Over my years in the semiconductor industry as both an engineer and a manager, I have seen (at least) hundreds of manager-staff relationships and have observed the good and the bad. Sadly, I have also seen the ugly: I have seen managers who believe that leadership is just telling people what to do—“being the boss”—and I have seen staff members who think they’re Tom Brady when in reality they’re more like Ryan Leaf (for those unfamiliar with American football, google it). Like any good scientist or engineer, I used these observations to improve my own skills, to use what works, to avoid what does not, and to further hone my own leadership skills.
The conclusion I have drawn from all this data is that the industry has a serious lack of good leadership. Given that I have no experience in other industries, I cannot say whether or not this is a universal truth, or whether or not the semiconductor industry is better or worse than any other field. The one thing I know for sure, however, is that at Trilicon we will do things differently.
The most oft-repeated phrase in management training is “work-life balance” but for most leaders this is interpreted as “drive your technical staff to work 80 hour weeks and once in a while give them a $25 gift card to take their significant other to dinner to make them feel important.” Everyone knows what the phrase means, yet few know how to achieve it while furthering corporate objectives. The answer is quite simple: Know your staff, treat them like human beings, and understand that work and life are not in opposition. While there are always times when extra effort is needed, if that is the rule rather than the exception, something is wrong.
Any company has benchmarks that must be achieved for success—as I have said to many people, if someone is paying you to do a job, you have a responsibility to execute and to do so professionally and respectfully. But there are many paths that may take you to the same endpoint, and in the end, good leaders must understand that the path they envision may not be the right one for a given staff member. At Trilicon, we believe “work-life balance” means that employees are given the freedom to organize their lives as they see fit, within reason, as long as they execute to the quality and schedule commitments necessary for the company to succeed. Not every life fits in to a perfect 9-to-5 schedule.
Trilicon is getting started, has little money, and is just a few people working to realize a vision for our product—and for our company (a topic for a future blog post). We are working to build a core team of experts to make Trilicon a long-term success.
Given Trilicon’s relative obscurity right now, if you are reading this it probably means that you have heard about Trilicon through one of the founders, in which case my hope is that you have already experienced good leadership from one of us. Our primary work is in the semiconductor space and we are always looking for chip folks: logic designers, architects, chip designers, and analog designers. If you have expertise in these areas and want to help us build a company that does things differently, let us know. Email us at [email protected].