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Notes -
Career prospects are better than you describe and the specialization actually helps. Most companies use the same baseline tools with exceptions existing for high-end tools (see EUV in my other reply) and what we call "legacy" tools, or extremely old tools that aren't sold anymore and OEM and second-hand support availability is minimal. For example, almost all companies own a fleet of AMAT Endura tools. So if I were to work at company A for 10 years specializing on Enduras I could easily transfer over to company B and work on theirs. Even if your exact toolset isn't there, the principles stay the same across the board, enough so that you can make up for lack of experience and knowledge quickly.
Experience is also a major consideration. Where I think intelligence reigns supreme in more "theoretical" roles (research scientist, low-level chip designer, etc), experience is king for equipment and process engineers. Intelligence helps and there's definitely a minimum requirement, but you don't have to be a genius to create extensive personal or company-wide documentation on how your tools work, understand major events that had a long troubleshooting process, come up with improvement projects, or run basic process experiments. By this, the longer I stay working on these tools the more I see, the more I learn, and the more pieces I can connect together to make improvements. I can then jump ship and immediately start contributing to another company, especially if I've uncovered or implemented things they haven't yet.
Regarding actual pay, one of my colleagues got a 40% raise by moving from company C to company D. COL was the same. He already had 20 years of experience at company C!
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