TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#271

Post by junipertea » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:42 PM UTC

zenron wrote: post #189

scarab92 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when the US tries to compete with Asia on manufacturing in a free market. These are people who want that job to exist, but are unwilling to work for the pay and conditions necessary for that job to exist.

> This is what happens when the US tries to compete with Asia on manufacturing in a free market. Does you definition of free market come from the "you'll work as much as I need you to if you want to eat" camp or the "if you want me to work bad enough, you'll pay me what I ask and negotiate the hours I am willing to work for you" camp?

Free market is the ability to choose from either camp, with majority picking the former.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#272

Post by majormajor » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 7:47 PM UTC

jason0597 wrote: post #264

majormajor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wort…

It would primary affect both the specific city/location and quality of housing my family was in as well as our long-term economic security and flexibility. The latter is the most important part, but the former is important to me as well.

Having money in the bank is basically the same as having choices.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#273

Post by majormajor » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:01 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #252

majormajor wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here we're looking at an industry where the US used to be dominant. So it's not a question of "how did another country beat the US to this sort of industry despite having less money floating around than the US?" It's specifically "how did this industry leave the US and why is it non-trivial to rebuild some of it?"

I'm talking about the how of them becoming the best in the world, not arguing that they aren't the best now. As money for semiconductor manufacturing moved to overseas companies, initially driven by costs, those companies ended up with the money to invest in getting good at it.

But that money was directed there as a result of specific actions by people in the US. So yes, all the conversation about immediate-cost-focused decisions, and the difference in the labor costs, are relevant.

It's not "American exceptionalism" to be aware of this history, it's "American exceptionalism" that caused this and that drives the laissez faire attitude that there wouldn't be domestic impact like loss of expertise and reliance on overseas producer from a focus on immediate cost over all else. The idea that if we wanted to, we could simply build the industry back up. Because we're America! Same as all the rest of "it can't happen here" BS that people use to excuse ignoring various domestic issues.

--

To frame the labor cost issue a different way, let's look at what the reverse process, bringing that expertise back to the US, would look like: let's say tomorrow the US wanted to build up a domestic best-in-the-world alternative company. They'd have to hire a bunch of engineers! Even best-case, it would take those engineers quite a while to reproduce all the earned knowledge and expertise of TSMC's engineers. All the while you're gonna have to pay those engineers more than TSMC's engineers are making, because it's a more expensive labor market. And then even if they do produce equally high levels of output after a while, all those higher costs are going to put them at a competitive disadvantage. So if you want to be good at it domestically, and you live in a country with more competition for labor, you really have to commit to spending extra to do it. (Getting TSMC to build some plants domestically is a way of short-cutting the knowledge acquisition step, but it's just a small step towards really rebuilding the industry.)

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#274

Post by avs733 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #213

avs733 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or... "we want reasonable jobs that allow us to have a life and do not functionally make us the property of a corporate entity that does not share sufficient amounts of the gains of our labor with us and labels requests to be treated with respect as unintelligible" States/those with power claiming things are 'unintelligible' when in fact they just don't like them or want to treat them as valid is a classic form of co…

Workers have to compete with everyone else in the world. If a company employs American workers who demand high wages to do the same work that international workers do for less pay that company will fail. The economy is a competition, companies can't just give away money.

> The economy is a competition, companies can't just give away money.

And this article makes that point very salient, as does antiunion drives at many companies. Say it costs me X to run a PR campaign about lazy workers or hire an antiunion consulting firm. It might cost me Y to raise pay, hire more workers, and/or improve working conditions. If X is less than Y and achieves the same effect - I do X, if Y is less, I do Y.

Employees are allowed to make employers compete as well. This is HN, like the home of the switch companies regularly in silicon valley & silicon valley was created because no non-competes.

In a flush labor market, employees compete for jobs from companies. In a tight labor market companies might have to compete (and treating workers better/paying more is a form of competing). If you don't want to compete by paying more, you can compete by accepting lower quality - just like if I go buy a product from a company or its competitors.

The strident defenses of the poor companies having to compete for labor being unfair is just such a strange narrative to me but one that has weaseled its way into a lot of the American subconscious.

If TSMC did know enough about American semiconductor employee work culture before investing $12 Billion in a new factory that they are surprised by this that's on them. If we accept your claim about American workers demanding higher wages than international workers for the same effort, then TSMC certainly knew that going in. TMSC isn't some innocent and naïve child...but they did build near Intel's castle hoping (it seems) to extract intellectual capital. A lot of those ex Intel-ers leave because of burnout and may have a shorter tolerance for BS than TSMC. TSMC is one of the top 10 employers in Taiwan, maybe that was something they didn't consider the influence of that in their work culture enough?

My suspicion is that this is an effectively planted article as part of a drive for better incentives by TSMC. This stinks of Foxconn and Wisconsin.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#275

Post by specialist » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:05 PM UTC

Objections over long hours? Unlikely. Assuming TSMC (and their contractors) pays overtime...

I want quotes from actual people doing the work.

My bestie was a welder working on fabs in the 80s and 90s. In Phoenix. Lax regulation, lax oversight. He loved the work, loved the pay.

And he locked horns with mgmt. Every single day. Mostly over safety issues. Cutting corners, skipping steps, providing the necessary training.

And all of his employers were USA corporations. Even back then, operational fabs make millions of dollars per day. Clock is ticking! Every day, hour, minute the fab isn't running is pure waste. The pressure to "get 'er done!" is immense.

They couldn't fire my welder buddy, much as they wanted to, because specialists like him were so scarce.

This is not a "cultural" mismatch. Please.

This is straight up mgmt vs labor. As old as history.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#276

Post by wheels » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #268

wheels wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STMicroelectronics

46,000 employees.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#277

Post by panda88888 » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

kristjansson wrote: post #215

davidjytang wrote: post #173

Earlier 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?

100% base pay + 116% year end bonus + ??% performance bonus. So total of 226% of base pay plus whatever performance bonus on top.

Edit: it’s customary in Taiwan to measure the tear end bonus in 1 month pay equivalents (8.3% of base pay).

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#278

Post by bllguo » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:32 PM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #142

From the article: “TSMC will have to change to an eight-hour work day five days a week.” They could have paid me a few thousand bucks as a consultant to tell them that's standard operating procedure around the US ... they could use hourly employees and offer overtime but they can't expect it. Do multiple shifts -- day and night shifts. How did nobody do due dilligence before setting up fabs in the US?

you talk like TSMC and Taiwan wanted to set up US fabs in the first place

It's almost amusing, force them to come open a plant and then castigate them for not accommodating US culture

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#279

Post by namelessoracle » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:35 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…

Honestly reading the article Taiwan might have MORE labor protection laws.

Re: TSMC’s Arizona Culture Clash

#280

Post by wheels » Wed, Jan 05, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #273

wheels wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here we're looking at an industry where the US used to be dominant. So it's not a question of "how did another country beat the US to this sort of industry despite having less money floating around than the US?" It's specifically "how did this industry leave the US and why is it non-trivial to rebuild some of it?" I'm talking about the how of them becoming the best in the world, not arguing that they aren't the best…

Except that your history is wrong in this case. It's more about politics and Intel's failure, and Taiwan and TSMC's capitalization on that than it is about salaries.

A lot of manufacturing did move to Taiwan in the 70s and 80s because labor costs were lower there then, and because the US was investing a lot in Taiwan because of its strategic role vis-a-vis mainland China. But that wasn't especially high tech, and was decades before TSMC became relevant on the global market for anything but very low-end chips.

The way that TSMC ended up on top was by beating Intel at its own game. It did that at a time where Taiwan was already rich, and the US wasn't actively subsidizing the semi-conductor industry, whereas Taiwan's government was. It seems naive to assume that Intel wouldn't have had a decade of missed deadlines if it'd just thrown more money at the problem. In that this article started off about corporate culture, it's not hard to argue that much of what killed US chip fabrication dominance was Intel's corporate culture (as opposed to cheap Asian labor).

Basically there was a lot of consolidation in fabrication in the US, then with all of the eggs in a couple of baskets, the US-based fabs dropped the ball, and TSMC and Samsung smelled blood and stepped up their game.