A lot of the work is actually just working with dangerous chemicals, and isn't a technical desk job with prestige.

It's factory work!

This - chip factory work is actually a factory job, with a obssesive compulsive quality control part. One stop, one power drop and the yield goes nowhere..

Yeah, my brother worked on stuff like this while working in a Physics lab, he got transferred to doing the software dev parts in the end as working with the acid was very stressful.

My family member works at TSMC. Last I talked to him (8mo ago), American engineers quit left and right due to working conditions and pay.

> American engineers quit left and right due to working conditions and pay

Which TSMC location has American engineers working at it?

TSMC hires US college grads and flies them to Tainan for training for a couple years. Then they go back to Arizona to setup the factory.

Can you expand a little bit on the issues with working conditions/pay at all? It would be good to have something written down publicly, if employees are being mistreated or taken advantage of.

It depends on what's available. If you grew up in abject poverty on a rural farm then getting a job in doors, in air conditioning, without requiring brutal, repetitive physical labor is like heaven - requiring you to work 15 hour days and 7 days a week is a small price to pay. If you grew up in a wealthy suburb, then the baseline is 40-hour weeks in the same conditions, and you have aspirations to either a) work less for the same money or b) make a lot more money. Anything else is "abusive" to you. There's something like labor arbitrage going on here...

Those people are gone from the labor pool. They were a momentary artifact of class mobility that was present up to the early 90s but is no longer a thing

I totally feel that! :)

One of the things that I found great about working with computers was that it got me away from being a few inches away from a fryer for 8-16 hours a day. Not having to deal with screaming parents, sobbing children, and people literally (yes, literally) throwing hot food at me that "had too much (whatever) on it". Instead, getting to sit in a calm quiet environment for literally something like 5x the pay, for barely 3 to 4 hours of work, was a massive improvement. Over time, I managed to get into a role that has even less customer interaction, for higher pay, and less stress. It's also in something I actually care about, too! It's really great how freeing things can be, once you start to get specialized into specific areas.

Anyway, I was kind of tripped out on how the commenter had phrased their initial comment, "people quitting left and right". I had taken to mean something like "...because of a recent change", and was wondering what it was.

The commenter made a follow up and it sounds closer to something like, "People would join and work for TSMC for a short time, then get disgusted and quit." I had assumed that there was a long-term American work force that had been floating around, but left because of something that wasn't covered in the article, and I wanted to know what that was. It sounds like that's not really what they meant.

Just to add more, TSMC hires cohorts of US college grads to move to Taiwan for training for their first (2?) years. Then they are sent to Arizona for another 2 years of work.

There are monetary incentives to complete the 4 year contract, but many (50%?) terminate their contract early while they are in Taiwan or before transferring to Arizona.

These American workers are hired to work in Taiwan for training and then sent to Arizona to setup the factory. By local Taiwan standards, they are treated well (relatively high pay and don’t have to work on weekends).

But by US standards, working 12 hours per day 5 days per week with no overtime or free coffee isn’t competitive in our job market.

I don’t think anyone is mistreated or taken advantage of. But TSMC doesn’t provide a competitive work environment if you have access to the US job market.

Idk my math says that working 60 hrs should at minimum provide a 150% premium over working 40s. If you want 60 hrs and pay me for 40 or 32 I think I’m getting taken advantage of. What else do you call that?

Each additional hour of work has a greater opportunity cost than the previous hour of work.

I agree it’s a floor but a ceiling

From what he described, if you take a (local's salary + overtime) * 1.x, you would get his non-overtime US-salary pay. US workers also get more paid holidays than locals (doubly so depending on the month you join).

US workers making x% more than locals for the same job seems like the locals are taken advantage of, not the US workers.

It's weird because it sounds like what you're describing isn't purposefully malicious, but more so an issue cultural perspective. One would think that a major company like TSMC would have hired some kind of cultural liaison to assess what benefits, pay, etc. that Americans would be willing to accept before attempting to open a plant in America.

There's clearly a need TSMC has for highly skilled, niche work. Why bother posting the job if they aren't going to cover the associated costs?

I mean, TSMC is welcome to put out as many job adverts for as many positions as they like, offering the legal mandatory minimums, whether it be:

* Minimum wage

* No benefits

* No overtime

* No holidays

* No sick days

* No vacation days

* No workman's comp

* Swing shift

* 7-day a week schedule

I just can't fathom how TSMC would feign surprise when an already limited labor pool isn't tripping over themselves to apply to degrading work conditions. The culture of the higher ups might not call those things "taking advantage", but, if TSMC doesn't have perspective of the people they're trying to win over it is just a waste of everyone's time.

I find the whole thing to be queer because, more often than not, it's America that is being accused of poor workers rights and work conditions in comparison to European worker regulations. It's odd that, even when the roles are switched with some other nation, it's still somehow on Americans to capitulate. It'd be funny if it weren't incredibly tedious. Not enough benefits? America hates workers. Too many benefits? America hates working.

> One would think that a major company like TSMC would have hired some kind of cultural liaison to assess what benefits, pay, etc. that Americans would be willing to accept before attempting to open a plant in America.

They don't want to open a plant in the US, but are doing so because Apple, the US Gov, and maybe the threat of the CCP, are pushing them to.

There is also a reason much of the electronics manufacturing went to Asia, and long hours + low cost is why. Trying to reconcile that with US or EU working conditions may not be possible without entirely retooling their approach and management -- which is challenging to do even in a company that very much wants the change.

> They don't want to open a plant in the US, but are doing so because Apple, the US Gov, and maybe the threat of the CCP, are pushing them to.

Fair point. I guess I would just imagine that, if they are going to build the factory, whether it be by choice, or by burden, they would make a point of doing an adequate job at the feat. If the building is going up because of pressures from outside the company, it would seem to follow that they would want the money spent on that to be worthwhile, right? Or is the assumption that if they drag their feet long enough due to "no fault of their own" they can import people to do the work at a faction of the cost, under deplorable conditions?

Personally, I cringe at the idea of the idea of terrible working conditions essentially being imported into America, but I certainly wouldn't put it past a country trying to make a buck.

> Trying to reconcile that with US or EU working conditions may not be possible without entirely retooling their approach and management -- which is challenging to do even in a company that very much wants the change.

Very true! One of the hopes that I had had with this process was that, perhaps because TSMC would be under US working conditions that, perhaps new processes could be made/discovered, meeting both good conditions and whatever expectations they had in mind. Perhaps that was a bit (or very) naive on my part; I still want to believe that a better, more humane process can be found to meet the bottom line and make the work less grueling for the people on the factory floor.

I had a bunch of friends working in the fab industry in the US at Micron. They said TSMC's offer to poach them was 50k, no insurance, no 401k, no stock, 1 week PTO with no increases (that includes sick days). It was an absolutely insulting offer.

My friends all retrained into IT/software and jumped ship out of the industry. They all make 1.5-2.5x what they used to and no longer risk exposure to deadly chemicals every day.

> They said TSMC's offer to poach them was 50k, no insurance, no 401k, no stock, 1 week PTO with no increases (that includes sick days). It was an absolutely insulting offer.

I made more money bartending after college in the DC suburbs.

As any economist would tell you, "Labor Shortage" is a myth in any industry.

Not in new or rapidly expanding fields that require expertise.

Hardware (And even embedded programming) pays absolute ass since it's all outsourced to Asia. Zero reason not to do literally any other job which will use the same skills, and pay double. Bringing it to America, means upping the salaries to match what Americans expect, and alot of jobs just lowball still.