Submitted by jaydecay123 t3_11e4xv3 in Connecticut
You might not know it but Wilton is home to one of the world's largest semiconductor companies and producers of machines that make semiconductors. - Full video
Comments
nikedude t1_jacp6yy wrote
The only bummer is they are based in Wilton. That will limit their future growth within the state just given the restricted housing options in the area. I've already seen billboards in BPT for them looking for more employees, but it's really not a great location to allow them to grow much bigger within the state.
johnsonutah t1_jacva68 wrote
Feel like many of our employers are in Fairfield County and that’s the preferred destination in CT. Stamford has a ton of businesses but shitty housing options
roundabout_now t1_jadzkb2 wrote
Big push for affordable housing in Wilton. Some buildings in progress. Also, average technician salary is $65,000, with some paying as high as $120,000.
nikedude t1_jae3tal wrote
The median home price in Wilton today is $860k. That's a ~$6k/mo ($72k/yr) mortgage + tax payment today. I would say a $250k household income would be the low end of realistically being able to safely afford that.
Westport, New Canaan, Ridgefield, Weston or Redding probably don't offer much reprieve either. Norwalk would be the only realistic housing option for someone making $60k to live in a bordering town
40z2freedumb t1_jaek9dm wrote
Dont most people commute?
nikedude t1_jaemm34 wrote
Yea, but it's a crappy commute from almost anywhere. Stuck on single lane Rt 7 from the north, or 95/parkway traffic from the east/west.
All I was trying to say with my original comment is they would be able to grow significantly bigger within the state if they were located more centrally to commute to. Middletown/Cromwell or up by Bradley
Few-Information7570 t1_jaenet2 wrote
There’s 106. Also a lot of back roads from 33. So it’s not just route 7.
CANOODLING_SOCIOPATH t1_jaen8yl wrote
Wilton is building some housing, which is good, but the town government of Wilton is notoriously anti-growth and anti-more homes.
90% of the land in Wilton requires that homeowners have at least 2 acres of land for each home. They also have been blocking the expansion of their sewer system to allow for denser developments near their train stations, even when developers are willing to pay the entire cost of extending that sewer line.
Wilton doesn’t simply need “affordable” housing, but housing for the people that ASML is hiring without those employees needing to displace current residents in order to move in. Developers desperately want to build these homes and can make a big profit by building them. But Wilton blocks them, so new ASML hires either need to displace current residents (driving up rents and home prices) or make excessively long commutes making traffic worse for everyone.
Howard_Dean_Scream t1_jae7j6h wrote
This is IMO far and away the biggest challenge to grow the company. I worked remotely for the first year for them and very nearly did not move out when they asked me to. It was a real struggle to find a house within an hour commute of work on the salary I make. Virtually all of my co-workers are single people with roommates living in norwalk.
Kodiak01 t1_jaej7km wrote
Many of their warehouses are actually located in NYS. Back in my commercial air cargo days, we handled ASML export shipments daily. A lot of what we would receive would be out of Newburgh and Poughkeepsie. Many of the crates were large enough that they would barely fit into a standard trailer, never mind being back-weighted to one corner so that even the biggest forklift we could fit onto the truck did not have forks long enough to get it cleaning off the floor. Between that along with the electronic shockwatches and Tip'n'Tells, they were interesting to move around at times.
nikedude t1_jaemz3h wrote
Interesting and kind of goes along with what I was saying. They wouldn't be able to pay warehouse wages around Wilton and keep it regularly staffed due to the high CoL, whereas Newburgh is more economically distressed and able to better support those wages
essaitchthrowaway3 t1_jad2my4 wrote
ASML is not a high tech company on the cutting edge.
They are on the bleeding edge of semiconductor development. When people talk about institutions developing the future, you hear places like MIT, NASA but ASML deserves to be on a similar level.
Howard_Dean_Scream t1_jae74pr wrote
I'm an Engineer at ASML, you guys would not believe the technology this place is moving forward. Feels like working on the freaking USS Enterprise.
Few-Information7570 t1_jaccy9j wrote
Always a little but cool to see all the great industry we have in Connecticut. And how well integrated they are into our communities.
nsfdrag t1_jaclmkp wrote
Yup! It's pretty incredible how important the company is to worldwide electronics. I looked at working there years ago because the salary was good, but not quite good enough to justify the move to the higher COL area.
Mr_Smith_411 t1_jacql04 wrote
I worked there when it was SVGL, kinda sad it's not an American company anymore.
nsfdrag t1_jacrc5x wrote
True, but doesn't surprise me in the least with how international the company is. Would be much nicer to spread good things from american companies but oh well.
US-Freedom-81 t1_jacd1b9 wrote
I have a family member who loves conspiracy theories. He thinks this place is going to burn down to make the supply chain more volatile.
EasyE0287 t1_jachvo3 wrote
Joke's on them. ASML already had a fire in a Berlin (Germany) facility last year that did mess with new machines, but had minimal impact on semi supply chains.
jaydecay123 OP t1_jacd7af wrote
🤣
US-Freedom-81 t1_jacdbz5 wrote
Yeah, that what I thought inside…
red_purple_red t1_jaehu3a wrote
I thought ASML was a Dutch company?
Boddah067 t1_jaeoeuz wrote
It is, but ASML Wilton is responsible for building critical modules of their EUV machines as well as some other products.
SusanMShwartz t1_jaei3l1 wrote
I live in Wilton. Love it.
fanpple t1_jaexnnj wrote
ASML does have a large presence in Wilton, but their “home” is more so in the Netherlands, where they are from and where their HQ is.
They have a few US locations, Wilton and two California locations are their US R&D offices.
mikel124 t1_jaez09a wrote
I thought they where headquartered in the Netherlands?
EasyE0287 t1_jaciwn1 wrote
As a former investor in the company, not to under-sell the importance of ASML: any/all logic and memory chips under 7nm nodes currently require Extreme Ultra Violet lithography machines to be created, which run north of $100M each. ASML is the only company in the world that is able to produce these machines, and any competitors that have tried to emulate have since given up. There have been attempts to steal/copy their trade-secretes (China), but it will likely take 5-10 years before a viable prototype is available, and by then ASML will likely have developed a newer, more advanced model.
There is potential for different chip manufacturing practices (stacking/shaping) to be developed to try to ease reliance on ASML, but adoption of these is likely years out still.
To give an example of the technical complexity of the ASML machines, I recently heard that the mirrors used in them are so smooth, that it is estimated that if you were to stretch one of the mirrors out to cover the entire area of the USA the largest "bump" would be about the height of a human hair.
Defintely a very good thing to have ASML in CT, since they will be an economic contributor for decades to come, and being a physical/manufacturing tech company means that they will continue to have a need for physical, in CT workers (not out-sourced, remote).