Circuit design is still a lot of programming too. For one of my classes I had to design a pipelined CPU that ran an ISA with variable-length instructions, i.e. some took more clock cycles than others. It's all still programming, it's just that the "language" you have to work with is rudimentary logic, wires and gates. So far as chip design, i.e. laying out a circuit onto a board and making it small and fast, I wouldn't know where to begin.