Can anyone help me save my career please.
My whole career looks like a disaster
My career trajectory in semiconductors goes something like this below. Now, I want to join NVIDIA or AMD for personal choices. I've given myself a year to prepare, but I've worked on so many different things throughout my life that I'm never prepared enough for what could be asked in interviews. My resume does have a lot, and they could pick up any part. I have breadth, but not depth. Jack of few slaves, master of none. Which parts do I focus on? Which IPs? Which experience?
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MTech in Microelectronics and VLSI
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Internship domain: Pre-Silicon Validation, Products worked on: Graphics SoCs. This team didn't have FTE opening, so I applied to other teams and got a job in a different domain.
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Three YoE in Post-Silicon Validation (System Level), Products worked on: Server SoC IPs worked on: Coherent Fabric, Cache Coherency Subsystem. PSV work felt stagnating after some time, so I switched internally. I tried to switch from 1st year itself, but wasn't getting opportunities as they all wanted people with experience in that field, not PSV
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After much grinding and studying SV, UVM etc on my own while working in PSV simultaneously, I got an internal role in DV. Product: GPUs Domain: Memory Pipe (L2 Cache, Address Translation Unit etc) BUT, this team happened to have a completely proprietary methodology of verification, not the industry-standard UVM or C++ tests. Anyway, I got laid off in this team due to a very infamous mass layoff that year.
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I have now joined a smaller embedded system company. I work in DV now and with UVM but on Wireless/Bluetooth products.
Tbh I'm tired of learning a new thing every two years. When I was young, the novelty seemed interesting, I didn't want to stagnate my career. But tech scene has changed now worldwide. In my last job, we all used to assume we could be caned any moment, it was that bad. And I keep the same attitude now. Maybe I'll lose this job within a few months. The architectures here don't interest me any more. My motivation to target NVIDIA is that I wanna work on CPU/GPUs and their work location.
I have unintentionally become a "job switcher". I want to develop depth in a domain and architecture that keeps me hooked. I want to settle in a role. But what do I even prep for now? When I got laid off and was interviewing during my break, they kept asking about the caches and IPs I last worked on. So do I focus on my current work? But if I want to go back to CPU/GPU/Server arch, would they focus on my last role which was as GPU DV? I'm so tired, and I'm 30, so it feels like time is running out. I still have a little life and ambition left within me, and I worked hard to reach here, and I still have a long way to go. Please guide me on what to prepare for the next interviews.
Posted Mar 5, 2026, 4:52 PM UTC