David Setton is the Director of Engineering at Lam Research, one of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturing equipment companies. He has over 25 years of experience in product design and management. He specializes in complex electro-mechanical equipment and leading multi-disciplinary cross-functional teams for major engineering projects. Prior to his work at Lam Research, David ran his own company, Setton Consulting, and was the Engineering Manager and a Mechanical Engineer for Mattson Technology.
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What are the ingredients to become a great leader and an exceptional engineer? Are you looking for expert tips and enriching inspiration that will guide you through your career-building process?
David Setton has some advice for novice engineers and managers beginning in the industry: articulate your ideas thoroughly and in a very concise manner. Knowing your material and doing great work is one important aspect of leadership and engineering, but the other is presenting succinct details about the projects you are working on. Today, David is here to share his encouragement to young engineers and detail the process of creating a successful seal.
In this episode of the Makers of Our Future podcast, Bill Sharratt, of Darcoid, sits down with David Setton, Director of Engineering at Lam Research, to discuss what exceptional leadership and engineering actually require. David talks about his journey into the engineering field, the step-by-step process for manufacturing a silicon wafer, and the material science of seals and semiconductors.
This show is brought to you by Darcoid. We're building this podcast as a searchable store of knowledge, something you can reference if you’re new to seal design. And if you’re starting out on your career in engineering you’ll learn what others have done to achieve career success Learn more at www.darcoid.com.
Intro 0:03
Behind every great product is a great seal. Join us at the crossroads of preeminence, product design, engineering, seal mastery, and supply chain excellence, and to learn from the makers of our future.
Bill Sharratt 0:21
Hello, welcome to Makers of Our Future. I'm excited you're joining us today. Hearing from people that are behind the products that are changing the world at Darcoid, here we decided to make this podcast as a searchable store of knowledge, something you can count on, when you're specking. Your next seal. Let's get started. I'm Bill Sharratt. I'm Senior Vice President of Business Development at Darcoid. I'm your host for today. Our guest for today is Mr. David Setton. Dave is an accomplished engineer with over 25 years experience in product design and project management. Dave specializes in semiconductor capital equipment applications, MEMS robotics and automation. He's currently director of engineering at Lam Research, who is a leading supplier of semiconductor capital equipment. Dave, welcome to the show.
David Setton 1:19
Thanks, Bill. Glad to be here.
Bill Sharratt 1:21
Good to have you. We're catching up earlier. It's been a very long time since our paths crossed. I've I've been delighted to see that your career has gone from strength to strength. Currently, you're at Lam Research and semiconductors kind of in the news as being unobtainable and holding up all kinds of supply chain issues. And I know there's a ton of investment going into bringing new fabs online in the US. So how's things from the big picture? industry perspective?
David Setton 1:58
Yeah, things have been really good for the past decade or so in general, for semi equipment. And as more items around the household have more semiconductor content, the business has been growing pretty well at Lam. We're facing a lot of the supply challenges, as well as as other industries at this time. So there's a huge surge in demand, and we're trying to keep up like everybody else, which is kind of crazy times in general. So
Bill Sharratt 2:39
you, you get busted if you use the word unprecedented? Because I think that's a little to use these days.
David Setton 2:47
Yeah, yeah. But it really is. It's, you know, for semiconductors. You know, dishwashers have semiconductors now. And obviously, all our devices, phones have the semiconductor content and the phone is going up. And now everybody you know, lots of people have multiple phones that will work phone, you have a personal phone, kids have phones, multiple laptops, in a in a household, the TVs and the the cable boxes, etc. You know, refrigerators now come with semiconductors in them and our Wi Fi enabled microwaves, I guess. And then cars, you know, have a tremendous amount of semiconductors in them today, if we get Wi Fi and self driving and autonomous, autonomous vehicles and things like that. Oh, shoot.
Bill Sharratt 3:44
Yeah, I mean, you jump on your bike, right? And it's like, do I use my bike computer? Do I use my phone to upload to Strava? Do I use my I've got a radar on the back, you know, to tell me when people are coming up behind? It's chips chips everywhere, right?
David Setton 3:59
Yeah. And even bicycles have electronic shifting power meters. You know, I have a few bikes that have power meters on them, which have chips in them. Everything's Bluetooth. Yeah. So
Bill Sharratt 4:12
Well, David, hats off to you. But like single handle handedly making that all happen, what you must do
David Setton 4:21
on the supply side, and the demand side. And the whole economy and of myself, right.
Bill Sharratt 4:28
So how many is on your team? As director of engineering? What does that look like? In terms of managing people as well as project?
David Setton 4:37
Yeah, so I've got I think 11 people on my team, two separate teams. One team is doing system engineering and one team is doing configuration engineering. So yeah, I think 11 people and then I kind of dotted line manage a couple program managers on specific projects. I'm so busy, it's fun, great team. Really proud of them and all the work they've been doing. That system engineering team has mostly been on site through the pandemic. And they've been, you know, kicking butt and taking names for couple years and making stuff happen. Yeah. Excellent. So really proud of that team. Everybody's doing well.
Bill Sharratt 5:24
So in terms of engineering, do you get to do engineering anymore? Is it people management? Do you wake up in the middle of night and say, This is how we're going to do it? I mean, was the creativity versus management kind of?
David Setton 5:39
Yeah, a lot less on the creativity side, which I miss, to be honest. But I still have a little bit input. You know, when the team gets stuck, I kind of dive in and try and help. It's not too often but it happens on occasion.
Bill Sharratt 5:58
Yep. Excellent. Good.
David Setton 5:59
I still have some value. I'm happy to report. They might not think so. But I still think so.
Bill Sharratt 6:08
Good for you. So let's roll the clock back. I was looking at your bio on LinkedIn. And it looks like you got out of out of school about the same time I was getting into the steel industry sometime late last century. What was your path? You UC Santa Barbara? Yes
David Setton 6:27
Yeah. Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. actually went to work for Lam Research. after that. I was an intern and my senior summer at Lam as a manufacturing engineer. Worked for Lam for a couple of years in manufacturing, engineering, a little bit of design work in the gas box and gas delivery space. Okay. And then went to Mattson Technology. I think that's where you and I crossed paths, yeah. 96 timeframe or something like that? Wow, way back then. And then was at Mattson Technology for a few years and then went to graduate school for my MBA at UC Davis. Back to medicine after that,
Bill Sharratt 7:17
right. So graduate school? That's a big step on on the educational path. Was it a big benefit for you, in terms of your career in terms of how you approached the projects you're working on?
David Setton 7:36
You know, it was certainly fun. While I was at business school, I really appreciated being a full time student, I decided to leave industry and go back full time. You know, semiconductor was boom or bust. And so I didn't think I could handle a full time job and part time school. So I decided to go back full time. And I was certainly fun and certainly educational. I enjoyed it. You know, compared to my undergraduate days, I was really focused on school in graduate school versus, you know, being 18 at UC Santa Barbara. Yeah, I think school uniform school. Yes, amazing place. I think school was like, third or fourth priority. So, so I was really focused, and that was awesome. And so I think it helped my career. You know, it's hard to say, I've been very fortunate in my career and enjoyed my work, you know, so I'll say yeah, so worth it.
Bill Sharratt 8:45
And you get some you're self employed in there in the mix there. Setton Consulting what, what were you working on then? What kind of scope of projects were you handling?
David Setton 9:00
Yeah, so as as I just said, right, the semiconductor equipment industry was often boom or bust. And so on some of those bus times I decided to go out on my own and work on projects. And it varied sometimes I was working as a mechanical engineer. Sometimes I was working as a project or program manager. Sometimes it's like a technologist. So you know, really, depending on what the customer needed, and I was flexible, and that was super enjoyable as well. I had a little bit more flexibility in terms of which projects I worked on and which customers and so that was super fun. Educational as well. Seems like a different lifetime ago.
Bill Sharratt 9:53
Yeah, I, well. I'd forgotten about that boom bust cycle on some economy or what Watch the book to Bill ratio is, you know that was going to tell us how things were going. And it was pretty savage there. So good move. I mean, did you have to? Do you have to do a lot of marketing and promotion when you're self employed? Or was it referrals and networking?
David Setton 10:17
It was mostly networking. Right. I had a past coworker that was sort of the Rainmaker. And he would kind of bring in the projects. And for the most part, there were a couple others that were from contacts back in the Mattson days or previous Lam days. Actually, I guess so vary, but most mostly, I had kind of a business development guy who's feeding projects. Excellent. So and surprisingly busy. You know, during those times,
Bill Sharratt 10:50
where you really got to pick and choose a bit. I mean, it's nice to have that luxury.
David Setton 10:55
It was it was we were super busy, right up until the Great Recession, right until 2008. Where everything kind of I mean, that seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it? 2008. And we're everything dried up rather rapidly.
Bill Sharratt 11:14
Yeah. It was staggering. How things shut down and stop. Yeah, yeah. Scary. Merry. Halftime for everyone. The you mentioned the word intern earlier. And that, that that's interesting to me. We we host interns periodically in our engineering group at Darcoid. Do you have experience managing or working with interns since being an intern yourself?
David Setton 11:45
Yeah, at Lam we do have interns. It's actually been quite competitive. You know, for summer interns. Interestingly enough, I had a friend who wanted to have their I'll say, kid, you know, high school, entering college, do some interim work. And, you know, applications have to be in the prior winter. For some of the work, there's a lot of competition for him. I personally haven't managed interns, but the quality of the work that they produce, I've seen it and I've worked with them is very high. I'm super impressed with kids. And in college these days, I should say young adults, they're not really children, very hard workers, very sophisticated, quick learners. Really impressed with their with their work that I've seen in the recent past. Excellent. I did as
Bill Sharratt 12:50
an intern. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it can be a mic work kind of a program. But when you have real defined desired outputs that that can be a game changer. What should an intern know? How to? How should they make the most of their opportunity? If they have an internship at Lam? How do they stand out? How do they get an invite back for a full time job?
David Setton 13:21
Yeah, that's a good question. I think, you know, I think the public speaking part of it, the presentation, part of it is really important. That's where people really see kind of where the rubber meets the road. Okay. So it's unfortunate that that, you know, because that's not a spring for a lot of people, especially engineers. I think that's, it's the case for not just interns, actually. But for young engineers, and, and even managers. The ability to present in a clear and concise manner is a challenge, right? A lot of engineers dig into the details too much. So a lot of people could do like, for instance, interns, for example, they may do great work, but if they can't present it in, it's not known all the great work that they do, it's kind of hidden, especially to the executives. So if they can present themselves and their work in a very concise manner, but still get their point across, and also be able to deal with the details when those questions do come up. I think that's a real advantage for them. And I think that's, again, that for young engineers and managers as well, being able to articulate their ideas and their concerns and the risks to management is super important.
Bill Sharratt 14:47
That's really actually is really good to hear because as a parent of kids going through high school and then into college, they spent a lot of time on group projects. We With an emphasis on presentation, and I was kind of wondering about that, but those points really drive home the value of being able to speak to the whys and the results and, and the achievements in the in the presentation material. Good stuff. Thank you.
David Setton 15:19
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. It's a skill, it's a skill worth learning. And it took me a long time me personally to understand that. So I think it's a real advantage if people can come up to speed quickly in that area. For
Bill Sharratt 15:33
me, it's that balance between I really want to tell you everything I've done on the 17 slides versus you know, death by PowerPoint, and you know, getting that getting that right, right.
David Setton 15:42
Exactly. Exactly.
Bill Sharratt 15:44
Alright, so this should be about seals. So let's talk about seals was seals taught in school when you left Santa Barbara as a as a qualified and dangerous me, did you know anything about seal or elastomers?
David Setton 16:00
No, I knew zero. And actually, here's an actually good point. Like I thought Santa Barbara was a good school and I still think is a good school. When I was a manufacturing engineer, I knew very little I came in so green as to what a number 10 screw was, or what's a seal or an elastomer O ring was or how it worked or how to design. So there was a lot of on the job, education for me, coming out of a theory based school like Santa Barbara. So the short answer is I didn't know anything about seals
Bill Sharratt 16:41
I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have to hit up the faculty. And we're gonna. Yeah, actually, they should come on the show and expound on that. Because it's, you know, it's a specialty industry. It's a specialty application, a specialty field, but sales behind everything. It's an important thing to know about for sure. So we talked sales at at Mattson, right. I think we're talking earlier, trying to try to remember what we worked on together. But was that your first run in with sales at Mattson Technology?
David Setton 17:22
For sure, from a design perspective, want as a manufacturing engineer at Lam, I'm sure I dealt with them in some capacity, I don't recall. But from a design perspective at Mattson, and the application that we worked on, that you helped me on was a vacuum robot for weight for transferring in the transfer module we were designing and we had a very large shaft it was a I think a six and a half inch diameter shaft that we're trying to seal on a rotational basis.
Bill Sharratt 18:02
So, you know, we application I mean, vacuum is the name of the game in in process chamber environments for for etching designs into silicone, right. Vacuum robot. So you normally if you got a vacuum you would the seal you use would be something that's completely impermeable and you squeeze it nice and tight. The trouble is when you do that, you can't move the mating surfaces. That robot doesn't rotate like you want it to. So you got some design challenges right away,
David Setton 18:42
right? Yeah, yeah. So we had if I remember back in the day we had we squeezed too tight like you said we didn't have the torque in the motors to rotate the shaft. We also had a lot of articulation, which is a problem in semiconductors everything's got to be very clean. So we didn't want that particulates. We would also wear the seal very quickly so that we would have to be replaced and you don't want a lot of downtime and semi equipment you want to keep pumping out chips
Bill Sharratt 19:16
as a seller of seals, I recommend replacing seals every day if we can.
David Setton 19:21
Yeah, but then they never get used if you're Yeah, we so we struggled a little bit with that. So we started I think with O rings. We went to a lip seal and that works well except it would wear the shaft I can't remember the material. I think it was a high carbon lip seal or something like that. That would wear the shaft quite extensively. For I remember correctly. We had a chrome plating on the shaft and so that didn't work out I think the final solution was to quad seals with a differential pump in between. It was the was the final solution and lots of vacuum grease.
Bill Sharratt 20:12
Lots of grief. Yeah, it's one of those edge case applications where there's nothing in the manuals, nothing in the books. Nothing online will tell you how to do that. Material Science and do you use Teflon? Do you not? That's where stuff gets interesting for sure. So, Dave, can you give me step back a bit and give me a kind of a fly through on not how a semiconductor is made. But what does the process chamber environment? Do? What what how is the wafer moved around? How's it exposed to chemistry? How does that all fit together? Yeah, so in 10 words or less,
David Setton 20:59
in 10 words or less? My public presentation? Yeah, so I'll talk about modern wafer handling. So though, and I describe it to lay people as kind of a high tech pizza oven. Think of the wafers. So chips are made on wafers, they're about a foot in diameter, like a personal size pizza. They come in a box that's sealed, and it goes into an opener, it opens the box, right? I mentioned, excuse me, I mentioned everything has to be super clean. So inside these plastic boxes, the personal size pizzas, the wafers sent in there at 25 of them gets opened, everything is super clean, it gets picked up by a robot. It has like a spatula, if we use the kitchen analogy to more gets picked up by spatula,
Bill Sharratt 21:58
and effectors. I'm sorry. And effectors is
David Setton 22:03
the high tech word for spatula and the factor. And these pizzas get baked in a vacuum. So you have to take them from the box, which is that atmosphere, although it's a clean atmosphere, into the vacuum, and so we have a transfer module is the name of it and it takes it'll take the wafer, put it into a load lock, which then is evacuated, all the air is removed. And then it gets transferred into the process module, which is the oven. You know, there's a variety different types of ovens. Lam has a couple of specific types. One was we etch, which removes material, we also have dev tools or deposition tools, which we add material on to it. My background is more on the edge side. And so in these high tech pizza ovens, we either heat the wafer, or sometimes we cool the wafer to sub zero temperatures, depending on the application. We apply a lot of energy and gases, different etching gases. And there's a range of them chlorine, bromine, SF six, you know, a variety o to oxygen, argon nitrogen. And so with these gases, it then etches the silicon wafer.
Bill Sharratt 23:41
Just about everything else so they can can get exposed to right I mean, yeah, some nasty chemistry. They're very aggressive. Sorry, aggressive.
David Setton 23:48
There's some aggressive chemistries, it actually is a silicon etches the seals. Yep, it matches the interior of the chamber. So Lam does a lot of business and consumable parts. Think of it kind of like the tires of your car, right? They were out and we exchanged them. And or, or maybe the motor oil of your car or something like that, which gets exchanged every so often. Yeah, and so the way forgets, bake, the pizza gets baked and then gets removed out of the chamber and it goes back into its box. And then it goes on to the next step. And in making the wafer, there's 3060 80 steps, sometimes on the latest technologies. You know, half a little on them or edge, half of them are depth and then there's, you know, a few percentage of other things in there too. So that's kind of the high level of a wafer processing equipment or semiconductor processing equipment. Super,
Bill Sharratt 24:47
thank you. Awesome. So from the from the seal side of things, I guess the closer you get to that process chamber environment, the cleanliness requirement ramps up and up and up. So you've got you described aggressive chemistries, flooring, chemistries, I mean, that's to etch glass, you need fluorine, fluorine breaks down the polymer bonds in the elastomer, the elastomer starts degrading, whatever else is in amongst those polymers become something that can get close to your wafers during, during processing. So, a lot of material science on the seals, right? Yeah, actually,
David Setton 25:37
the seals have a lot of jobs. Obviously, they have to seal and you require the last Tumeric properties, right, it's got to be flexible. And like I mentioned, there's heat, there's cold temperatures, temperature cycle quite a bit. You know, so the main job of the seal is to seal and keep atmosphere out of the vacuum side. So that's number one. And then, as you said, it's got to remain clean, and not etch or be etched resistant, it's got to not hardened so the seal can remain, it can't expand too much it can absorb material and expand because then it will change the sealing properties. And we'll have leaks. We can't expand too much with heat or contracting with with temperature. So super, a lot of challenges for that seal. And also in these aggressive chemistry that erodes, it'll stop sealing. So yeah, tons of technology in there, it's a super critical part in our process equipment. It remains one of our challenges to have a seal that lasts a long time, right? This is, if we go back to our motor oil analogy, right, we used to have just regular motor oil, that would last 3000 miles now you have a synthetic motor oil, which lasts 10,000 miles, which is kind of a game changer for the automotive industry, we do the same thing we want. We want our seals to last a long, long time so we can keep the equipment up. And there's been huge strides with with the new materials in recent years. And I'm not a seal expert in terms of the chemistry and things like that, but we've gone to much better materials, and they last much, much longer compared to when I was first starting out in this industry.
Bill Sharratt 27:34
clean burning long lasting. That's the name of the game. Right?
David Setton 27:39
Exactly. And low articulation, as you said, low erosion rates. It's been real, it's been real key to extending what we call the mtbc. Meantime, between cleans of our chamber, right. So once, once the seals get to a certain point, and they're no longer sealing, or they're creating particles, we have to exchange them. And then once you open up that vacuum chamber, you have to clean it and other things like that. So currently, the seals in some of our equipment are the limiting factor in that mtbc.
Bill Sharratt 28:16
And all the name of the game for your production equipment in fab is continued uptime, getting the maximum return on investment on that piece of equipment, the maximum throughput and then staying up with technology advances and etching smaller and smaller device features. Right? So it's a it's it's going to be constantly moving the goalposts constantly changing.
David Setton 28:45
Absolutely right. It's gotta be cheaper, faster, and better. Which is super hard. And that's a you know, yeah, thankfully, layout has been, you know, on the leading edge and really making strides and really doing well with our customers. So it's been a it's been good for Lam and me personally. But it's it's a challenge, right? You know, all the powers and the temperatures are going more extreme where they're going colder or hotter, we're applying much more power to etch faster, the throughput has to go up. And that's demanding of all the materials including seals in the chamber and it's creating higher demands for new materials, new technologies, new designs,
Bill Sharratt 29:39
any number of specialty expertise needs to be built in a number of different fields obviously. So what advice for a new engineer dealing with sales for the first time, obviously Lam has companies like Lam have built up tremendous knowledge and In will have a lot of in house expertise. A lot of the customers we work with are not don't have the luxury of having that depth of engineering. Know how engineer, first time dealing with salesmen. What do they need to know? Or what? What pitfalls do they avoid? Or how do they go about it?
David Setton 30:26
Well, two things, I mean, find a good supplier, like yourself, Bill, like you were very helpful back in the day. And look internally to your peers and your elders, I guess I don't know what the right term is. But people who've been around the block for advice. But don't you know, also be creative. Don't Don't get stuck. If someone says you can't do that. My advice is be creative. There's always where there's a will there's a way. So I think creativity and working hard, it will get you very far. That's kind of my MO. Next one. seems to be pretty. I've done okay, I guess.
Bill Sharratt 31:18
Now, there's always got to be another way. There always is another way. Some of it is almost counterintuitive, sometimes the approaches that you need to take. So yeah, I'd say Don't rush into it with a fixed mindset. That's, that seems to be a common theme that I'm hearing in these conversations.
David Setton 31:39
Yeah, I mean, I think you got to be reasonable, right? You're not going to whatever your spec is, you may not double it, right? If you're looking for, let's say, my, my challenge is like a throughput or an entry. Yep. We often don't go from 10 to 20. But you might go from 10 to 12, to 15 to 20. over a span of years. Yep. In the same thing with a seal, right, you're you might not get a lifetime out of a seal. If you'd look at cycles, or RF hours or something like that. You're not going to double overnight, but but if you have a longer term view, you'll get there. And you got to be creative, right? And willing to try different things. Excellent. Excellent.
Bill Sharratt 32:34
Do you think Dave, you're I mean, Korea stuff, you're gonna stay in the field, you're gonna specialize in more discrete technologies? What? Where do you think you're, you're going, you're in a really good place right now. Where do you see yourself in five years?
David Setton 32:55
Maybe retire? I don't know. Lucky guy. I'm playing the lottery these days. Yeah, you know, I think Lam and the group I work in I work in the customer service business group, we we do a lot of specialty markets compared to my peers and other groups, right? We work on MEMS devices, power devices, not your typical logic, remembering where the bulk of the business is. So I figure I'll still be in that role for the foreseeable future. The world right? With zoom calls and electric cars and self driving, who knows where?
Bill Sharratt 33:49
So I remember MEMS was, you know, I don't know when but back in the day MEMS was the next big thing, right? Is it still? Where do you see the next big thing? It is? Okay.
David Setton 34:04
Well, I mean, I use that you know, kind of tongue in cheek here because it hasn't blown up like they thought it was in at least in terms of equipment side. And I think the challenge is the devices themselves have gotten so small. The microphones on our phones, you know, I'm on the iPhone here. Sometimes thing isn't, that's a MEMS thing that cameras, all those things have gotten so so small that they fit more and more on a on a wafer. So you don't need more equipment. Because there's so many more on a particular wafer, right? And the yields have gotten so good right? Before it was 50 or 60% of the dye would actually be usable. Now they're talking 98 99% of the time. out. You know, and that's kind of our own detriment we've become so good at producing them on our tools
Bill Sharratt 35:08
is find yourself out of a job. Kind of we're not selling as many tools. Yeah, yeah.
David Setton 35:15
It's good for our customers. And it's good for Lam ultimately. But I mean, that's, that's part of the semiconductor process and Moore's law, right? Everything keeps getting smaller and smaller yields get better and better, they get cheaper and cheaper. So benefits the consumer benefits our customers and eventually benefits Lam. But
Bill Sharratt 35:35
well, hey, thanks for being a part of that process. I know it takes it takes money to get there. But, you know, stuff we can do on these things. Oh, my God, it continues to improve. So again, hats off to you, Dave for being a part of that value. That's happening.
David Setton 35:55
Yeah, it's it's a huge team. Right? Not just sorry, I got a little reminder there. It's a huge, it's a huge team between Lam our customers, the engineers, it's quite amazing how many people work and on these devices and the progress that we've made over the years.
Bill Sharratt 36:17
Fantastic. You got to remind my phone pink to I realize we're at time, I need to respect that. Couple of quick questions if we can. Number one, shameless self promotion, Dave. Often companies are looking to hire the best and brightest. What is about Lam? That is the best place to be? And how should people reach you if you want to be available to that kind of approach?
David Setton 36:44
Oh, yeah. You know, I think the best thing about Lam is its culture, we're data driven. We have very good core values. I think there's a list of five or six and, and everybody really plays to those core values. It's, it's, it's a very strong culture. And it's a good culture. It's strong in a good way. And so I think that's the best part about Lam. How to reach me, I am on LinkedIn. David Setton, Setton, send me a note. You're looking for opportunities, always hiring. Lam has been growing for the past 12 years since I rejoined. So.
Bill Sharratt 37:35
All right, thank you for that. Last question. I like to say we stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. As you look back at your career, other mentors or people that have given you advice that has stood you in good stead throughout? How would you like to reflect on that?
David Setton 38:01
Yeah, absolutely. And they're probably too many to name. And I haven't thought about this question. But there's probably three people that give me advice that I remember specifically or gave me opportunities or advice. One was my brother. At some point, he said, take your graduate school entrance exams in undergraduate because it'd be in the mode of studying. And those are good for five years. So that was a piece of advice he gave me and I give that to young, young adults these days. So take your entrance exams early. Another one was a close family friend who's now passed, a gentleman named George Kaminski. He gave me that internship at Lam many, many years ago, while still in college. He was a nice, great guy, super smart. And the couple pieces of advice, which I also give young people is take advantage of the ESTPs if your company's offer and soy, the employee stock purchase plan. Invest in that all you can. It's awesome. Yeah. And that's worked out well for me and I give that advice. Also 401k Take full advantage from day one. You won't regret that as well. And just put that money away for retirement and you'll never miss it as you start your career. And then another gentleman Fred to breezy, which I worked at that Mattson and you probably remember that name. Super smart, great guy. I haven't been in contact with him in a decade or so unfortunately, but he gave me lots of opportunity he was trusting in terms of my work. Yeah, was open to creative ideas was critical when appropriate. And I miss working with individuals like Fred.
Bill Sharratt 40:18
Outstanding. Thank you. And there's some really grown up advice in there.
David Setton 40:25
Well, I have grown up these days, though, unfortunately, I wish I was younger. But at least you know, as we get older, we hopefully gain a little wisdom. Whenever it is.
Bill Sharratt 40:37
Dave, you shared a lot of wisdom here. You know? Well, it's a searchable Trove is what you've you've given us and and I hope it pops up on people's screens. I think it will. I really can't thank you enough for your time.
David Setton 40:54
Thank you for having me. This was super fun. I'm glad. I'm glad to catch up with you, Bill. And hopefully it's not the last interaction we have for another decade
Bill Sharratt 41:03
It will not Thank you, David, thank you for your time. That's great. I really appreciate it. Thank you
Outro 41:11
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