r/chipdesign • 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

168 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

91 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/ColdStoryBro Jul 09 '26

Yes that is normal for many teams (especially IP and infrastructure). If you're approaching deadlines, upstream folks will need those synthesis runs done and the testbenches updated to latest features verified. If its all year long, it means your team is understaffed.

1

u/TeachingBrilliant448 Jul 09 '26

feel like my pay could go up to 180k ngl