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Americans capable of being productive at TSMC cost too much for TSMC to afford. They can get better paying jobs with better work life balance, easily. Japan has
by barry-cotter 3y ago
Americans capable of being productive at TSMC cost too much for TSMC to afford. They can get better paying jobs with better work life balance, easily. Japan has a similarly terrible work culture and is much poorer than the US, like Taiwan, so TSMC has much less cultural mismatch to deal with.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoThis is a great response that sounds convincing. Right now high IQ hard working americans can choose law, finance, medicine or software for a pretty high ROI. I think this is less true in other countries, so those capable folk might be more evenly spread throughout various engineering fields.
- rayiner 3y agoThis is true. My parents wanted a doctor and an engineer. And while my brother and I both got STEM degrees, we ended up in law and finance, because those fields pay way more. I’m convinced that this is bad for your average American. It’s good for the small slice of the population making high salaries at banks, law firms, advertising companies, etc. But that drives financialization of the economy, which is probably worse for the average worker. It might be better for the median American to cut down those industries and shift the economic mix to industries that create more solid middle class jobs.
- dctoedt 3y ago> It might be better for the median American to cut down those industries and shift the economic mix to industries that create more solid middle class jobs. Serious question: How, exactly?
- VirusNewbie 3y agoHopefully some of the large, profitable companies will eventually see it as an existential threat to have such a dependency on a single nation, and subsidize paying high comp for chip engineers and even manufacturing. This already happens to some degree slightly higher on the stack. For example firmware engineering is not generally a high paying subfield of programming, but at FAANG companies the comp is very high.
- rayiner 3y agoKnowledge work by its nature seems to be winner-take-all and not generate well paying jobs for people who aren’t cognitive elites. California and New York are good examples of this—the finance and tech bros with sky-high salaries drive up the price of everything, to a degree that outstrips the modestly higher salaries those industries pay to ordinary workers. Contrast that with something like oil and gas, or sophisticated manufacturing which needs large numbers of moderately skilled workers. In absolute terms these industries generate less wealth. California’s GSP per capita is more than 25% higher than Texas’s. But middle class people are moving from California to Texas (and Georgia and Tennessee)—not the other way around. Or instead of Texas, consider Germany. I’d posit that it’s better for Germans that the country excels in manufacturing rather than finance or tech.
- dctoedt 3y agoBut returning to my question: As Lenin asked: что делать (what to do)?
- selimthegrim 3y agoHe was riffing on earlier books’ titles.
- rayiner 3y agoWhat Germany and China do: change our industrial policy to favor manufacturing over tech and finance.
- VirusNewbie 3y ago>we ended up in law and finance, because those fields pay way more. Compared to STEM research or an EE sure, but is this true compared to say, MD or FAANG software engineer? (assuming the same level of competence. I don't think every L3 AMZN engineer could hack it as a surgeon or something).
- rayiner 3y agoFAANG salaries are roughly comparable. But they further illustrate the problem: Alphabet and Meta are advertising companies, Apple is essentially the Louis Vuitton or Prada of computers, and Netflix makes entertainment. Amazon is the closest thing to a real company, and it is a delivery service for cheap Chinese products. Moreover, the middle-class jobs generated by those companies, outside the engineering teams, are crappy service jobs.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago> Apple is essentially the Louis Vuitton or Prada of computers, The extra utility of LV and Prada products relative to their competitors is zero compared to the extra utility of Apple products, for example due to lower power usage and more longevity. Also, FAANG is just a catchy acronym for high profit/profit margin earning businesses, that also includes Microsoft and a multitude of other businesses that pay well.
- rayiner 3y ago> Also, FAANG is just a catchy acronym for high profit/profit margin earning businesses Most of those businesses are high profit/profit margin precisely because they target sectors such as finance and advertising that are of questionable social value.
- VirusNewbie 3y agoIf you hadn't already said you didn't work in tech, this would be the smoking gun that would clue us all in. Most of us here are aware of AWS being one of the primary profit makers of amazon, and GCP isn't far behind. You missed those very obvious business segment that sort of renders your argument moot.
- resolutebat 3y agoOne data point that supports your assertion: Japan has 29 lawyers per 100k population. The US has 4,000.
- dmurray 3y agoSource for this? The ABA [0] gives a much more believable figure of 1.3 million "active lawyers", which is almost exactly 400 per 100k. So I suspect you are off by an order of magnitude, but perhaps you have a different way of counting lawyers. [0] https://www.abalegalprofile.com/demographics.html https://www.abalegalprofile.com/demographics.html
- shiroiushi 3y agoMaybe the GP added an extra zero by accident, but 29 vs. 400 is still a huge difference, more than an order of magnitude.