A feud is heating up between Arizona workers and the world’s leading chipmaker after the company claimed the US doesn’t have the skills to build its new factory::TSMC wants to bring in foreign reinforcements to get its Arizona factory running because it claims there aren’t enough qualified local workers.
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It’s not just the price, it’s the whole package. The only place I’ve seen it being lightly talked about was on the Aug 11th’s WAN Show.
TSMC is a Taiwanese company, therefore they expect workers to follow the Asian/Chinese work culture. Meaning basically living (usually literally) in the company and very rarely going home for a quick visit. None of this western “work/life balance” nonsense, none of the unionization stuff. Oh you’re not happy with something? Do not even dare speaking up, much less grouping up to discuss or protest. Just suck it up and deal with it.
The price is important, don’t get me wrong, but Chinese companies do not want people who won’t take any and everything their bosses say without even a slight hint of question.
All of which US companies would love to push onto their employees and work place.
Yep. The thing is that in the US it’s not readily available, and even if companies do twist the government’s arm to make it happen, it’d still take quite a while for people to accept it (if they ever do in significant numbers).
Also, obligatory reference to the documentary American Factory, where the differences between American and Chinese work cultures are shown in a similar scenario (a Chinese company opening a factory in the US).
I didn’t know about this film, but I just watched the trailer and now it’s on my list. Thanks!
Thanks! I just added this to my Netflix queue.
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Most of that is conflation of Taiwan with China (and let’s not do that) as well as mixing up TSMC with a random Shenzhen factory. Taiwan is definitely fucked, but it is more “America fucked” than “996 fucked”, as it were.
And it is important to understand that TSMC are basically the best of the best in semiconductors. That is skilled labor. I wouldn’t want to work there but if I had to pick a semiconductor factory to work in…
No, the reason that the vast majority of “popular science” tech youtubers have not covered this too much is that it is really a mixture of
- Wages: Yes, the wages are not as high as American workers want. And a lot of that is because these ARE factory jobs. But people expect “tech company” salaries. And there will be a few roles that get that but most are more about implementing a design rather than building their own process.
- Work hours: Yeah. There are going to be “crunch” expectations. But likely less so than most “tech” jobs in this country
- Skill. Like it or not, Taiwan are the gods of semiconductors and the processes associated with them. We do not have that skillset.
So 1 and 2… should be valid but This Is America. But 3 is the real issue. Because we have people who are insisting on getting full salaries while more or less needing to be trained (often for a few years) on the job to be qualified. Versus flying out the people who DO know their shit. Like, we all like to complain that outsourcing usually makes a larger support burden on the parent company. And… yeah.
So most tech youtubers aren’t touching this with a ten foot pole. And LTT have a long history of spewing complete bullshit. Either people worship Linus for “not being afraid to cover a topic” or get angry and they get publicity for “another hot take”.
And basically every other tech youtuber just says “I am not at all qualified to talk about this subject”
This person has no idea what they’re talking about. I’m an EE based in Arizona. I work with a lot of people who used to work for Intel, NXP, On Semi, etc. Semiconductor Fabs tend to have a pretty intense work culture. But from what they tell me, TSMC is on a whole 'nother level, and TSMC can’t pay them enough to put up with it’s work culture and expectations. They have the skills but at the end of the day, for them, family and their sanity is more important.
Are there people who will thrive in such conditions? Absolutely, just like I personally know a guy who thrives working in an Amazon warehouse. However, from my experience, people who want to have families and not have their lives revolve around their jobs are not interest in working for TSMC.
(To a lesser degree every year it seems) In Software and Hardware design, Intel are the big dogs. In terms of fabs? They are woefully behind TSMC (although, there are efforts to narrow that gap and some of the new tech that has been publicly revealed is awesome).
And that is how it plays out in the field. If folk “aren’t good enough” to work for a big company (whether because they lack skills or, more frequently, don’t want to base their life around matching the corporate profile) they emphasize the bad. I am more on the software side than hardware, but the number of stories about how hellish it is to work at Google and Amazon('s software side) are insane. And almost always associated with “I could have gotten a job there, if I tried”. And yeah, there are a LOT of problems. Mostly at the lower level (which is comparable to most startup cultures and why people should REALLY look at “mid tier” companies and orgs to get their initial experience). Once you get to mid career, it is well within the normal range.
Which is more or less true for TSMC. Yeah, it is a factory job and those suck. But if you actually compare it to similar orgs (again, ignoring the hellscape that is Shenzhen and the like), they are generally "roughly average’. Worse in some regards, better in others. And, like I said, that SHOULD be unacceptable that this is “average” but… labor has problems the world around and nobody cares enough to stand up for it.
The Taiwanese were not born gods of semiconductors. They were one of the very first places we massively exported things to like Mexico. They were trained and educated over decades to get where they are now. Even if that was the issue it’s nothing that couldn’t be solved by education.
But the issue is that they aren’t going to sit on their hands while other countries/companies catch up. In part because “the semiconductor shield” is real. And also because… it is a LOT of money.
Branching out to other countries is… a choice. And I do hope it means we see more proliferation of skills. Because it is a major get for Intel to convince a Taiwanese engineer to move to Tel Aviv or whatever. It is a much smaller lift to convince someone to move from Arizona to New Mexico. Similarly, this has the potential to get TSMC a lot more in house designers for basically the opposite direction.
But this idea of “Oh, we can all learn. just give us time” is (generally) American Exceptionalism bullshit and a large part of how these incentives and tax breaks are being sold to politicians. Because, barring massive revolutions in processes, TSMC will still be on top even as the rest of the world becomes “competent”. And you can bet they’ll keep their best factories in Taiwan because, again, the semiconductor shield. But it will also mean that, when Xinnie the Pooh and china decide it is worth pissing away their economy to attack, the world doesn’t go back to the stone age. More like the bronze or iron.
Because if it were just a matter of pumping money and time into it? Jensen would be calling Intel about building the latest GPUs. Because I will definitely poke fun at how “far behind” Intel’s fabs are. But they are also actually REALLY good and some of the best on the planet. They just aren’t THE best and the big money is in being able to make those ridiculously fine grain processes and chips. And that is because Intel is very much still playing catch up with a moving target.
I worked in a semiconductor plant. There isn’t any special skill to it. You have a list that you do and nowadays the robots actually do all the difficult work.
In my time, you had to check and calculate by hand the offsets for the lithography machines. Now with it being done in self-contained robots because of the radiation x-ray process, a person just manages the robots.
Also, why isn’t the new Intel plant being built having the same issues with qualified workers?
I personally think it’s stupid to build a high water using plant in the middle of a desert, when the area hasn’t ever monitored the water table.
Finally, someone mentioning the water usage aspect for a plant being built in Arizona. A water intensive/critical process? Sure, set it up in a desert…
Intel recycles nearly 100% of the water they use, I’m sure TSMC will do something similar. They need to do a ridiculous amount of processing to make it suitable to return to the city supply anyways, so they just found a way to reuse
It’s not a choice though. It is an inevitability. The United States foolishly pushed everything off over there. Only now realizing how bad a mistake that was. And how silly it is for nearly all of that sort of product to originate in that region for no real reason. It would have always made sense for those products to be produced closer to the market that they are to be sold in if at all possible. And it has always been possible. There will be factories and Chip Manufacturing in the United States again soon. And yes it’s TSMC’s Choice ultimately whether or not they will be part of it. But it is happening.
To be clear I have a very low opinion of capitalists. And I 100% think that the heads of TSMC will act like short-sighted petulant children and probably screw themselves over in the long term.
And I don’t know where the hell the American exceptionalism BS came from. It has nothing to do with that. Any humans, basically anywhere in the world can potentially learn and be trained to do this. The biggest roadblock is the affordability of the equipment to do so currently. But every major country/region should be pushing right now to build their own ability to produce. Canada United States Brazil, the EU, Russia even, Australia, New Zealand. Especially looking into designing and building their own riskv technologies. It will happen eventually. But how bad capitalists respond to all this will determine ultimately how long they will be relevant.
The idea of “We just have to put our minds to it” is very much the foundation for American Exceptionalism. Anything we are good at, we are the best at. Anything we aren’t, we don’t care enough about.
As for: capitalism gonna capitalism. Maybe. But keep in mind that the Taiwanese government is the largest shareholder in TSMC. The concept of “the semiconductor shield” has increasingly become a core tenet of the defense against china. Because if it is in the entire world’s best interest that Taiwan not be leveled in a violent assault: World governments are likely to step in.
And, again, the idea that the rest of the world can “catch up” to today is very much a reality. The idea that TSMC is going to sit and wait for everyone is very much not. They are going to pump money into research, development, iteration, etc. Again, barring fundamental shifts in technology, they are going to be dominant for probably decades.
What various nations’ attempts at “catching up” is about is not overtaking TSMC. Part of it is about getting some of that nvidia money (which is becoming increasingly important as cars modernize). But mostly it is about preparing for being ostracized russia-style or TSMC being a giant crater. We won’t be able to make top of the line computer chips, but we might be able to keep some of our weaponry running.
It’s only American exceptionalism if it’s put in terms of americans. As I specifically stated I think any country can do this. There’s nothing special about Taiwan in this instance other than it already exists there. It used to exist in the US and Russia as well. It will again. Taiwan thinking it can, or that it’s good to maintain a monopoly. Is silly.
And again if Taiwan thinks that that’s going to save them. Which is a foolish thing to think. (China only wants them literally because they currently have a near Monopoly on manufacture. Diluting that Monopoly would actually make them safer) They’re going to be sorely disappointed. If China moved tonight. Not a single military unit would be dispatched to attack internationally. The US wastes the most money of any country on military and military equipment. But they aren’t going to deploy. China is threatening everyone around them with impunity. And the US/EU can’t threaten much more than hollow product boycotts. Because they’ve all handed over their nuts on a platter to exploit near slave labor in Xi’s authoritarian wonderland.
The best way to neuter Xi is for everyone to take back as much of China’s manufacturing as possible. And not concentrate it in the hands of an authoritarian dictator for a few bucks extra.
You have some good points but I’m not sure TSMC are looking for highly-skilled people to work at their off-site factory. I honestly believe that most, if not all high-skill positions would be filled by Chinese people. They need factory workers to keep the factory running, I seriously doubt they’d expect the US factory to be able to create anything new on its own in the foreseeable future.
But at any rate, your points also show that it’s not just the price at play here.
Lastly, I agree with you regarding LTT. I didn’t mean that they were bringing some insightful new information, just that it was the only place I saw it even being mentioned. I live in mainland China and see how Chinese companies treat employees, that’s where I got my replies from.
Okay, I kind of hinted at this but:
Taiwan is not China. Taiwanese people are not “Chinese”. Please stop mixing the two up. That is the kind of heinous shit that Xinnie the Poo does. If you are unable to respect a sovereign nation then, kindly, you don’t deserve to have an opinion and should shut the fuck up.
😂
Factories share some similar characteristics no matter where they are in the world. I’ve seen first-hand examples of it in a few countries and second-hand examples in many others.
Even places squarely “first world” such as Japan, South Korea or Singapore have very similar expectations for factory work, such as long hours in exchange for low salary.
You can keep being petulant and attempting to force your opinion on the subject, I’ve said what I had to.
You had to call Taiwanese people Chinese? Repeatedly?
They’re Chinese. They’re from the Republic of China.
Taiwanese people are ethnically Chinese.
That said, I don’t have a dog in that fight and don’t care one way or another whether Taiwan is considered part of China or a separate country.
You seem offended by that for some reason, so my last reply to you is: I first said Asian/Chinese. I wasn’t implying any political innuendo into the matter, I was merely referencing common Asian practices that I know are true in Taiwan as well as mainland China. Factories are factories, be it in mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, Africa or anywhere else. Stop trying to read offense where there isn’t.
And have a nice day.
My understanding is that this isn’t even about making the semiconductors, this is just about building the factory in the first place. In this case, Taiwan’s expertise in making chips means fuck all.
Gamers Nexus recently did a really good video about paying contractors to build out their acoustic testing chamber. In theory, that is just “put foam on the walls” but they go into everything ranging from which spikes are foam versus metal, how cabling and ventilation are run, and even what is under the floor.
And that is where the expertise comes into play. Theoretically, any competent contractor can follow instructions and build a fab. If you ever meet a competent contractor, protect them with your life.
The reality is that TSMC is going to be constantly having to fly out their people to inspect construction work, indicate what needs to be redone, etc. At which point… why are they paying others to do stuff they need to redo anyway?
Modern fabs are some of the most complex things on the planet. They need to be if they are operating at the nanometer scale (let alone sub 10 nm scale… even accounting for the shenanigans that are used to define those scales for marketing purposes).)
I don’t understand your example. You don’t just tell someone “Hey, I want an acoustic testing chamber.”
Your “experts” are going to have the plans already made and the contractors build to that spec. The contractors don’t ‘decide where to use metal or foam. Your experts’ building plans should have that already in there, otherwise they aren’t much of an expert.
Have you ever worked with contractors?
Nothing is ever done truly to spec. And you also learn fun lessons about the ramifications of not specifying exactly what size and head screws to use on that cabinet. Every other cabinet said to use zinc plated square maxi-loc head 1.5 inch screws, but this cabinet didn’t specify so they actually used iron phillips head screws because they had extras. Or maybe that is actually a gang box and now you have the problem where there is not enough clearance to have a light switch on each side of a wall.
Now extrapolate that to something where minute differences can completely break processes months or years down the line.
The GN acoustic chamber is a good example of just what kind of thought goes into something like that. And that is caveman shit relative to a fab.
And just to be clear, this is not me shitting on contractors. A halfway decent contractor is way better at building stuff than I ever will be and it is important to actually specify anything you care about.
But also, as someone who needs to redo his floors because the folk the previous owners hired were grossly incompetent? Fuck them contractors.
I agree that your point is usually true. But I am not sure that is the case here. In prior news they alleged that they developed the knowledge as they learned from experience from issues with past fabs. If there are no fabs in the continent anywhere close to what they want to build it’s possible that there aren’t enough workers with all the skillsets they are looking for.
On the other hand they are known to take advantage of the fact that their workers are so specialized that it’s difficult to find alternative job offers so they don’t pay well. They will definitely run into the scenario you described when they look for fab operation staff. At least this is known so many people avoid this field entirely.
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Absolutely. But most of the people in the industry refuses to acknowledge the truth and would rather whine. In some cases they deride software engineering as “easier short term gains” which is completely false. At least in this case supply and demand seem to be working. At some point they’ll have to pay more or no one will invest in a career in an exploitative field.
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Journalists really shouldn’t let businesses get away with not saying the quiet part out loud.
It’s Business Inside-Her. What do you expect?
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No, I was attempting to make a sexual joke. Business Insider has a bad habit of taking in whatever bullshit Big Daddy Business tells them without any shred of “journalism”.
It also would have been perfectly fine to name the company in the headline. There is plenty of room for it. But that’s Business Insider for you.
A world leading bleeding edge chip maker is looking at building in the desert and claims there’s not enough resources to do it. Sounds like Arizona doesn’t have enough chip knowledge, which is believable because there are no other chip or silicon manufacturing in the state.
What is Arizona proposing as a solution? Because TSMC is already saying they have an answer to the “not enough talent” problem and are paying god knows what to fly some of the best educated architects in the world over and house them in a place that no one wants to be.
It sounds like you don’t understand the problem.
Sounds like Arizona doesn’t have enough chip knowledge, which is believable because there are no other chip or silicon manufacturing in the state.
Intel has multiple fabs in Arizona and is building 20A fabs there.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites
It sounds like you don’t understand the problem.
No other chip production in the state?
Intel has several fabs in Chandler, AZ. They have down to 10 nm there, with 5nm being their best. So there definitely is a chunk of knowledge in the state.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites
This article states several others: https://www.chipsetc.com/semiconductor-companies-in-arizona.html
Seems like semiconductors are kind of a big deal in and around Chandler which is presumably why TSMC chose there.
It is very inaccurate to say there is no other chip or silicon manufacturing in the state. There is a ton in Phoenix - Microchip has multiple fabs and is headquartered in Scottsdale, there’s also NXP, ON Semi, Intel, probably more that I don’t know about. It’s not the exact same technology that TSMC is building (AFAIK), but there is definitely a strong semiconductor industry in Arizona.
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The highest volume Intel fab in the world is in Arizona, about an hour from the TSMC site. TSMC has been trying to poach people from Intel by offering them more money. However many people are rejecting their offer, despite the pay raise, due to the toxic work culture at TSMC and possibly a longer commute.
Sounds like Arizona doesn’t have enough chip knowledge, which is believable because there are no other chip or silicon manufacturing in the state.
Dude you are so wrong. Intel has MASSIVE fabs there and are building an even larger one on Chandler, Motorola has built chips in AZ at many different locations for 30+ years, Honeywell, Nokia, etc. ALL have plants there. It is colloquially known as the Silicon Desert because of this.
I worked for a Fortune 100 tech company that claimed they couldn’t get enough qualified workers to fill open jobs. It was utter bullshit. The workers they brought in from out of the country were typically right out of school or with a very short work history who needed a lot of training, not the highly skilled workers the company claimed they needed.
The foreign workers were cheap and routinely worked 100 hour weeks because they had no family or social life in the U.S. American workers with families and lives outside of work could not and would not work those kind of hours consistently. The company then would peer rank employees and (surprise!) the foreign workers working 100 hour weeks would perform more tasks than those working 60 hour weeks.
U.S. citizens would routinely be denied raises and ultimately forced out of their jobs because of this practice. What companies want and foreign workers provide is a cheap workforce that will work 100 hour weeks and can’t readily switch jobs. Only a government that represents corporations instead of people would facilitate this kind of employee abuse.
I have worked in multiple wafer fabs in Arizona, there are plenty of workers but the way they do things is strictly through contractor companies where your not guaranteed a position within the actual company at all, your contract lasts for 6 months, or a year, and then hopefully when it’s done the contractor you were working with has another gig for you at another Fab, or you just go with a different contractor for a different assignment. Wages are barely above minimum, there are no advancement opportunities, there’s no raises, the shifts are 12 hours and most of the time the only thing that’s available is overnight. The problem isn’t that there aren’t workers, the problem has never been that there aren’t workers, the problem is that these jobs are unsustainable for workers to survive with current business practices, and rather than attempting to fix that their plan is to bring in an even more exploitable class of people.
What was that Netflix documentary called… American Factory? Chinese buys glass manufacturer in US and it covers the culture differences and training when bringing Chinese labor over to train and assist American workers.
I read this Wired article a couple months ago that though long does do a really good job of covering the company, its culture, and the issues with trying to run a factory in the U.S. : https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/
This seems like an “if you build it, they will come” situation. We clearly don’t have a thriving chip maker industry in this country, so it’s going to take a while to build that job market.
I thought the US gov was dedicated to making this happen no matter the cost?
Why do people keep saying this? There are many fans in the US. And for those that manufacture abroad, they still design their chips hear, ie Apple. People don’t want to work at TSMC precisely because there are alternatives. Intel is demanding, but TSMC has a horrible track record regarding respecting their workers and safety. They don’t even lock out electricity or gases on their tools when they’re being worked on. As a personal anecdote, I received an offer from a company that paid much better to work at TSMC, but declined the offer based on the customer. Luckily a couple months later I found another job at the site I wanted that paid a little better even.
Agreed. It seems that the arguments here have more to do with time. I’m totally making an assumption here, but wouldn’t catching up with the Taiwanese take at least half a generation of time to learn the craft properly let alone make innovative advances in semiconductor manufacturing and architecture?
No, Intel tried a novel architecture (different from TSMC) and it was found to be unviable. They basically wasted a few years going down the wrong path. They have incredible engineers and will catch up. We’re at a point where the technology is limited by the machines they buy, which Intel and TSMC have the same vendors. They are behind because they went down a fruitless path, but they switched course and are now playing catch-up
