5 ms·

From a US perspective, it's a strange mix of these two things( from consumer electronics): - We don't open more chip factories here, because labor/regulation/l

From a US perspective, it's a strange mix of these two things( from consumer electronics): - We don't open more chip factories here, because labor/regulation/land/etc is too expensive - We don't have enough logistics workers (docks, truks, etc) because it doesn't pay enough. Right? Am I seeing this wrong? Because what I keep reading is that we have ships just waiting in California to be unloaded but not enough dock workers to unload them and truck drivers to move the goods out?

carom 5y ago
Multiple companies are building chip fabs in the south west right now.
- supergeek133 5y ago
  Really? Had no idea.
  - Melting_Harps 5y ago
    With delays, but.. yes, Samsung has chosen Austin as it's location for a 3nm chip plant, and 2nm chips coming after 2025 [0]. The truth is that Bitcoin was actually one of the few Industries that was spurring on chip manufacturing in the US, Butterfly labs was one of the few that could challenge Bitman in the early day but had to give it up due to increasing regulatory red-tape and an ever greater monopoly in Schenzen. As both a former SCM and a Bitcoiner I think that the US had to go through the shock doctrine before it realized it was playing Russian Roulette with it's Supply Chain, and it's Value Chain for decades as every CEO and exec with an MBA from an Ivy League decided to gut the manufacturing Industry. This allowed for Amazon's rise in dominance, and has pretty much disrupted the traditional fulfillment, and distribution system and made it entirely it's own: every business I've interviewed for since COVID now follows freight, air routes that were optimized by Amazon. It's personally appalling that a company that makes nothing has been able to supplant SC and Logistics to this degree, but it's firther proof that Big Tech [Software] has in fact eaten the World. As for the low pay, I think what also needs to be noted is how damaging it is to do warehouse work, working injured is the norm not the exception, couple that with many weeks without breaks and swing shifts (now also the norm, not the exception due to all of these delays) no amount of money is enough to get me back. I had an interview in Supply Chain Management that was teasing high 5 figures, to low 6 figures but was very upfront that I'd have to commit to 70+ hour work weeks, swing shifts, and 40-50 days without a day off. You can rise fast if you're competent, and even faster if you have a background in tech but the truth is I'm over that phase in my Life and SCM as a job is never ending so I decided to just focus on the Software side of things and focus on using ML and AI in Logistics and Supply Chain and went back to school for a degree in CompSci after a career in fintech and a short-stint at IBM where I was trying to resolve this issue within the Ag/Food Industry;s logistics and Supply Chain without much success. It's sad we had so much interest from Megacorps and IBm could have been a leader in this space, instead it has been broken up and remains a shell of it's former self that played a critical role in the Apollo Missions. 0: https://www.gizchina.com/2021/10/07/samsung-delayed-the-implementation-of-the-3nm-process-technology/ https://www.gizchina.com/2021/10/07/samsung-delayed-the-impl...
    - Tylast 5y ago
      Butterfly Labs was basically using the customer paid rigs to mine Bitcoin for themselves before they shipped customers obsolete devices. They only sent me mine after I called my CC company, disputed the charges & reported the non-delivery as fraud...magically, my rig showed up a week later. https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6833047/bitcoin-conspiracy-theorists-vindicated-as-ftc-shuts-down-butterfly-labs https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6833047/bitcoin-conspirac...
      - Melting_Harps 5y ago
        > Butterfly Labs was basically using the customer paid rigs to mine Bitcoin for themselves before they shipped customers obsolete devices. They only sent me mine after I called my CC company, disputed the charges & reported the non-delivery as fraud...magically, my rig showed up a week later. And you don't think Bitmain did the same thing? Again, I'm not advocating the business models of either corp, and to be honest I think open-hardware is where we should be focusing on our collective attention during this supply chain disruption in order to make some actual progress. But it's still worth noting that ASIC development was concentrated in Shenzhen with no competitors to speak of prior to Butterfly labs. Still, this is all to say we have don ea poor job despite all the red flags until it all came crashing down and now Mega corps are likely to cash in on this and the infrastructure bill to 're-shore' the same manufacturing they and their predecessors fought like hell to offshore in the 80-90s.
  - carom 5y ago
    Intel, TSMC, and Samsung. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-spending-20-billion-to-build-two-new-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-spending-20-billion... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/tech/tsmc-arizona-chip-factory-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/tech/tsmc-arizona-chip-factor... 3. https://austonia.com/samsung-chooses-taylor https://austonia.com/samsung-chooses-taylor 4. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/intel-investing-3-5b-in-new-mexico-fab-upgrade-boosting-us-chipmaking/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/intel-investing-3-5b-in-new...
- pirate787 5y ago
  To be fair this is a new development and in response to geopolitical instability in Asia more than US cost advantage.
miguelazo 5y ago
That sounds right to me. The press has tried to push all sorts of narratives, but buried in the previous Bloomberg article on the ports we learn that 30% of truck appointments go unfilled. The WSJ article yesterday quoted Long Beach port guy saying only 60% of their truck appointments are being utilized.
- spicybright 5y ago
  It's very unintuitive how it'd be cheaper to leave that many trucks sitting there instead of paying workers a bit more. Surely whatever a driver transports is worth much more than the paycheck they get?
  - xxpor 5y ago
    It seems like most of corporate America operates under the if you give an inch they'll take a mile theory.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    A) is there a shortage of trucks or drivers? B) are there bottlenecks at the ports that prevent more trucks? C) can rail be used to move boxes? D) who is making money by things NOT moving?
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      - Yes, many older truckers retired instead of dealing with COVID. This applies to many other sectors, most notably in my area school bus drivers. Other countries (notably, UK and EU fuel truck drivers) are also facing shortages of truck drivers. Nursing, retail, hospitslity have all been in the news recently for the same issue. Recent reports show 12 million open positions and only 8 million people seeking employment (estimsted, of course) - physical layout only allows for so much throughput at a time. The bigger the jam, the longer it'll take to clear - yes and no. Rail doesn't (directly) go to most places, and those that it could, often don't have distribution logistics in place from the customers since they already have their chain configured for trucks - it is a net loss all around for everyone. Any higher prices on goods are offsetting losses from reduction in volume. Theres no evil fairy tale villain to blame.
noahtallen 5y ago
I think you’re partly wrong on chip factories. While most new plants have been opened in Asia in the past few years, there are major plants under construction in the US by both Intel and TSMC [0]. Additionally, the US still has a large number of fabrication plants [1]. And US-based semiconductor companies handled around 48% of the global market share in 2019 [2]. So I think it’s not true to say that US had completely lost its edge with semiconductors, nor that the US moved all its manufacturing capacity to Asia. The US has been and is still competing to be one of the largest players in the semiconductor industry, even if it might not be first place anymore. And I think it’s fair to question whether the US needs to be in absolute first place. Asian countries have significantly more population and therefore need for semiconductors compared to the US, so it makes sense that eventually, manufacturing capacity would be more relative to local population levels. - 0: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/semiconductor-fabs-dotting-arizona-silicon-desert/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/semiconductor-fabs-dot..., https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Intel-breaks-ground-on-20bn-Arizona-chip-plants-in-battle-with-TSMC https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Intel-b... - 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... - 2: https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-SIA-State-of-the-Industry-Report-FINAL-1.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20...
- supergeek133 5y ago
  Thanks for the correction on the chip factories, and I agree with your last point about "needing to be in first place" but this pandemic has surely made it more evident how quickly we can be disrupted by either an Act of God or a country just waking up one day and deciding they no longer want to sell us things.
- gavin_gee 5y ago
  The intel investment is too little too late to have any impact on the current shortage.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  It takes years to open a new chip factory. And the kinds of chip factories that get opened here in the US are unlikely to be the kind required to solve the problem that the car manufacturers are having, because they’re looking at old technology commodity chips that no one here in the US would want to make. That is unless you’re wiling to pay 10-100x more for them, through contracts that require you exclusively make and supply them here in the US, much like the US military does for chips that they really care about. But then it would take years for those kinds of contracts to make their way through all the various intermediaries, and third, fourth, and fifth parties, etc…. There’s lots of problems inside this “Perfect Global Multi-Year Hurricane” of supply chains.
vondur 5y ago
Dock workers here in Long Beach are well paid. (100K+/year is not uncommon)
- api 5y ago
  Look at real estate prices in the Los Angeles metro area. That's not enough.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    It's well more than the median income in the area. People are taking jobs that pay less. So it clearly has more to do with other factors like the work conditions or training requirements or such. Companies not willing to pay for training is a common story...
- supergeek133 5y ago
  I'm sure there are people that might lobby that 80-100k/year in Long Beach qualifies as minimum wage with housing prices! Ha.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    The cash on the side for smuggling helps
- francisofascii 5y ago
  I don't think that is the norm. If you search for dock worker jobs in Long Beach, you see $30-50K advertised.
Zigurd 5y ago
Chip making is technologically difficult, even if you can buy all the same machines TSMC uses. It is evident from previous failures that a nation can't just say "we need on-shore chip capacity" and pay to get it. in the US, Intel fell behind TSMC and GF can't catch up. The situation is more dire most other places.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Notably, no Chinese company has been able to match the top tier capabilities of TSMC and Samsung so far. Even though Beijing is certainly interested in achieving technology parity at least. Ergo, it must really be difficult.
WanderPanda 5y ago
I don‘t think salary of the workers is the problem here. It is more about regulatory/union obstacles that prevent ports from competing and being automized
- supergeek133 5y ago
  You mean robots, or other ports being used? There were a lot of stories this morning about "Florida being open for business" but of course that comes with a ship that is currently in CA going to FL.
pmorici 5y ago
Container shipments are up like 20% from pre covid levels. It isn’t that there is a shortage so much as people haven’t adapted to the increased demand for goods.
nonameiguess 5y ago
Dockworkers being poorly paid is definitely not true. It's been a while since I lived in Long Beach, but these were among the most desirable jobs you can get. Any time the union announced it was hiring, they needed to do a lottery to even get the opportunity to apply. Whatever the reason it is that not enough people have this job, it isn't that they don't want it or that it doesn't pay enough. Trucking pays pretty well, too, but comes with a different set of challenges. You have to be willing to live on the road, sleeping at truck stops or in your own cabin, never seeing your family if you even have one, sitting for 8-12 hours a day and destroying your spine orthopedically. It takes a special kind of person to want that job no matter how well it pays.

carom 5y ago

Multiple companies are building chip fabs in the south west right now.

supergeek133 5y ago
Really? Had no idea.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  With delays, but.. yes, Samsung has chosen Austin as it's location for a 3nm chip plant, and 2nm chips coming after 2025 [0]. The truth is that Bitcoin was actually one of the few Industries that was spurring on chip manufacturing in the US, Butterfly labs was one of the few that could challenge Bitman in the early day but had to give it up due to increasing regulatory red-tape and an ever greater monopoly in Schenzen. As both a former SCM and a Bitcoiner I think that the US had to go through the shock doctrine before it realized it was playing Russian Roulette with it's Supply Chain, and it's Value Chain for decades as every CEO and exec with an MBA from an Ivy League decided to gut the manufacturing Industry. This allowed for Amazon's rise in dominance, and has pretty much disrupted the traditional fulfillment, and distribution system and made it entirely it's own: every business I've interviewed for since COVID now follows freight, air routes that were optimized by Amazon. It's personally appalling that a company that makes nothing has been able to supplant SC and Logistics to this degree, but it's firther proof that Big Tech [Software] has in fact eaten the World. As for the low pay, I think what also needs to be noted is how damaging it is to do warehouse work, working injured is the norm not the exception, couple that with many weeks without breaks and swing shifts (now also the norm, not the exception due to all of these delays) no amount of money is enough to get me back. I had an interview in Supply Chain Management that was teasing high 5 figures, to low 6 figures but was very upfront that I'd have to commit to 70+ hour work weeks, swing shifts, and 40-50 days without a day off. You can rise fast if you're competent, and even faster if you have a background in tech but the truth is I'm over that phase in my Life and SCM as a job is never ending so I decided to just focus on the Software side of things and focus on using ML and AI in Logistics and Supply Chain and went back to school for a degree in CompSci after a career in fintech and a short-stint at IBM where I was trying to resolve this issue within the Ag/Food Industry;s logistics and Supply Chain without much success. It's sad we had so much interest from Megacorps and IBm could have been a leader in this space, instead it has been broken up and remains a shell of it's former self that played a critical role in the Apollo Missions. 0: https://www.gizchina.com/2021/10/07/samsung-delayed-the-implementation-of-the-3nm-process-technology/ https://www.gizchina.com/2021/10/07/samsung-delayed-the-impl...
  - Tylast 5y ago
    Butterfly Labs was basically using the customer paid rigs to mine Bitcoin for themselves before they shipped customers obsolete devices. They only sent me mine after I called my CC company, disputed the charges & reported the non-delivery as fraud...magically, my rig showed up a week later. https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6833047/bitcoin-conspiracy-theorists-vindicated-as-ftc-shuts-down-butterfly-labs https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/23/6833047/bitcoin-conspirac...
    - Melting_Harps 5y ago
      > Butterfly Labs was basically using the customer paid rigs to mine Bitcoin for themselves before they shipped customers obsolete devices. They only sent me mine after I called my CC company, disputed the charges & reported the non-delivery as fraud...magically, my rig showed up a week later. And you don't think Bitmain did the same thing? Again, I'm not advocating the business models of either corp, and to be honest I think open-hardware is where we should be focusing on our collective attention during this supply chain disruption in order to make some actual progress. But it's still worth noting that ASIC development was concentrated in Shenzhen with no competitors to speak of prior to Butterfly labs. Still, this is all to say we have don ea poor job despite all the red flags until it all came crashing down and now Mega corps are likely to cash in on this and the infrastructure bill to 're-shore' the same manufacturing they and their predecessors fought like hell to offshore in the 80-90s.
- carom 5y ago
  Intel, TSMC, and Samsung. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-spending-20-billion-to-build-two-new-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/23/intel-is-spending-20-billion... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/tech/tsmc-arizona-chip-factory-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/tech/tsmc-arizona-chip-factor... 3. https://austonia.com/samsung-chooses-taylor https://austonia.com/samsung-chooses-taylor 4. https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/intel-investing-3-5b-in-new-mexico-fab-upgrade-boosting-us-chipmaking/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/intel-investing-3-5b-in-new...
pirate787 5y ago
To be fair this is a new development and in response to geopolitical instability in Asia more than US cost advantage.

miguelazo 5y ago

That sounds right to me. The press has tried to push all sorts of narratives, but buried in the previous Bloomberg article on the ports we learn that 30% of truck appointments go unfilled. The WSJ article yesterday quoted Long Beach port guy saying only 60% of their truck appointments are being utilized.

spicybright 5y ago
It's very unintuitive how it'd be cheaper to leave that many trucks sitting there instead of paying workers a bit more. Surely whatever a driver transports is worth much more than the paycheck they get?
- xxpor 5y ago
  It seems like most of corporate America operates under the if you give an inch they'll take a mile theory.
- newsclues 5y ago
  A) is there a shortage of trucks or drivers? B) are there bottlenecks at the ports that prevent more trucks? C) can rail be used to move boxes? D) who is making money by things NOT moving?
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    - Yes, many older truckers retired instead of dealing with COVID. This applies to many other sectors, most notably in my area school bus drivers. Other countries (notably, UK and EU fuel truck drivers) are also facing shortages of truck drivers. Nursing, retail, hospitslity have all been in the news recently for the same issue. Recent reports show 12 million open positions and only 8 million people seeking employment (estimsted, of course) - physical layout only allows for so much throughput at a time. The bigger the jam, the longer it'll take to clear - yes and no. Rail doesn't (directly) go to most places, and those that it could, often don't have distribution logistics in place from the customers since they already have their chain configured for trucks - it is a net loss all around for everyone. Any higher prices on goods are offsetting losses from reduction in volume. Theres no evil fairy tale villain to blame.

noahtallen 5y ago

I think you’re partly wrong on chip factories. While most new plants have been opened in Asia in the past few years, there are major plants under construction in the US by both Intel and TSMC [0]. Additionally, the US still has a large number of fabrication plants [1]. And US-based semiconductor companies handled around 48% of the global market share in 2019 [2]. So I think it’s not true to say that US had completely lost its edge with semiconductors, nor that the US moved all its manufacturing capacity to Asia. The US has been and is still competing to be one of the largest players in the semiconductor industry, even if it might not be first place anymore. And I think it’s fair to question whether the US needs to be in absolute first place. Asian countries have significantly more population and therefore need for semiconductors compared to the US, so it makes sense that eventually, manufacturing capacity would be more relative to local population levels. - 0: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/semiconductor-fabs-dotting-arizona-silicon-desert/ https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/semiconductor-fabs-dot..., https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Intel-breaks-ground-on-20bn-Arizona-chip-plants-in-battle-with-TSMC https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/Intel-b... - 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat... - 2: https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-SIA-State-of-the-Industry-Report-FINAL-1.pdf https://www.semiconductors.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20...

supergeek133 5y ago
Thanks for the correction on the chip factories, and I agree with your last point about "needing to be in first place" but this pandemic has surely made it more evident how quickly we can be disrupted by either an Act of God or a country just waking up one day and deciding they no longer want to sell us things.
gavin_gee 5y ago
The intel investment is too little too late to have any impact on the current shortage.
bradknowles 5y ago
It takes years to open a new chip factory. And the kinds of chip factories that get opened here in the US are unlikely to be the kind required to solve the problem that the car manufacturers are having, because they’re looking at old technology commodity chips that no one here in the US would want to make. That is unless you’re wiling to pay 10-100x more for them, through contracts that require you exclusively make and supply them here in the US, much like the US military does for chips that they really care about. But then it would take years for those kinds of contracts to make their way through all the various intermediaries, and third, fourth, and fifth parties, etc…. There’s lots of problems inside this “Perfect Global Multi-Year Hurricane” of supply chains.

vondur 5y ago

Dock workers here in Long Beach are well paid. (100K+/year is not uncommon)

api 5y ago
Look at real estate prices in the Los Angeles metro area. That's not enough.
- majormajor 5y ago
  It's well more than the median income in the area. People are taking jobs that pay less. So it clearly has more to do with other factors like the work conditions or training requirements or such. Companies not willing to pay for training is a common story...
supergeek133 5y ago
I'm sure there are people that might lobby that 80-100k/year in Long Beach qualifies as minimum wage with housing prices! Ha.
- newsclues 5y ago
  The cash on the side for smuggling helps
francisofascii 5y ago
I don't think that is the norm. If you search for dock worker jobs in Long Beach, you see $30-50K advertised.

Zigurd 5y ago

Chip making is technologically difficult, even if you can buy all the same machines TSMC uses. It is evident from previous failures that a nation can't just say "we need on-shore chip capacity" and pay to get it. in the US, Intel fell behind TSMC and GF can't catch up. The situation is more dire most other places.

inglor_cz 5y ago
Notably, no Chinese company has been able to match the top tier capabilities of TSMC and Samsung so far. Even though Beijing is certainly interested in achieving technology parity at least. Ergo, it must really be difficult.

WanderPanda 5y ago

I don‘t think salary of the workers is the problem here. It is more about regulatory/union obstacles that prevent ports from competing and being automized

supergeek133 5y ago
You mean robots, or other ports being used? There were a lot of stories this morning about "Florida being open for business" but of course that comes with a ship that is currently in CA going to FL.

pmorici 5y ago

Container shipments are up like 20% from pre covid levels. It isn’t that there is a shortage so much as people haven’t adapted to the increased demand for goods.

nonameiguess 5y ago

Dockworkers being poorly paid is definitely not true. It's been a while since I lived in Long Beach, but these were among the most desirable jobs you can get. Any time the union announced it was hiring, they needed to do a lottery to even get the opportunity to apply. Whatever the reason it is that not enough people have this job, it isn't that they don't want it or that it doesn't pay enough. Trucking pays pretty well, too, but comes with a different set of challenges. You have to be willing to live on the road, sleeping at truck stops or in your own cabin, never seeing your family if you even have one, sitting for 8-12 hours a day and destroying your spine orthopedically. It takes a special kind of person to want that job no matter how well it pays.