You can tell that it originates from within the semiconductor industry by the generally chaotic presentation (e.g. the "stuff everything in and add arrows" layout of the slides and picking a bunch of arbitrary, jarring, and unnecessary colors)—on top of the already-dubious decision to use PowerPoint to explain these ideas in the first place (out of a reflex—read: crutch).
Semiconductor industry is almost all B2B. People don't invest much time into trying to make technical content look aesthetically pleasing. It only gets read by other technical experts who don't value aesthetics as long as the information is clear.
This is another half-ass attempt to preempt someone saying something pointed and true by subtly tweaking their intent until it's possible to try and interpret it—or rather: deliberately misinterpret it—as saying something that it isn't. Join your friend. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30265930> This kind of defense mechanism gets old.
Beauty has nothing to do with the criticism here. (You seem to have missed, for example, the "and unnecessary" part of the comment; people put in work to make things look this bad.) And "as long as the information is clear" is not a bar that most of the kinds of slides that are under attack can pass. That's in fact the entire point of the criticism.
Somehow other industries outside semi (involving really successful companies filled with technical people who also don't prioritize aesthetics) are able to put together something for people to read by simply... writing shit down (you know: something that actually does involve reading), instead of relying on dodgy PowerPoint slides (that of course don't involve reading so much—but do often involve suffering).
Besides that, the statement that "Semiconductor industry is almost all B2B" is a combination of nonsense (i.e., wrong) and irrelevant. The majority of the semiconductor industry where this kind of material plagues the average worker's day is employee2employer.
I am not defending anything. I am not saying it's the right way to do it. I am just reporting my own observation of how the industry currently operates, from the perspective of someone working in the industry.
The way your previous comment was worded implied a level of attempt to justify the presentation style as opposed to being worded like: "their argument is [It's B2B...]." And while it's admittedly such a minor nitpick on an internet comment made by somebody I probably don't know, I bring it up because I also work in hardware, and your argument (or quote thereof) echoes of of managers throughout the industry that justify half baked EDA tools, arcane software, disjointed workflows, and visual design akin to drawing with crayons. These things make me want to pull my hair out. We're trying to make chips on bleeding edge lithography processes, yet we're banging rocks together like cavemen when it comes to software, and for no good reason either!
And to be clear, I am not trying to justify the response you got, I am simply trying to point out the level of frustration that some engineers in the industry (like myself, and a lot of people on HN) have with our workflows. Especially when we see all of these exciting new tools on HN!
This is exactly the kind of just-so, cargo cult explanation backed by appeal to authority with a tinge of strawman-y, macho bullshit[1] that I would expect when it comes to the semiconductor industry. Having to "read" something "difficult" is not the issue.
Don't misunderstand me. If we grade on a curve by taking into consideration the typical fare that comes out of this sector, these slides are definitely A+ quality.
And it's telling that fabless is placed below the foundries. Situated between actual fabs and their equipment vendors? And beside IDMs? Total category error, but correcting this, of course, would mean that foundries don't get to be the top piece.
[1] "Pain is gain" is a phrase that I've used in the past (and will continue to use) to describe the resistance to improvement and as an explanation of the day-to-day suffocation of working at a chipmaker.
That's because you have to pay an extra licensing fee for clear and concise visual design. Besides, that would add complexity - imagine if there was something that needed to be changed after the article was published! /s
It seems like the SC industry is a bunch of Brent from the Phoenix Project where miracles happen when they enter a trance and find the right bit to flip at the right place and that their PowerPoint presentations is a snapshot of the neural network inside their brain.
