Posted on 06/03/2023 8:26:58 PM PDT by anthropocene_x
On the Glassdoor profile of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC—the world’s biggest manufacturer of semiconductor chips—current and former U.S. employees swap messages about grueling working conditions. “People… slept in the office for a month straight,” an engineer wrote in August. “Twelve-hour days are standard, weekend shifts are common. I cannot stress… how brutal the work-life balance is here.” “TSMC is about obedience and is not ready for America,” another engineer wrote in January.
TSMC says it has on-boarded nearly 2,000 staff for its Arizona plants so far, including 600 engineers. But interviews with recruiters indicate those were hard-fought hires since TSMC’s harsh working culture, rigid standards, and months-long overseas training requirement are turning off current and prospective American employees. The chip giant says it has introduced new policies of late that suggest it’s trying to combat a reputation as an unsparing employer among the engineers and technicians it urgently needs.
“Sure, TSMC might allow a reasonable expression of opinion [on work-related matters]—but only from an engineer or deputy manager to the department manager,” Joey, who has worked as a 5-nanometer chip engineer for TSMC in Taiwan for nearly six years, told Fortune. “It’s impossible for managers to express their opinions to upper-level management. This simply cannot be done,” Joey said. He asked to be identified only by his nickname due to fear of reprisals.
Supervisors chastise workers who apply for overtime, Joey said. Most workers accrue overtime to finish their heavy workloads, but many are too afraid to ask to be paid for it.
TSMC founder Morris Chang, the man credited with establishing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, has repeatedly said that the company’s success in Taiwan would be difficult to replicate in another country. The U.S.’s “lack of manufacturing talents”—as Chang put it— make TSMC’s U.S. gambit particularly challenging.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
You don’t get to be the most advanced chipmaker in the world by sitting on your butt.
TSMC is the reason China wants to annex Taiwan.
Wage slavery by any other name would weigh as grave.
They have wanted to annex Taiwan since before any chips were made there.
But, it is an added incentive to help make the Chinese Communist Party factions unite on a common goal.
And China is the reason that TSMC wants to move to the US. I don’t know many people who would put up with their crap for long.
Sounds like the life of modern house slaves.
They (and we in the US) desperately need to get their US centers up and running before China invaded Taiwan or something worse happens. They do not have time to screw around. Our native chip production lines without them are mostly 14nm or worse. We do have some 10nm fabs but they don’t cut it in a world with 5nm, that doesn’t cut it.
Or something with a short timeline. Manhattan Project, anyone?
Semiconductor manufacturing needs to be highly organized so there isn’t a divergence which could cause an unexpected drop in yield.
TSMC has the best process in the world and they intend to keep it that way.
Apple and Qualcomm are two of their biggest customers.
Assign me overtime and fail to pay me for it and it’ll be a short day in court for you. If it constitutes a class action,you won’t be the owner of the company any longer. The Left has made labor law a serious weapon in this country.
Sounds like Silicon Valley back in thee 80’s - on roids.
Sounds like the movie “Gung Ho” with Michael Keaton where he gets the Japanese to buy the car manufacturing company.
They want an excuse to demand staffing their facilities with H1B workers from Taiwan.
Given the impending China conflict, I’m sure that they have lots of staff who would want to come to the US.
Nickname: Joey
Job: 5 nm chip engineer
~6 years in Taiwan
Shouldn't be too hard to identify. Trust a reporter and you're screwed, dude.
In any case, should the ChiComs invade Taiwan, all chip facilities need to be taken out by cruise missiles, razed to the ground. Take away the prize.
It sounds to me like chip manufacturing is an industry that won’t survive for very long in a “Tower of Babel” society like the U.S. You can’t run a business like this without a labor pool of focused, homogenized people — which we haven’t had in several generations.
Wait until they discover too late they have to deal with a Cadre of “protected class” complainers who have the full force of Fed-Gov supporting their grievances.
Sleeping in the office for a month IS excessive. But if everyone was THAT committed to the project, I could do it.
“Twelve-hour days are standard, weekend shifts are common.”
Sounds a lot like the Printing/Publishing industry back when I was in it. 12/5, 12/6, 12/7 were all pretty common. Money was good though. Ain’t that why we work?
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