TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#241

Post by sudosysgen » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:40 PM UTC

dfadsadsf wrote: post #129

quintushoratius wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people you know worked long hours, but were they actually more productive? Studies on working have consistently shown diminishing returns on longer and longer hours, generally past 30-40, depending on job type, i.e. physical jobs like assembly line work drop of slowly (mistakes rise but only gradually) vs intellectual jobs where mistakes either rise rapidly or people adjust by taking more slack time throughout th…

In all studies that I saw (and there is general lack of quality studies in that area - hard to set up realistic A/B experiment and observational data get you only so far) while average productivity dropped after 40h there were outliers (~10%) with no drop in productivity or increase in error rate with 60h/week. There is good chance that in elite job in Asia (and TSMC is definitely elite) almost everyone is in that ca…

How long were those studies going on for? I can do 12-14 hour days for a week, I even once programmed quite challenging code for 36 hours without making anymore mistakes towards the end, but after I do this I'll be very tired for a few days once the rush is over.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#242

Post by eob » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

sverhagen wrote: post #41

So, they spoke with one anonymous staff member, and then sourced, wait for it... Glassdoor. I'm not saying these claims are untrue or that they even seem untrue, but it's still squeezing an article out of... not a whole lot. Glassdoor doesn't have a reputation (in my circles) for "balanced opinions".

I just lived in Taiwan for about a year, and it's pretty common feeling there that TSMC is struggling "to get Americans to work hard" in Arizona. I had several folks mention it to me when TSMC came up as a topic. They're worried they'll have to start sending full teams of Taiwanese engineers over to staff the factory (in addition to those required for training & supervision).

That doesn't mean it's necessarily true -- folks in any country, in aggregate, tend to talk about themselves as harder working than their neighbors. But I think this general idea/complaint is way more prevalent than a few Glassdoor comments, even if that's where they sourced the article.

I don't know anything about semiconductors or manufacturing in general, but I do know a friend at TSMC had to buy a second apartment to sleep in because he works such long hours and didn't want the additional commute back to Taipei at night. It's also worth mentioning that -- like the SF and NYC set who maintain "work" apartments -- this guy is compensated very, very well.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#243

Post by kixiQu » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:42 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #227

wheels wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] we moved because it cost less with no labor or environmental protections and we could work the shit out of people. TSMC was never in North America, it was always a Taiwanese company. It's literally an Asian company moving production to the US. Taiwan isn't some rando poor Asian country; it's a rich democracy. The work culture is no doubt different (as it is, say, in Japan or South Korea), but to pretend that…

> TSMC was never in North America, it was always a Taiwanese company. This isn't about a particular company, it's an industry-wide trend. Semiconductor manufacturing was predominantly in the US, then it wasn't. > The work culture is no doubt different (as it is, say, in Japan or South Korea), but to pretend that it has no labor or environmental laws is somewhere between racist and naive. This is actually the root of…

It is not necessary for the labor and environmental laws to be such that they "can't survive a cost benefit analysis" for them to create a force pushing manufacturing towards places without those laws. Any regulation will have this effect, and the details you speak of determine the degree.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#244

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #240

s1artibartfast wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more common solution in these industries is 3 x 12 hour days per week, not 70 hour weeks. Does it state which model TSMC is using

According to the article in Taiwan 5x12 and even 6x12 or worse is considered expected.

yeah, that is definitely rough for American standards and probably not sustainable. After going back to the article, the confusing part is that the hours are so inconsistent. I wonder if they are running 3x 8 hour shifts and people need to stay longer to cover vacancies or close out problems that occurred on their shift.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#245

Post by PKop » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #44

PKop wrote: post #5

12 hour days. Sounds pretty dystopian. Guess there's a reason Taiwan has the lowest birthrate in the world. Working themselves into oblivion.

Nor even terribly unusual--even in US manufacturing. Longer than 8 hour shifts is simply a matter of scheduling--you then wind up doing things like 4 days on/3 days off. However, when you pass 40 hours, you owe people overtime in the US. I imagine that TSMC isn't particular stringent about documenting that in Taiwan.

It might be unusual if these Taiwanese 12-hour shifts don't actually come with 3 days off, and are just in addition to "regular" hours, 5-day work week.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#246

Post by gregmac » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:51 PM UTC

_RPL5_ wrote: post #210

breezeTrowel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going by the article, it seems a large part of the "culture clash" is TSMC's insistence on three hours of meetings each day and using outdated software that was designed back in 1987(!). While workers in Taiwan used to work 12 hour days, time worked is not a good indicator of productivity and I'm willing to bet that TSMC's massive profitability meant there wasn't much incentive to make the work process more efficient…

My impression was that the extra hours are due to the factories being on a 24/7 uninterrupted production cycle. Having people work 12 hour shifts instead of 8 reduces the headcount required by 33%.

I don't think shift duration changes the headcount, it really depends on the total hours per week each person is working.

There's 168 hours in a week. If people work for 40 hours a week, to cover the 168 hours you need to employ 4.2 people for every employee you want on the floor at any given time. That means everyone works 5 8-hour shifts, or 3.3 12-hour shifts per week.

If you reduce headcount by 33%, that works out to 2.8 people per employee on the floor, which means everyone works 60 hours per week -- 7.5 8-hour shifts, or 5 12-hour shifts. That's a lot.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#247

Post by FooBarBizBazz » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #108

Edman274 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A global pandemic that has resulted in 4.5 million people quitting their jobs in the United States in the last month has resulted in people leaving jobs with long shifts. I bet that this has also affected people in TSMC fabrication plants. 2. It is possible that being on call at Intel requires fewer hours of attention than being on call at TSMC. It is also possible that Intel is offering higher starting salaries t…

Right. I’m hearing US citizens have become “practically ungovernable.” I’ve definitely experienced people acting with more hostility and clear inner turmoil just out running errands than ever before now. And this is enough to shock me after living a decade in one of the most hostile, large metropolitans in the US.

> ungovernable

Interesting word choice.

Supposedly, the word "ungovernable" was used by anticolonialist/anti-imperialist factions in the '70s to describe a deliberate strategy of breaking down the "peace, order, and good government" that their imperialist counterparts offered as justification for their existence. Closely related is "no justice, no peace". However, this attribution of "ungovernable" to left-actors came to me via a right-source, so I'm not completely sure about it. If true, however, then I think you're implicitly reaching back to that era, to conjure images of South Africa and Uganda. I think the recent coinage of "Brazilianization" has a similar goal. Anyway, I would be very interested if anyone could help trace this sense of "ungovernable" to its source.

Some possible leads:

[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-p... and its sources, particularly

[2] King, Anthony, ‘Overload: Problems of Governing in the 1970s’, Political Studies, XXIII (1975), 284–96. ;

and

[3] https://ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/Soc924-2011/Offe%20--%20Ungover...

and its sources, particularly

[4] Fluno, Robert Y. (1971), “The Floundering Leviathan: Pluralism in an Age of Ungover- nability.” In: Political Research Quarterly, 24/3: 560-566.

These are all "establishment" sources though; there are no real Left sources so far -- though [3] does say,

> Ungovernability is a peculiar concept. It has been used both by academic political sociologists and by journalists and politicians; it has played a role in New Left as well as neo-conservative discourses.

so I think it should be possible to see where it went (and came from) on the Left.

EDIT: I now also find these:

[5] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/become-ungovernable

[6] https://dailypost.ng/2021/01/22/us-were-ungovernable-protest...

Who knows what the latter source is though.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#248

Post by 6510 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

asiachick wrote: post #221

Tostino wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't read that comment in relation to TSMC, but as a rebuttal to the GP's assertion that it was "people" who drove US production over seas over the past 40 years.

it was people who drove US production over seas. Consumers were always free to choose locally made products. They didn't, they chose cheap.

I can only think of lame examples I'm sorry but there is this silly trend where careful expert design is replaced with letting the end user decide. To me this is just a sign of incompetence. The expert needs to carefully craft into the product what the user wants but only after careful examination. The lame examples would be to let the driver design the car, the passenger the aircraft or the patient the surgery room etc

The story as told above on how production moved to cheap labor countries, jobs were lost as well as purchase power has a weird continuation where the decline of purchase power scales down production and makes life harder for the cheap laborer therefore more fragile. We shift from [the absurd] putting the consumer in charge of the economic decisions to having the "choices" made by (or more like making the results depend on-) people all the way at the bottom of the food chain. We are pretty much left collectively hoping that they can keep up with our unreasonably demanding demands.

I'm not even complaining that we are squeezing people to hard. I have issues with a system that can just abruptly stop - entirely! Sure, I want cheaper products but I have no idea what kind of risks we are taking. I should not be the one to decide. I would rather have a large group of highly trained professionals calculate the risks and present them in a way we might understand. Make me a map of the [proverbial] meteor strikes and the global economic consequences. What parts of the show can go on if ingredient X is taken out of the soup?

(edit: Ofc there is more than cheap labor pushing localized specializations which increase efficiency and decrease resilience)

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#249

Post by majormajor » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 6:02 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #198

phkahler wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It’s like: That's cute, but not what actually happened. It started with: Company: We want more profit Production: Moved to Asia Other Companies: We can't compete any more Other Production: Moved to Asia Companies: Oh crap, we need production back in the US (for various reasons) Production: Oh shit that's right, we moved because it cost less with no labor or environmental protections and we could work the shit out…

> [...] we moved because it cost less with no labor or environmental protections and we could work the shit out of people. TSMC was never in North America, it was always a Taiwanese company. It's literally an Asian company moving production to the US. Taiwan isn't some rando poor Asian country; it's a rich democracy. The work culture is no doubt different (as it is, say, in Japan or South Korea), but to pretend that…

Painting it as a single company moving back and forth is an oversimplification but in a open market it's pretty close to "company located in US loses business to company located in less expensive country." Taiwan is hardly cheap but local labor-dependent stuff in Taipei seemed cheaper than the US when I visited - unlike Europe, say. Similarly, fewer workers seem to leave the US for better-paying jobs in Taiwan then vice versa. Googling salary estimates for EE jobs in Taiwan gives me ranges of up to 2.5M NT annual (90K USD) or 80K NT per month ($2900 USD).

TSMC was also founded in 1987, Taiwan has changed a lot over the decades and at a certain point inertia works for a lot even as costs may even out compared to in the past. What were those salaries in 2000?

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#250

Post by majormajor » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 6:06 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #219

Scalestein wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling this racist seems applicable but quite a stretch to me. From the article is seems workers in Taiwan work 12 hour days as normal. Couple that with the fact that manufacturing used by primarily US being done outside US borders is generally some for cost saving reasons and it seems to make sense to assume that Taiwan IS doing this cheaper somehow. If it were a matter of innovation wouldn't the same innovation ho…

The article is about engineers, not factory workers. Are you really telling me there's no culture of overworking for engineers in Silicon Valley? It's contrasting Arizona with Taiwan; I don't think this same article would be written about Silicon Valley vs. Taiwan. There's also a difference between what you're saying and what the great-grandparent said: being cheaper can be because they have better processes or are m…

Salary info I'm finding on google suggest that electrical engineers still get paid less in Taiwan than in the US. I'd also be very curious what those numbers looked like over the decades when offshoring really ramped up.

Not "10x less" or anything incredibly dramatic, but for a business, money saved is money saved.

It's silly to have a whole thread of back and forth responses on "is it racist to say cost of labor is cheaper somewhere else" without looking at the numbers to see if it actually is. GDP per capita is very much not the same as salary.

Personally I'm waiting for engineering salaries in the non-US to catch up to the US because it'll make it easier for me to leave the US if I choose to do so but it doesn't look like it's happened yet.