The world’s largest chipmaker promised to create thousands of US jobs. There are growing tensions over whether US workers have the skills or work ethic to do them.::Jobs at the TSMC semiconductor factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience. Americans may push back on the company’s culture.
“If an engineer [in Taiwan] gets a call when he is asleep, he will wake up and start dressing,” he said. “His wife will ask: ‘What’s the matter?’ He would say: ‘I need to go to the factory.’ The wife will go back to sleep without saying another word. This is the work culture.”
Fuck that shit, that’s not work culture, that’s exploitation.
What the fuck needs to get done by a chop engineer on short notice at midnight anyway
Or are they just calling line workers engineers to avoid paying overtime
That depends on pay and other obligations.
It’s disgusting is what it is
What? Tech companies the world over have people on 24/7 on-call rotas, and it’s usually voluntary.
Depending on the company, you might typically do 1 week in 4 on-call, get a nice little retainer bonus for having to have not much of a social life for 1 week in 4, and then get an additional payment for each call you take, plus time worked at x1.5 or x2 the usual rate, plus time off in lieu during the normal workday if the call out takes a long time. If you do on-call for tech and the conditions are worse than this, then your company’s on-call policies suck.
I used to do it regularly. Over the years, it paid for the deposit on my first house, plus some nice trips abroad. I enjoyed it - I get a buzz out of being in the middle of a crisis and fixing it. But eventually my family got bored of it, and I got more senior jobs where it wasn’t considered a good use of my energies.
Your internet connection, the websites and apps you use, your utilities - they don’t fix themselves when they break at 0300.
If TSMC’s approach to on-call is bad, then yeah, screw that. I don’t see anything in the article that says that one way or the other. But doing an on-call rota at all is a perfectly normal thing to do in tech.
A SaaS startup I used to work for tried to implement on-call rotations for their salaried engineers. No additional compensation was offered for the time you were on-call, and if you did get called, the policy was going to be essentially “take the next day off” - when we already had unlimited PTO. I was not happy, and made it known at the time. My manager mentioned that, being in a senior role, I might have the opportunity to excuse myself from the rotations. Ew.
The effort didn’t end up going anywhere, but that’s been my sole experience so far with on-call efforts in software engineering.
I work in the US and I’m on call 24 hours a day basically doing IT work it’s not that crazy
If you’re on-call 24/7/365 without a break, and it’s not because you have equity in the company, then find a new job.
If you don’t, then your health (physical and mental) will eventually force you to leave anyway. I did it at a startup where I was employee #1 (no equity for me), just me and the founders, and I nearly had a nervous breakdown from it, and ended up quitting from stress. Afterwards I decided I would do no more than 1 week in 3, and life got better after that.
we are just a small company and that’s the reason for the demand of my time but the way that we do things I don’t really work after hours very often at all unless it’s scheduled situation or an emergency you can do this in a way that is healthy for employees you just have to have policies that protect the workers
Shitty framing.
They don’t want to pay for the luxury of being able to have an engineer on call 24/7 by paying 3 people to cover a full 24-hr spread of time.
They want to pay one guy a shit salary without overtime and be able to work them 24/7/365.
Work ethic? Fuck you and your “work ethic.” I do my job and I do it well because it pays me to do it and if I don’t do it well, they could replace me. Why do I need a “work ethic?”
They want US workers to be cheap labor without sacrificing quality. It’s impossible to do that so they’re blaming the workers for being bad instead of blaming the companies for not paying workers well enough.
“Work ethic” is just HR speech for “cheap and easily exploitable”
So many ignorant comments in this thread. First of all, Taiwan isn’t some poor, developing nation, they’re extremely modernized and highly educated. They literally rank among the highest education rates and scores in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Taiwan
For comparison of a basic education stat, the US has around a 79% literacy rate among adults while Taiwan has around 98%.
Second of all, TSMC workers in Taiwan make decent money on average:
https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202307010011
And for their US operations it will be above average as well:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TSMC-Salaries-E4130.htm
https://www.salary.com/research/company/tsmc-salary
Now, I do agree that their work culture appears to be toxic. However, how many companies in the US are just as demanding and brutal? While Americans are stereotyped as lazy, we’re actually the exact opposite when you look at our average productivity and workloads.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx
https://clockify.me/working-hours
https://www.bls.gov/productivity/
Compared to some Eastern countries, we’re definitely working less, but not necessarily producing less, as it’s pretty much proven that longer hours results in a sharp drop off in productivity.
Anyway, just food for thought.
Nah didn’t you know every Asian country are developing countries fueled simply by American off shoring for lower wages?
I feel the competency issue is also something to just dismiss, Taiwan has large domestic workforce that’s been involved in high end chip making for many years, it’s natural you wouldn’t find the same level of expertise (on a large scale) that you would have in taiwan
I completely agree that Taiwan has had decades of shaping a consistent workforce capable of working within cutting edge chip foundries, while the US hasn’t really, outside of Intel’s foundries which are quite behind TSMC.
I feel the simple solution is for the US government to subsidize an intern/training program where Taiwanese engineers and line workers train US counterparts. I suggest the US subsidize it because our government is the main reason TSMC is even building foundries here to begin with (the DoD correctly views our reliance on TSMC as a critical national security issue due to open hostilities from China threatening Taiwan’s independence).
The Factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience.
Wft does total obedience mean. Lol what bullshit.
I work in a semi conductor fab and I assure you the most inept workers here are the upper managers.
I have to give 3 separate updates a day with the same information to the same people. They are constantly worried about micro-schedules and push backs, while also requireing endless meetings to discuss why we arent making the deadlines. Its fucking ludacris. Also their Internet doesnt work inside the fab so I have to stop work early to leave and then email them their fucking updates.
These are the same people who are attempting to use temp companies to fill every position and then wondering if their workers have the work ethic. Lol.
Pay people a living wage and stop making their jobs miserable.
I hope you are making bank lol I wouldn’t put up with that shit for a week 😂
I dont work for the semiconductor company itself. I am a vendor. It is still bs but I have some insluation from the worst of it.
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There seems to be some confusion about the level of jobs involved here. This isn’t about standing on an assembly line for as long as you can hold your bladder. Low-level tasks like that are highly automated in these factories. But these also aren’t smoothly running processes where tasks are all routine and well-defined.
These are equipment technicians who find out one day from another team that a robot arm off by one tenth of a mm results in ruined product, and the current calibration only has mm resolution. A delay in addressing this could cost millions. Folks will need to stay late. Orders will need to be followed. Just an example.
Starting up a fab is like building an airplane mid flight. It’s not as simple as hiring more workers because the new problems aren’t predictable, and knowledge can’t be conveyed to new folks fast enough. Workers learn on the fly.
This is what Asian cultures have been kicking our ass in as far as semiconductor fabs. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on work culture and hours, but I don’t think we (Americans) can expect to compete with Asian peers in this space without compromise.
Also, these are great careers for people who don’t mind working and enjoy challenges.
This is just a negotiating tactic. An extra tax break will solve those problems. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Ah yes, the skill to work 100 hours a week and be on call 24/7 and expect things like breaks. They should ask Amazon where they hire because that’s much of the same!
That doesn’t sound like jobs. It sounds like indenture.
Oh ok so we aren’t being slaves enough is what they’re saying
Why would anyone know how to make chips, if we don’t make chips. Who’s going to teach them to make chips, the chip fairy?
I mean FABs are very complex. If they’re going to try to give the role to the uneducated poor folk (looking at you south USA), it’s going to require extreme leadership conditions :(
No, it’s going to require extreme salaries, because there are so many options for the qualified people in the Phoenix area. TSMC’s reputation precedes them and people would rather work at Intel or NXP or ONsemi or anywhere else for less money, than to work for them
Again, “qualified” is not their target demo for workers lol
Outrage bait.
