Manae K.

From the other side of the world

As I grown up in town that has an airport, I always love seeing airplanes and wanted to work near airplanes. To chase the dream, I decided to leave my home country, Japan, and study aerospace engineering at University of Florida. However, more and more I studied aerospace, I began questioning myself if I really enjoy this major and decided to change my major into mechanical engineering. After I changed major, I started looking for internship and I came across Micron at job fair and got interested in semiconductor industry. The following summer, I was offered internship as Product Engineer at Micron in Japan, and the experience was fascinating. Fortunately, the next summer, I was again offered internship as Work Force Development Engineer at Boise. Although the internship was made into remote due to Covid, I was able to apply and develop my technical skills I learned at college. As I enjoyed not only work but also culture and people at micron through those two internships, I decided to go with micron when I received full-time job offer as CMP Process engineer.

No two days are same

As a process engineer, I work on to correct process deviations through root cause analysis, communicate process holds and execute action plans to ensure the quality process of daily operations. Every day, I came across new challenges and there is no two days that are the same.

Work harder than you think you did yesterday

Everyday, I encounter new challenges and there is always something new to learn. It is not always possible to do these works by myself. However, my favorite part of this job is that team members teach and help each other to work through new challenges, and see my growth everyday.

Stay humble

The advise that I can give is to stay humble. Even though you graduated with good GPAs, honor or dean’s list, you do not know everything. There is somebody who can do something better than you. It is ok that you do not know everything. Observe, talk and learn from people around you as much as you can.

Assisted career path as peer advisor

During senior year at college, I worked as peer advisor at mechanical and aerospace engineering department. As a peer advisor, I gave advise regarding not only class schedules but also students’ activities, and other social life at college. There was one student visited my office hours asking help for his schedule. I found out that he is from Japan, same as me, and had a lot of questions in school life as he recently entered college. Even after I graduated, the student asked me for career path advise. Of course it was fun to interact with lots of students in same department but also I am proud of being able to help career success.