Seeing Through Silicon

Seeing Through Silicon — Episode 3: Bullies in a Strange Land

Where underdogs DO become heroes.

Show Notes

Crestline didn't hire me to make the fab safe. They hired me to make it look safe. A course. A signature. A stamp that would carry them through an audit. Then I found an eyewash station that had never been connected to water — and realized how much of that place was built to be seen, not used.

Bullies in a Strange Land is an episode about power: who holds it on a fab floor, and how it moves. Chuck, the fab GM, ran Crestline on Texas charm, and the charm wore thinner every time I got closer to the truth. Floria, the diffusion lead, proved a bully doesn't need the top title. And Jamie, the fab manager I trusted most, was the one person I couldn't bring myself to tell.

I went through the chain of command. I did it the right way. In an industry this small, doing it the right way can still end with twenty minutes, a back door, and a guard's radio crackling across the gravel.

In This Episode

Silicon Canary Files

Every episode comes with a month of written dispatches — Field Notes, the story behind the story, and this month, a Canary Conversation with Judith Barish, Coalition Director of CHIPS Communities United. Subscribe free at seeingthroughsilicon.com and they'll come to you weekly.

Adopt an Episode

Every episode of Seeing Through Silicon can be adopted. For $10 or more (pay-what-you-want), you can put your name — or a name you choose — on record as part of an episode's story. Adopters receive a personalized adoption certificate and the option to be credited on the Canary Roll Call. Want an early teaser? Adopt an episode that hasn't dropped yet.

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Disclaimer

This series is a memoir-based dramatization. The stories in Seeing Through Silicon are mine — lived on the front lines of the semiconductor industry in the 1970s. Company names and character names have been changed to protect individual privacy. The experiences, workplace conditions, and human dynamics described are real — because they happened to me, and to people I worked alongside. The companies depicted — Sandstone Semiconductor, Western Integrated, Sunnyvale Micro, and Crestline Semiconductor — are fictional composites.

Next: Episode 4, "EPI Gals" — Drops December 6, 2026

Seeing Through Silicon — Episode 2: Sliver of Silver

Where underdogs DO become heroes.

Show Notes

I walked into a restroom one floor up from the fab and caught a woman doing something she never meant anyone to see. Denise was touching up her gray roots at a porcelain sink — managing her age the way you manage anything in a place that has already decided your expiration date.

Sliver of Silver is Denise's story more than mine. The only female technician — a decade older than everyone in her engineering group. No pedigree degree — the one she was working toward, she paid for herself. And a body of design work approved by a manager who said yes out loud, signed nothing, and then died. In an intact industry, that gap is all an ambitious colleague needs. Especially one who knew the truth and decided his silence was worth more than her career.

I didn't have the word for it then, but this is an episode about mentors — the ones who show up while you need them, the ones who show up late, and the ones nobody ever credits. Silicon Valley had a rule for women like Denise: never burn a bridge. Nobody ever said who the bridge was protecting.

In This Episode

Silicon Canary Files

Every episode comes with a month of written dispatches — Field Notes, the story behind the story, and this month, our first Source File. Subscribe free at seeingthroughsilicon.com and they'll come to you weekly.

Adopt an Episode

Sliver of Silver is now available to adopt. For $10 or more (pay-what-you-want), you can put your name — or a name you choose — on record as part of this episode's story. Adopters receive a personalized adoption certificate and the option to be credited on the Canary Roll Call. Want an early teaser too? Adopt an episode that hasn't dropped yet.

👉 Adopt Sliver of Silver

Disclaimer

This series is a memoir-based dramatization. The stories in Seeing Through Silicon are mine — lived on the front lines of the semiconductor industry in the 1970s. Company names and character names have been changed to protect individual privacy. The experiences, workplace conditions, and human dynamics described are real — because they happened to me, and to people I worked alongside. The companies depicted — Sandstone Semiconductor, Western Integrated, Sunnyvale Micro, and Crestline Semiconductor — are fictional composites.

Next: Episode 3, "Bullies in a Strange Land" — Drops November 1, 2026

Seeing Through Silicon — Episode 1: First Burn

Where underdogs DO become heroes.

Show Notes

I already knew, before I ever walked onto that fab floor, that some rooms cost you something to enter. I just didn't know yet what the bill would look like — or how long I'd carry it.

First Burn opens where the series opens: with a young working class woman with a new badge, and a company that will teach her — fast, and without apology — what she's worth to it. Sandstone Semiconductor gives me a mentor who does it right, a trainer who does it wrong, and a friend who does something worse than either. Somewhere in the middle of a Santa Cruz drive with the windows down, I stop noticing which one is which. By the time I do, it's too late to matter.

This episode is the moment I learned that trust, once burned, doesn't heal the way skin does. This is where it all begins — the literal and the metaphorical, in the same afternoon.

Content note: this episode includes a description of a workplace chemical burn injury.

In This Episode

Canary Conversation

This month's Canary Conversation features Ted Smith — founder of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and co-founder of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology, fifty years into asking the industry who's accountable for what "clean" actually costs. We start with a pattern we can't stop seeing: "clean rooms" in the '70s, "net positive water" today — different vocabulary, same distance between language and footprint. 

Adopt an Episode

First Burn is now available to adopt. For $10 or more (pay-what-you-want), you can put your name — or a name you choose — on record as part of this episode's story. Adopters get early access to an episode teaser and the option to be credited on the Canary Roll Call.

👉 Adopt First Burn 

Disclaimer

This series is a memoir-based dramatization. The stories in Seeing Through Silicon are mine — lived on the front lines of the semiconductor industry in the 1970s. Company names and character names have been changed to protect individual privacy. The experiences, workplace conditions, and human dynamics described are real — because they happened to me, and to people I worked alongside. The companies depicted — Sandstone Semiconductor, Western Integrated, Sunnyvale Micro, and Crestline Semiconductor — are fictional composites.

Next: Episode 2, "Sliver of Silver" - Drops October 4, 2026 

Credits

Written & Narrated by Dee McCrorey 

Sound Design & Mix: Jack Josey, AudioBag

Original Music: Stanis Halushka

Canary Conversation Guest: Ted Smith

Creative Advisors: Elizabeth Yerman, Ell Furr

Silicon Valley wasn’t built by CEOs. It was built by the people they forgot.

Seeing Through Silicon is a narrative audio, limited series that pulls back the curtain on the forgotten frontline workers—the women and men who built Silicon Valley’s semiconductor industry from the ground up.

Set in the 1970s and told firsthand by someone who was there, these are the untold stories of life and work inside the fabs: a time when chipmaking ruled the valley, the Wild West had no rules, and the people who made it all possible were left in the shadows.

Fifty years later, the technology has changed. But the questions haven’t:

Welcome to Seeing Through Silicon—where underdogs DO become heroes.

As AI reshapes our world, these stories are a warning—and a roadmap for doing things differently.

Subscribe now to hear the stories that Silicon Valley tried to forget—and the lessons we still haven’t learned.

📝 Read the story behind the series in this week's Field Notes →

🎙️ Premieres Labor Day 2026. Subscribe now to follow along