This reminds me of the documentary titled "The American Factory"[1]. The teams at TSMC would do well to learn from their experience.
TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
251–260 of 303 posts
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Here's my point though:
Engineers in virtually every country in the world make less money than in the US. But the reason people have jobs in the rest of the world isn't because everyone wants to make things in the US, but it's just too expensive, so they'll settle for somewhere else. That's pretty heavy-handed American exceptionalism.
TSCM has the best fabs in the world. This article literally mentions them having to build the factory in the US and send people over to teach the Americans how to run it. They're just better at it. To keep insisting that that's not the case, and that this is really all about their lower salaries is, in fact, racist.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
Normal fab work is a 12 hour shift-- plus having to suit up and unsuit outside those shifts-- 3.5 times per week in the US. Yes, this means some overtime.
Regardless of whether it's actually normal or not, I find it funny that the engineer thinks something happening "2 to 3 times a week" doesn't make it normal.
Normal and routine aren't quite the same thing.
My friends and I may lick doorknobs 3 times per week, but others would be hard pressed to describe it as "normal". Though perhaps within the context of our custom, and from our point of view, it is.
P.S. I don't actually lick doorknobs.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I knew several Chinese colleagues and friends like these. They are all good people wanting to make a good life by working hard, nothing to blame them. But it was kind of an unwritten rule that if you had two Chinese working in your team, you had no chance beating them. I've had the opposite experience. Most of the ones I knew were work evasive, and spent substantial time craming for leet code. I think there might…
“Knew” as in caught a glimpse of at a distance?
No, as in they worked with me during graduate studies or were on my team and it was extremely frustrating. In particular "playing dumb" to avoid work was particularly offensive as that strategy created more future work but also involved people lying to my face.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> Any regulation will have this effect, and the details you speak of determine the degree.
There's more to it than that.
The ban on leaded gasoline makes gasoline somewhat more expensive. If you multiply that by all the unleaded gasoline everybody has bought since the 1970s, that's a lot of money! But lead is really, really, really bad. That ban is cost effective even if it costs billions of dollars. Which it does, but the alternative is much worse.
There are other regulations that cost just as much and provide nowhere near the same benefit. The deterrent effect on doing business in the US of both regulations is the same, but the benefit we receive isn't.
And the deterrent is cumulative. There are advantages to doing business in the US. An educated workforce and a stable government etc. Companies move out when the cumulative regulatory deterrent exceeds the advantages.
Which means you can have a ban on leaded gasoline without anyone leaving, because the cost of that doesn't exceed the other advantages of the US. Which means that anyone trying to repeal the ban on leaded gasoline is doing it wrong.
But if you have a ban on leaded gasoline and 250,000 other regulations that each cost just as much but are barely breakeven if that on the benefit side, you exceed the threshold and lose the jobs. To get the jobs back, you have to get rid of some of the regulations.
We need to get rid of the ones with a poor cost benefit ratio, not the ones with a great cost benefit ratio. Which is, to be honest, most of them -- but it's still really important that it be the right ones.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They may also be running into the issue that physicians and residents do: hand-off errors. I have seen arguments that it's better to have an exhausted physician who has been monitoring you for 12+ hours than a fresh one who just started their shift. There's a lot of state of the current situation that can't be easily transmitted from one shift to the next.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As an European these hours would be completely unacceptable to me unless it's 3 days on 4 days off, which it doesn't seem to be. Americans aren’t interested in 13 hour shifts, either, unless the pay is extraordinarily high. I agree: Something is missing from this article. If they’re running 3-on, 4-off schedules with these hours, that’s one thing. But if they’re asking 13-hour days and 5-day weeks then it’s an open…
from my experience in semiconductor fabs, its probably worth differentiating the different schedules a little bit. I'm going to start from generally the lowest to the highest paid while noting this doesn't necessarily reflect the lowest to highest value. The factory: runs 24x7x365 - it has to, most processes have enough controlled time processes that it is a effectively week (or weeks) long process to shut down certa…
One thing worth considering is that it is well known that long shifts increase the odds of worker error. This is why we have strict laws against pilots or truck drivers working past their effective hours.
An accident at a chip factory isn't going to be front page news the way an airplane crash is, but it could very easy cost millions in repairs and lost productivity. When I see talk about 12 hour shifts I always wonder if the management isn't costing themselves more in the long run, even if they aren't allowed to admit it for macho culture reasons.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many moons ago I used to work inside a samsung fab. At no point was I ever feeling a sense of outrage regarding having a literal 80s-style pager strapped to my body 24/7/365. A big part of why this didnt bother me was the scale/impact of what I was doing - I was responsible for the primary business interface used across the entire factory floor. Once you see a modern fab with your own eyes, it will change you in a de…
It does sound like an outlier in terms of demand, but to back up your point, there are many industries in which there is critical infrastructure and activities going on potentially 24x7 most of not all weeks. I support financial applications that could be considered critical infrastructure for the country. To the point where the government has set up special regulatory procedures to ensure it’s managed properly. We m…
I'd say 12 hour shifts are OK as long as the work time per week does not exceed 40 hours too much. That is, 12 hours 3 days a week, maybe 4 days on some weeks, could be very reasonable.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last year in Taiwan, their fresh-out-of-college employees were paid 13-month salary worth of year end bonus. Some may consider it worthwhile in their stage of life. Correction: 14-month worth plus additional performance bonus.
Your phrasing is a little unclear. A 16% bonus or 116% bonus?
Sorry. It is 12 month salary + 14 month salary as year end bonus + performance-based bonus.
Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Once you see a modern fab with your own eyes, it will change you in a deep way. Nothing you see in media can prepare you for the real thing. While working for Samsung Austin Semiconductor in 2013, I needed to travel to Korea for a month as part of our work on a global supply chain software project. IIRC, we were working at the semiconductor complex at Giehung. The fabs there are unbelievably enormous, much bigger t…
> I believe you can probably contact the public relations department at Samsung Austin Semiconductor and schedule a tour for your group. IIRC they do regular tours for schools and other STEM groups. Last I badged out, there was an entire museum room dedicated to the history/tech/etc.
Yep, I went to their location in High School for a field trip!