Recently, we sat down with Jason Syu, an Applications Engineer at NVIDIA, to talk about his journey into a career at NVIDIA, what it means to be an Applications Engineer, and what software engineers should know about working in the hardware industry. Jason also shared some insights with our learners about finding a career in the tech industry.
Most people probably know NVIDIA pretty well; it’s one of the biggest corporations out there. A quick background for those who don’t know: NVIDIA started out as a hardware company focused on making GPUs, which is the graphics processing unit within a PC system. They got their first break with gaming graphics processors. Over the years they expanded into other enterprises, and are now a system-wide hardware and software stack including an AI solution or compute solution. A lot of their revenue is still coming from this gaming and G-force product launch, and that is the product line that I support.
When you purchase a new RTX gaming card, the card has the NVIDIA package logo but it is sold by another company. This company can be ASUS, EVGA or MSI. They are NVIDIA partners/ customers of NVIDIA, while consumers and gamers are the end-user.
The NVIDIA partners buy NVIDIA graphic processing units (GPUs), make it into a graphics board, add the cooling solution and package it all together into a box. They manage the manufacturing and end-user sales and most of the end-user support.
As an application engineer, I am the interface between NVIDIA and the NVIDIA partners. I make sure these partners know how to use our products correctly. If they run into any technical issues, then I help resolve them so that when they ship these products to the end consumer, the end customer has a seamless user experience.
Let me take a step back here to give you my perspective on being a software engineer in a hardware company. Regardless of the hardware, your work schedule is most likely tied to the hardware launch date. Whether the hardware is a car, a smartphone or a graphics card, the product life cycle determines the schedule. If it’s a car, then the typical product life cycle is every 3 years. Every 3 years, the car company will launch a major update to a model. In between the major launch dates, the engineers work on touch-up models. If it’s a smartphone, the product life cycle is around every 2 years. A major smartphone update comes every two years, and a minor update every year or so.
In terms of the day-to-day, I start out my day with checking over the issues that I have received over the night because a lot of our counterparts are in Asia. I try to resolve some of these issues we have received in the first half of the morning before I jump into a morning meeting. Morning meetings are mostly engineering status, where we are today, what are the challenges we face, how are we resolving them, and or what are the plans for the coming weeks. I dedicate my early afternoons to longer term initiatives and ongoing projects. In the evening, we may have another meeting with our Asia team, and we sync up to see what’s going on there.
First of all, I am not too good at coding, so I knew I didn’t want to do software for a living. That is part of the motivation, but there’s obviously other motivations as well. Looking back nowadays, the compensation packages in general for software engineers usually are more generous than hardware engineers. As a hardware engineer, our expertise is developed specific to an industry or to a company, and that expertise can make you have some holding power in that position. The trade-off can be in the more modest compensation package. Another component was in terms of a lifestyle choice between looking at a screen for 10 hours on end, or going into a lab and working with hardware designs and lab equipment. A hardware engineer may be more active at work, whereas a software engineer may be more sedentary.
I think as a hardware engineer or a software engineer, when you are deciding to join a company or you are looking for opportunities, always look at a company to see if their strategy makes sense and if there is a long-term growth opportunity. If one of those things doesn't make sense, you should think twice before accepting the offer. And when I say growth opportunity, it’s not becoming a CEO at the company, but a chance for your career to grow. Maybe eventually you want to switch to a different role at the company, so looking at the company’s lateral mobility can also be a factor. NVIDIA is going into the AI industry and the crypto industry, so that means as an employee in this company, eventually some of my work would also be touching these areas as well. These are areas that are growing today and will be growing tomorrow.
When I graduated from undergraduate with an electrical engineering degree, I got a decent offer from an inkjet printer company. I didn’t take that offer, because inkjet printers, as an industry itself, were a dying segment. Today, few people still have an inkjet printer in their homes. This is a counter-example of the types of growth that I am talking about. These are some of the things that I think about when I decide which company to join.
A lot of times the software engineers wonder why hardware designers don’t just create a quick prototype to try out some of their software ideas. However, hardware engineers tend to think differently.
The fast-paced iterate process of software design does not directly translate to hardware design thinking. For example, you could think of a house as hardware. Yes, we could build a shack or tent very quickly, but you wouldn’t want to live in that for 30 years. And when you actually go out and buy a house, you’re looking for something you can live in for 30 years with minor remodeling throughout its lifetime. When we build a house, we want to make sure that we planned out a good foundation. Once the concrete is laid down, it will be very costly to change anything at that point. There is a similar mentality in a hardware design role.
One thing that as a software engineer that might not appreciate or have the insight on hardware engineering, is just how much time and money it takes to create a piece of hardware. This is before it is even ready for softwares to be loaded onto the electronics. Therefore, it’s important for the design specifications to be as clear as they can be before the product is actually made.
The cycle time for hardware bug fixes can be long, because a hardware engineer cannot just open up a file, change lines of code, and click compile and DONE. A hardware engineer has to physically move the plastic, move the metal, respin it, and then re-fabricate it. That entire process takes time, takes supply logistics and takes money.
Months and years are the time and effort it takes for hardwares to be built for production. For example, some of these hardware design costs, including parts and engineering labor, could range from $500 for a small electronics gadget to $600,000 for an autonomous vehicle.
Well I am not a futurist so I am not sure exactly how the futures of these hardware will pan out, but I think sometimes you can definitely see the industries that are coming to an end. For example, inkjet printers are done. Handheld cameras and DSLRs are pretty much done (someone will disagree for sure). Gas stations are done. Those are the areas that I would try to get out, or even get in.
In terms of whether automation will take over humans, I think it definitely will, in some aspects. However, in my opinion, I think the fate of automation is determined more by policy rather than technology. In terms of technology and automation, these are industries that are always going to be in trend.
I got pretty good at cooking. Jamie Oliver’s has a pretty good recipe for seafood linguine on his YouTube, so you should definitely look that up. It’s very easy and only takes about 15 minutes prep time and 30 minutes total cook time. Jamie may not be good at making fried rice, but his linguine recipes are excellent.
We want to thank Jason for his time in speaking with us and our students about his career as an Applications Engineer. He provided valuable insight about working with hardware in the tech industry to our learners.