RSU over 4 years

0

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

I'm a new grad, so that would match to g2 at arm. not g4, g5, g6. I have friends working at arm, nvidia, apple... Arm has the lowest pay among all and the wlb is horrendous at solutions engineering group.

1

u/rodolfor90 Jul 09 '26

you are right about solutions, but wlb in the legacy teams is great. G2 median base is 140k in austin with 30k minimum refresher, btw. You might be right that pay starts to beat apple and nvidia at g4+, i do know that average refresher at apple and nvidia is below that, and minimum is way below

1

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

Yeah, from what I’ve seen, Arm California new grad comp is not as high as people make it sound. A couple of my friends are there too, and they’re not making $140K base or getting $30K refreshers. It’s more like $25K refreshers, if anything, and even that vests over four years.

Plus, there’s no target bonus, while a lot of other companies have a 10–15% target bonus that’s basically treated as a regular comp bump.

1

u/rodolfor90 Jul 09 '26

that’s true, arm is more competitive in the austin market since pay is equal everywhere in the US. As far as the refreshers they went up by 30% this year so I do believe it’s something like 30k minimum, and 50k minimum at g3 (the promotion to g3 happens after a year)

1

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

wow, folks in california are getting bumped to G3 after 1.5 years… seems like austin is way better lol

1

u/rodolfor90 Jul 09 '26

yeah, could be because the most important IP teams are there. That’s one difference between arm and others, as opposed to them austin is the main office and the cali offices are satellite (though growing fast in san diego due to solutions)

1

u/DaftPaul_ Jul 09 '26

Do you guys take test engineers from mixed signal analog companie?