6 ms·

seems like what is often downplayed or silent on American media is the cultural mismatch between TSMC taiwanese engineers and their american counterparts so it

seems like what is often downplayed or silent on American media is the cultural mismatch between TSMC taiwanese engineers and their american counterparts so it always comes to those out of the loop as a bit of a surprise but from what I've read from individual Taiwanese workers and their feedback its clear that there is significant regret from one side. and it doesn't seem to limited to just TSMC but another large company as of recent that receive icey reception for their large investment in America manufacturing. i think this is a big reason why lot of these jobs simply wouldn't stay in america as the consumer would not be able to foot the costs added by "cultural premium" faster than what innovation can reduce.

itake 11mo ago
Perhaps if the US workers earned OT like TW workers do, the "culture" gap would shrink.
- limagnolia 11mo ago
  Is OT "overtime"? How is it legal not to pay overtime in any US factory? Unless they are salaried (exempt)?
  - TimorousBestie 11mo ago
    A lot of the workers there probably are exempt under American law. I’m not an expert on Taiwanese labor laws but their list of exempt labor categories in the LSA is much shorter than the one in the American FLSA.
  - itake 11mo ago
    yeah, overtime. My cousin is an engineer at TSMC (who worked both in Tainin and now in Arizona) and is w-2 exempt.
- j_walter 11mo ago
  TW workers have a majority of their compensation in bonuses, so the OT portion is quite small and many do not even bother to ask for it. The overall compensation between a TW and US engineer at TSMC is also significant. Not to mention the lowest paid hourly workers...where in TW they make 2-3X minimum wage, but in the US it's like 1.25X.
  - itake 11mo ago
    That is not what I heard from my cousin at TSMC. The OT gives the workers a “living wage”. Most of his coworkers charge OT every week of the year. He admitted, even with their OT and bonuses, he probably makes more than them w2 salaries. But my point still remains: if they want US (or TW) folks to work more hours, they need to pay for those hours.
    - j_walter 11mo ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/18x5vr5/semiconductor_engineering_pay_10000_in_taiwan/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/18x5vr5/sem... This reddit post captures what I've seen at TSMC in Taiwan. $120K is normal pay at the director level...engineers make $2500-5000 a month. TSMC AZ starting pay for a new college grad w/ BS is probably just under $100K/year with just salary, with the potential to make over $120K within a few years with full vested bonuses.
      - itake 11mo ago
        I think your numbers match what my cousin shared. In both my conversations with my cousin and in the reddit post, it is unclear if reported salaries are take-home or don't include the OT and bonuses, but I don't get your point? My point is: Engineers in Taiwan work more hours because they are paid to work more hours (OT). Engineers in the USA are not paid more if they work 35 hours or 60 hours. If TSMC wants to address the culture gap (get the Americans to work more), TSMC should pay up.
        ksec 11mo ago
        >My point is: Engineers in Taiwan work more hours because they are paid to work more hours (OT). I can 100% tell you this is not true.
- lazide 11mo ago
  Hahaha. The work culture between TW and the US is night and day - and it isn’t flattering for the US.
  - bnjms 11mo ago
    How so? Are the Americans relatively lazy or just unwilling to put in tedious but necessary extended hours?
    - lazide 11mo ago
      The entire approach is different. Especially with Taiwanese engineers, their entire focus is whatever work they are doing. Everything else (quite literally), their wives handle. Americans typically ask for things like work life balance, non abusive working hours, etc. they also don’t (anymore) have the type of family life setup that allows them to actually focus so much - being pulled into child care duties, or taking care of family members, or whatever their next vacation should be, etc. The general attitude is also more ‘yeah whatever’ to some extent. The amount of singular obsessive engineering you get out of one vs the other is hard to compare.
      - agentifysh 11mo ago
        hmmm this is interesting I was always the impression Taiwanese wives were more progressive and men had to do lot more lifting vs other regional cultures in east asia my original thinking after reading some of the anecdotes from TSMC engineers is that they were obsessively dedicated which means extreme hours from North American culture its also the same in places like Samsung where the company treats employers very well with perks and long career stability but its not free always requires huge sacrifice I'd imagine similar to Japanese conglomerates. I'm not sure which is better in America its definitely transactional relationship but it also comes with stability issues relatively compared to what these East Asian giants offer but at the cost of not being able to switch if and when you find yourselves at odds. Not sure what it was like at Nokia but also another conglomerate that ultimately folded under competition and also a country with more stringent labor/life constraints that you would find less enforced in East Asia. Getting a bit distracted here but noting how much culture plays a role in these large companies and their management styles.
coredog64 11mo ago
There are like half a dozen semiconductor manufacturers in Phoenix that were here before TSMC arrived. There's a robust pipeline from ASU to these same manufacturers. Can we please just stop with the nonsensical notion that "Americans don't know how to fabricate semiconductors"?
- itake 11mo ago
  its not that the USA can't produce semi-conductors. Its that semi-conductor production, at TSMC's scale (both in terms of number of units, yield rates, and depth) currently requires highly skilled workers to work a lot of their hours to "baby sit" the wafer production. Maybe there is a world where TSMC can hire enough skilled workers and optimize processes enabling people to go home at 5p, but that is not currently the case.
  - lysace 11mo ago
    Yes. This. So, yeah, essentially fundamentally incompatible with the US economy. The US is going to have to heavily subsidize the payroll of tens of thousands of very accomplished EEs/etc to make this work. By doing that they will also wreck the HW part of SV.
    - astrange 11mo ago
      There isn't really a HW part of SV. Hardware engineers aren't paid well enough to live there in droves like programmers. There are some of course, but the ones I know are in San Diego or Bremerton or Israel. Also, it's completely normal to run a factory 24/7. I think people are just impressed because TSMC is the only one they've read about? (However, it's correct that a TSMC fab is the most advanced and complicated process on the planet.)
      - lysace 11mo ago
        Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Applied Materials probably employ like 100k people in SV?
    - 11mo ago
lysace 11mo ago
Spell it out. WTF.
tarsinge 11mo ago
Why do you think it’s cultural and not a skill issue? For example Tim Cook said they produce in China not because of costs but skills https://www.benzinga.com/markets/25/04/44783543/when-tim-cook-revealed-the-real-reason-iphones-are-made-in-chinaand-its-not-low-labor-costs-china-stopped-being-a-low-wage-country-years-ago https://www.benzinga.com/markets/25/04/44783543/when-tim-coo...
- itopaloglu83 11mo ago
  I remember the example of Apple where they spent twice as much the Marshall Plan in China and created entire infrastructure to train people with high skill. So, it’s a form of stop hitting yourself game. You cannot just skip training an entire generation in the US and expect all the high skills to just exist.

itake 11mo ago

Perhaps if the US workers earned OT like TW workers do, the "culture" gap would shrink.

limagnolia 11mo ago
Is OT "overtime"? How is it legal not to pay overtime in any US factory? Unless they are salaried (exempt)?
- TimorousBestie 11mo ago
  A lot of the workers there probably are exempt under American law. I’m not an expert on Taiwanese labor laws but their list of exempt labor categories in the LSA is much shorter than the one in the American FLSA.
- itake 11mo ago
  yeah, overtime. My cousin is an engineer at TSMC (who worked both in Tainin and now in Arizona) and is w-2 exempt.
j_walter 11mo ago
TW workers have a majority of their compensation in bonuses, so the OT portion is quite small and many do not even bother to ask for it. The overall compensation between a TW and US engineer at TSMC is also significant. Not to mention the lowest paid hourly workers...where in TW they make 2-3X minimum wage, but in the US it's like 1.25X.
- itake 11mo ago
  That is not what I heard from my cousin at TSMC. The OT gives the workers a “living wage”. Most of his coworkers charge OT every week of the year. He admitted, even with their OT and bonuses, he probably makes more than them w2 salaries. But my point still remains: if they want US (or TW) folks to work more hours, they need to pay for those hours.
  - j_walter 11mo ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/18x5vr5/semiconductor_engineering_pay_10000_in_taiwan/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Semiconductors/comments/18x5vr5/sem... This reddit post captures what I've seen at TSMC in Taiwan. $120K is normal pay at the director level...engineers make $2500-5000 a month. TSMC AZ starting pay for a new college grad w/ BS is probably just under $100K/year with just salary, with the potential to make over $120K within a few years with full vested bonuses.
    - itake 11mo ago
      I think your numbers match what my cousin shared. In both my conversations with my cousin and in the reddit post, it is unclear if reported salaries are take-home or don't include the OT and bonuses, but I don't get your point? My point is: Engineers in Taiwan work more hours because they are paid to work more hours (OT). Engineers in the USA are not paid more if they work 35 hours or 60 hours. If TSMC wants to address the culture gap (get the Americans to work more), TSMC should pay up.
      - ksec 11mo ago
        >My point is: Engineers in Taiwan work more hours because they are paid to work more hours (OT). I can 100% tell you this is not true.
lazide 11mo ago
Hahaha. The work culture between TW and the US is night and day - and it isn’t flattering for the US.
- bnjms 11mo ago
  How so? Are the Americans relatively lazy or just unwilling to put in tedious but necessary extended hours?
  - lazide 11mo ago
    The entire approach is different. Especially with Taiwanese engineers, their entire focus is whatever work they are doing. Everything else (quite literally), their wives handle. Americans typically ask for things like work life balance, non abusive working hours, etc. they also don’t (anymore) have the type of family life setup that allows them to actually focus so much - being pulled into child care duties, or taking care of family members, or whatever their next vacation should be, etc. The general attitude is also more ‘yeah whatever’ to some extent. The amount of singular obsessive engineering you get out of one vs the other is hard to compare.
    - agentifysh 11mo ago
      hmmm this is interesting I was always the impression Taiwanese wives were more progressive and men had to do lot more lifting vs other regional cultures in east asia my original thinking after reading some of the anecdotes from TSMC engineers is that they were obsessively dedicated which means extreme hours from North American culture its also the same in places like Samsung where the company treats employers very well with perks and long career stability but its not free always requires huge sacrifice I'd imagine similar to Japanese conglomerates. I'm not sure which is better in America its definitely transactional relationship but it also comes with stability issues relatively compared to what these East Asian giants offer but at the cost of not being able to switch if and when you find yourselves at odds. Not sure what it was like at Nokia but also another conglomerate that ultimately folded under competition and also a country with more stringent labor/life constraints that you would find less enforced in East Asia. Getting a bit distracted here but noting how much culture plays a role in these large companies and their management styles.

coredog64 11mo ago

There are like half a dozen semiconductor manufacturers in Phoenix that were here before TSMC arrived. There's a robust pipeline from ASU to these same manufacturers. Can we please just stop with the nonsensical notion that "Americans don't know how to fabricate semiconductors"?

itake 11mo ago
its not that the USA can't produce semi-conductors. Its that semi-conductor production, at TSMC's scale (both in terms of number of units, yield rates, and depth) currently requires highly skilled workers to work a lot of their hours to "baby sit" the wafer production. Maybe there is a world where TSMC can hire enough skilled workers and optimize processes enabling people to go home at 5p, but that is not currently the case.
- lysace 11mo ago
  Yes. This. So, yeah, essentially fundamentally incompatible with the US economy. The US is going to have to heavily subsidize the payroll of tens of thousands of very accomplished EEs/etc to make this work. By doing that they will also wreck the HW part of SV.
  - astrange 11mo ago
    There isn't really a HW part of SV. Hardware engineers aren't paid well enough to live there in droves like programmers. There are some of course, but the ones I know are in San Diego or Bremerton or Israel. Also, it's completely normal to run a factory 24/7. I think people are just impressed because TSMC is the only one they've read about? (However, it's correct that a TSMC fab is the most advanced and complicated process on the planet.)
    - lysace 11mo ago
      Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Applied Materials probably employ like 100k people in SV?
  - 11mo ago

lysace 11mo ago

Spell it out. WTF.

tarsinge 11mo ago

Why do you think it’s cultural and not a skill issue? For example Tim Cook said they produce in China not because of costs but skills https://www.benzinga.com/markets/25/04/44783543/when-tim-cook-revealed-the-real-reason-iphones-are-made-in-chinaand-its-not-low-labor-costs-china-stopped-being-a-low-wage-country-years-ago https://www.benzinga.com/markets/25/04/44783543/when-tim-coo...

itopaloglu83 11mo ago
I remember the example of Apple where they spent twice as much the Marshall Plan in China and created entire infrastructure to train people with high skill. So, it’s a form of stop hitting yourself game. You cannot just skip training an entire generation in the US and expect all the high skills to just exist.