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TSMC's debacle in the desert: Missed deadlines and tension among coworkers

• doomleika 3y ago
  [flagged]
• joshhansen 3y ago
  It seems like a miscalculation on TSMC's part to expect to be treated the same in the world's largest economy as back at home. Another miscalculation: undervaluing the ability to speak the same language. Any organization except the U.N. should have a single working language and require everyone to use it exclusively. Hell, I even think that English proficiency should be a prerequisite for immigration to the U.S., or at least for citizenship.
• weebull 3y ago
  > The loss of Taiwan and with it TSMC — the thinking goes — would result in a global tech meltdown. The irony is that for most of the tech industry TSMC is unavailable. Nvidia, Apple and AMD have booked all the manufacturing slots for the foreseeable future. It's been this way since 2020. Yes, their loss would have a huge effect, but many are having to cope with that situation today.
  • CoastalCoder 3y ago
    > Yes, their loss would have a huge effect, but many are having to cope with that situation today. I suspect they'd be in much worse shape if Taiwan were invaded. First, they'd find themselves competing with current TSMC customers for the non-TSMC foundries. And second, an invasion of Taiwan could lead to a full out war with China, which might mean the non-Taiwanese fabs have their production priorities overridden by the warring governments.
    • mint2 3y ago
      Not to mention, the other fabs would be high priority missile targets.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • bevekspldnw 3y ago
        Exactly, flatten those in the first five minutes and that “shield” is gone.
    • Dalewyn 3y ago
      >an invasion of Taiwan could lead to a full out war with China, What would be the casus belli? Quite literally no country of even remote significance on the world stage (aside from the Holy See) officially recognizes Taiwan.[1] By what pretext would a country declare war against China as concerns Taiwan? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Types_of_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Taiwan#Ty...
      • CoastalCoder 3y ago
        You may be right that such a war is somewhat or entirely unlikely. I'm not remotely qualified to predict that. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it.
      • kelipso 3y ago
        Please. Casus belli doesn’t matter these days. You just do enough propaganda with a number of justifications and control the news coming from the other side until the poll numbers look right.
        • oldpersonintx 3y ago
          Casus Belli is now translated into "America could win". There is no clear Casus Belli with China. Last time the US faced China in combat was Chosin Reservoir...maybe the worst ass-kicking the US has ever received. No way voters are going to support a President who oversees delivery of 50k dead US soldiers just to save a fab.
          • DonHopkins 3y ago
            You're suffering from Xi Jinping Derangement Syndrome.
      • menacingly 3y ago
        So, China aggressively threatens everyone who recognizes Taiwan for decades, and the resultant lack of recognition for Taiwan is used to delegitimize attempts to defend them?
  • pama 3y ago
    Unless the date in the comment is wrong and I missed some important update in 2024, this statement is not correct. Apple Books a chunk of the latest tech for a period of many months every now and then but there is a long tail of companies using TSMC for shorter projects and for using earlier tech.
  • HDThoreaun 3y ago
    TSMC has a ton of lagging node manufacturing on Taiwan too though. If that was destroyed itd be as big or even a bigger problem
• pjc50 3y ago
  It turns out that culture in organizations matters, and is not something that one can simply import by edict.
• osnium123 3y ago
  Is it even realistic to expect US fabs to be competitive? I think this article sheds insight into why the US based semiconductor companies like Intel are falling behind.
  • fidotron 3y ago
    Indeed. > The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive hierarchies at the company; Taiwanese TSMC veterans described their American counterparts as lacking the kind of dedication and obedience they believe to be the foundation of their company’s world-leading success. I mean, some humility is in order. TSMC are succeeding because of these things, not in spite of them. Given the supposed need for expedience it's best to copy that as-is and then you can tweak it once it's up and running.
    • osnium123 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • trashtester 3y ago
        If the US starts shipping nukes to Taiwan, we will for sure have a repeat of the Cuban missile crisis, with the roles reversed. Unless hundreds of nukes can be installed in full secrecy, China will almost certainly try to sink ANY ship trying to deliver anything from the US to Taiwan, using nukes if necessary.
        • arethuza 3y ago
          If the US wanted to defend Taiwan with nukes wouldn't it just use bombers - no need for the weapons to actually be based on Taiwan?
          • trashtester 3y ago
            If the weapons are not placed in Taiwan, there's no guarantee that the US would use them to defend Taiwan. If the US formally makes such a guarantee, that in itself might trigger a nuclear war. This is a game of chicken, and games of chicken are rather dangerous. Do you want your city nuked to save Taiwan? Does Xi want to risk having Shanghai and Beijing obliterated to maybe take Taiwan? If there is an actual war over Taiwan, it's hopefully going to be a conventional one. But that would also mean China may risk it. Which would make TSMC production out of service for months or years (or forever).
• 7373737373 3y ago
  I'm surprised I'm not hearing of more homemade/small-scale attempts like Sam Zeloof's (https://youtu.be/IS5ycm7VfXg https://youtu.be/IS5ycm7VfXg). Not that this is the same class of problem, but still.
• badcppdev 3y ago
  I think it's hard to overstate the issues that stem from a workforce who cannot all speak the same language. In my experience it's an absolute showstopper for creating an effective organisation. Add language barriers to solving very hard technical problems and you're going to have slow progress. To be clear I am talking about just about language and not the cultural differences other comments are talking about.
  • VancouverMan 3y ago
    This can easily become an economy-wide problem. Canada is an example of this, and it has certainly harmed the country's overall productivity. Language has long posed a challenge for organizations in Canada with operations and customers in both the English-speaking and the French-speaking regions of the country. These days, though, that has become a comparatively minor issue to deal with. Severely flawed immigration policies have very quickly brought in a huge number of people who don't know English well, and who also don't know French well, too. In effect, these people don't really fit in linguistically anywhere across the country. As this third group has gotten larger, especially over the last decade, unnecessary friction has been introduced into even the most basic of interactions, for pretty much all of the participants involved. In the major cities, for example, it's not uncommon to watch one customer after another with limited English and/or French skills have trouble interacting with a cashier who also has limited English and/or French skills. Native English and French speakers are left in a position of constantly being unsure if they were properly understood, too. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, and mistakes have become far more common than they were even as recently as the 1990s and early 2000s. Lots of time, money, effort, and resources are frequently wasted thanks to this. Canada's productivity has certainly taken an unnecessary hit due to language issues.
  • osnium123 3y ago
    I agree with you. Having said that, TSMC’s ramp in Japan has gone much more smoothly than in Arizona, which indicates that all the issues can’t be attributed to language barriers. There is a work ethic/culture delta as well.
    • 3y ago
• pylua 3y ago
  In my experience, U.S. citizens are not likely to sacrifice their bodies and life to an entity that can cut them off at will. That sort of dedication comes at an extremely high premium in the us. Honestly, it is just business. The companies need to adapt and stop complaining.
  • osnium123 3y ago
    They are adapting by getting subsidies from the US government, which implies that US based manufacturing will never be cost effective. When the money flow turns off, these fabs might fade away.
    • pylua 3y ago
      It’s never going to be cost effective if you can outsource to a country that has less stringent laws and regulations. The government has other levers it can pull, such as tariffs. It also looks like the Taiwan employees are reluctant to transfer domain knowledge, based on the article. They don’t want to have to compete with U.S. workers.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • trashtester 3y ago
      The US cannot afford the risk of having virtually ALL advanced semi produced in a territory as exposed as Taiwan. At least until the threat against Taiwan is gone, they have to make sure a large percentage (>50%) of such strategic products happen outside Taiwan/China, meaning they have to continue subsidies (or switch to tariffs) until the threat is gone. Anyway, just because TSMC puts Taiwan in a position similar to Japan in the 1980's, doesn't mean they retain that advantage into the future
      • sharpshadow 3y ago
        Can you elaborate on what you mean with „the threat is gone“ please?
• mhb 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • Jerrrry 3y ago
    what a coincidence, we have plenty of disposable cheap labor not too far south of those factories. they are even queuing themselves up in distinct routes based on race and national security concerns. this is what real politik looks like in modernity.
  • light_hue_1 3y ago
    It has nothing to do with DEI. There's just a self serving political lie. Even the examples in the article make no sense, ok, some government agency is going to have a DEI officer, so what? TSMC famously treats its workers like trash. I've seen it up close when my students would join and report back about how terrible the environment is. You should see what the leadership team has to say about how workers should behave. US workers don't want to put up with it so they're having a lot of difficulty finding people.
• zug_zug 3y ago
  So the article is suggesting it comes down to this: That Taiwainese workers will work 16 hour days and weekends. That's true and probably won't happen in America with American workers. But, before we just take that one factoid and call it settled, I'd love to understand what the ROI would be on a plant that just hired twice as many workers. My impression is that the margins on these chips are 100-1000x.
  • smallnamespace 3y ago
    You’re conflating the cost of chips in a completed fab with the cost of building the fab. These workers are for the latter.
    • zug_zug 3y ago
      Did you read the article? Most of the article is about cultural differences among workers > “They really are trying to push this narrative that Americans are slower because of lower technical ability, but I really don’t believe that’s the truth,” an American engineer who recently left TSMC told Rest of World. “The Taiwanese create this false sense of urgency with every single task, and they really push ‘you need to finish everything immediately.’ But it’s just not realistic for people that want to have some normal work-life balance.”
  • trashtester 3y ago
    It sounds like much of the problem is not time spent working, but cultural friction. The American's expect a work environment similar to in American companies, while the Taiwanese (both management and others) expect Taiwanese standards, and neither side wants to back down. This will cause both sides to have something resembling racist feelings towards the other group. And when there isn't even a shared language that all can use (and are willing to use), it doubles the problem and introduces a lot of inefficiency. English is generally the current Lingua Franca, but TSMC employees appear to be either to proud of their language or improperly selected for language mastery to be willing or able to switch. And finding enough staff able to work using mostly Mandarin is probably even more unrealistic. TSMC will probably overcome all of these issues, if the motivation is there. It's just that things will move a bit more slowly than expected until the culture issues settle down.
• raymond_goo 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • CharlieDigital 3y ago
    Why bring DEI into this? Is there any factual information that DEI is the reason why the build out failed to meet expectations? Or is it more likely that TSMC is building a highly specialized factory and is used to working with Taiwanese contractors who already have the skills, equipment, and training? Even more likely that their estimates and schedules are all built around prior experience in Taiwan and thus those estimates and planning all failed to account for the scale of challenges in dealing with an entirely different labor market. I see no reason why DEI is even brought into this discussion.
    • raymond_goo 3y ago
      Commentators have noted that CHIPS and Science Act money has been sluggish. What they haven’t noticed is that it’s because the CHIPS Act is so loaded with DEI pork that it can’t move. The law contains 19 sections aimed at helping minority groups, including one creating a Chief Diversity Officer at the National Science Foundation, and several prioritizing scientific cooperation with what it calls “minority-serving institutions.” A section called “Opportunity and Inclusion” instructs the Department of Commerce to work with minority-owned businesses and make sure chipmakers “increase the participation of economically disadvantaged individuals in the semiconductor workforce.” The department interprets that as license to diversify. Its factsheet asserts that diversity is “critical to strengthening the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem,” adding, “Critically, this must include significant investments to create opportunities for Americans from historically underserved communities.”
  • doug_durham 3y ago
    What a bazaar conclusion to reach. You need to spend less time immersed in social media.
  • TechDebtDevin 3y ago
    Lmao how did you turn this into a political issue? Intel loves Israel and Poland because of labor costs and regulatory framework. If DEI (the largely overstated and mysterious hiring policy that mostly doesn't exist in the way you think it does) is even a feature of Intels corporate culture it would still be implemented in Israel and Poland.
• jszymborski 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is one of the most poorly written articles I've ever read. It feels like someone had a word limit to hit. I feel like I've read the same three sentences paraphrased a million times in the article. Let me save you some time: - TSMC's USA plant is delayed a year (this is apparently "woefully delayed" ?) - There is apparently a language barrier between TSMC Taiwan and TSMC USA workers. - Repeated references to a "strict hierarchy", but no details beyond that. What a stinker of an article.
• jmyeet 3y ago
  This shouldn't surprise anyone here because we've seen it happen time and time again with Silicon Valley. The urban infrastructure in the Bay Area is truly awful. The cost-of-living is out-of-control. There has been many attempts to recreate SV elsewhere [1] and while there has been some success, nothing has rivalled the original. So people are in the Bay Area because people are in the Bay Area and that's hard to transplant or reproduce because a startup in Ohio will ultimately have better access to capital, people and an entire ecosystem by relocating to SV. A lot of Chinese (and Taiwanese) companies now benefit from a culture they've created. Additionally there are supply issues. Factories in Shenzhen or Guanghzhou or Taiwan can now get all the supplies they need from all the factories that exist in that area. There's no cultural or language barrier with suppliers and the rest of the company. It is going to be extremely difficult and require sustained dedication to recreate chip manufacturing somewhere other than Taiwan, China, Japan or South Korea. Those places have decades of experience at this point and (now) an ecosystem advantage. "How did we get here?" is an interesting question because Taiwan's chip dominance was largely created by US manufacturers repeatedly seeking short-term cost-cutting. Dell (for example) would start assembling PCs in Taiwan to save on labor costs. And then they'd make PCB boards to save costs. And then they'd produce the RAM and storage there. Ultimately the entire PC was made there and suddenly they've created Asus and have funded every step of its development. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers#Places_with_%22Silicon%22_names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers#Pla...
  • trashtester 3y ago
    The difference is the massive strategic importance of not having such a reliance on a single location that your primary rival is claiming the right to take by force at any time. Think of fabs as having similar advantages to being distributed as do data centers. Imagine the added cost and latency if every data center on Earth was located around SF?
• cbm-vic-20 3y ago
  What's Michael Keaton been up to lately? I smell sequel!