TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#261

Post by deanCommie » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:02 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #199

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it seems a large part of the "culture clash" is TSMC's insistence on three hours of meetings each day and using outdated software that was designed back in 1987(!).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…

Any company that runs down worker resources by running them out of spec is not sustainable and indicative of a lack of mature management. You wouldn't run your physical machinery outside of its operating area, so don't do it to your workforce. Automate. Fabs are the knife edge of technology, literally building the components that go into all other forms of automation, yet they are reliant on primate and medieval era…

Yes...with a lot of asterixes.

Ask anyone who worked in retail for a long time. When they replaced the point of sale and catalog search systems in the early 2000's, everyone's productivity plummeted.

They replaced old, DOS/Norton-style keyboard-only systems with a legion of shortcuts and archaic codes with Web-based touch-screen or mouse-based UIs with modern UX etc.

The new technology was obviously more modern and allowed faster training, and it's hard to imagine any world where that upgrade doesn't happen. But the old system was faster, and allowed experienced users to do more.

Now, if you're talking about a Blockbuster Video, maybe it's the right choice.

But if you're talking about extremely specialized semiconductor manufacturing, maybe you stick with the highly optimized system that works. Some things changed a lot since 1987. Others haven't.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#262

Post by webmaven » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

ascar wrote: post #105

xattt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s different about the way fabs operate in Europe?

It's not about the way fabs operate, but about work laws and culture. If you need your employees to work in 12 hour shifts to keep the fab running then hire enough employees so they can still have a <=40 hour week, i.e. only work 3 days a week. Or (which is afaik the default in Germany) run the fab with three 8 hour shifts per day.

> Or (which is afaik the default in Germany) run the fab with three 8 hour shifts per day.

That seems reasonable, as long as workers have a stable schedule rather than the 'flex time' insanity that plagues many US workplaces.

That said, I imagine there are productivity tradeoffs between fresher workers (esp. at end of shift) vs. more handoffs between shifts and higher headcount of both workers and managers (so more communication overhead). How does that work out in practice?

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#263

Post by liuhenry » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

contidrift wrote: post #228

CivBase wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Investments and bonuses are not part of any of those categories. Profits don't just get dumped into a Scrooge McDuck-esque money pool. Businesses obviously keep some money on hand, but it doesn't benefit anyone involved to have the money sit there forever. Profits are eventually used to fund expansions, acquisitions, improvements, charitable donations, rewards, etc.

It was my layman's understanding that R&D or building a new factory would count as "business expense" so thanks for clarifying that.

I don’t think the parent response is correct, though, if by profit (colloquially) we go by earnings that could be distributed to shareholders.

Sure, gross profit would not include either of those expenses. But operating profit would subtract research and development (e.g. the salaries and bonuses of the engineers working on the next process node) and depreciation on new factory (i.e. the cost of the new factory spread out over its useful lifetime - though it doesn’t include a factory under construction). Then you subtract interest and taxes to get to net profit. And TSMC has net profit margins of 39% in 2020!

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#264

Post by jason0597 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:08 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #250

wheels wrote: post #219

Earlier 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…

> 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.

What difference would it make to your quality of life if you made $60k in Europe instead of $150k in America? Sure, your net worth wouldn't increase at the same rate, but should we define our lives around our net worth?

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#265

Post by ericmcer » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #175

neonihil wrote: post #137

It’s like: People: We want stuff cheaply, immediately and in immense volume! Production: Moves to Asia People: We want jobs! Production: Opens a new factory in the USA People: We don’t want to work that much! Production: increases pay, which increases product cost People: this is too expensive. Can we buy from overseas cheaply instead? Production: Closes USA factory, moves back to Asia. People: we want jobs…

>> 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…

You should watch "American Factory" on Netflix. It is about a Chinese company opening a factory in Ohio. There may be economics behind the different work cultures, but the cultures are hugely different at this point. The Chinese managers are actually baffled that workers only want to work for the paycheck, and don't work hard for pride. They have to take courses about how American workers need to be coddled and treated as special.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#266

Post by webmaven » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:14 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #169

mrkstu wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of threads make me feel like the old secret society handshakes have been replaced by mystic level mastery of memes.

So say we all.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#267

Post by phkahler » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:19 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…

>> TSMC was never in North America...

No, but their biggest customers were making chips in NA - Apple (via Motorola or Intel) and AMD.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#268

Post by phkahler » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #207

Server6 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TSMC's largest customers are American though. Apple, Nvidia, and AMD. These companies sourced their chips internationally to TSMC for cost reasons, related mainly to labor. They're to blame. There's a compounding effect too. They could've purchased American chips and subsidized American foundries. They didn't and instead American foundries have fallen behind.

The GDP per capita of Taiwan is higher than France. It's not the place you move jobs to to optimize for labor costs. Again, there's a pretty racist subtext here that because it's in Asia, you assume that must be cheap labor, not innovation. Would you have the same argument if the fabs were in France or Spain, both of which have lower GDPs per capita than Taiwan?

>> The GDP per capita of Taiwan is higher than France. It's not the place you move jobs to to optimize for labor costs.

What chip foundries exist in France exactly? Strawman much?

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#269

Post by kixiQu » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:23 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #255

kixiQu wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

Every regulation (that isn't globally applied/enforced (so all of them)) creates a regulatory deterrent (where it is applied/enforced), independently of its benefit. This is what I said, and this is also implicit in your comment.

The advantages of doing business in the US that are balanced against "cumulative regulatory deterrent" are largely independent of the specific regulations involved, though not always (much harder to get an educated workforce when everyone is lead-poisoned in childhood). Deciding which costs should be considered baked in (you're saying "no leaded gasoline") and which are on the margin (you're saying whichever 250,000 you claim are as costly as no leaded gasoline) is not inherent to the problem based on "efficiency" alone.

"Benefit" is rarely neutral. Values and politics are its domain. ("It's your luggage that has put the plane over its weight threshold, not my luggage!")

Also,

> To get the jobs back, you have to get rid of some of the regulations.

presumes that other countries' regulatory environments are functionally fixed and not impacted by international cooperation. International effort imposed extra costs on those who would employ child labor, for instance. Other types of responses exist besides "well we have to let them give Kentuckian factory-workers spinal problems because otherwise they'll go off and give Vietnamese factory-workers spinal problems!"

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#270

Post by croutonwagon » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:28 PM UTC

deepnotderp wrote: post #17

None of this makes sense. 1. Long shifts are normal for fab operators in the U.S., eg Intel. 2. Certain engineers are always on call if an emergency happens, also true at Intel. 3. Samsung, not exactly the “live slow and enjoy life” type of culture as an employer operates fabs just fine in the U.S.

The entire article just works off a glassdoor reviews and seems to assume these individuals also know how to run ops at said place. Not much different than any place really. I even tell my guys, sure I may have opinions, but one has to understand those opionions are formed from a specific point of view and information set. And those making the decisions we are levying criticism on are likely working of entirely different points of view and information sets.

Its a confirmation bias thing common with low level guys. It happens in the military too. For example it was a major takeway for me when watching Generation Kill. Like this interview the reporter has with the point he has to make at 1:50 int he video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gguxM8eABP8

Fab plants like this usually run 3 shifts, thats 24/7 production right there. So you can still do 5x8's and run a plant 24/7. My father in law literally ran ops for a few places doing printed circuit board fab before it was all sent offshore. Most of what made him valuable was logistics and managing shifts/workers/on call and ops process to ensure it ran smoothly. Not everyone can do it and many that THINK they can would flounder when put in the hotseat. Similar when people ascend to Director or Executive roles.