Inside TSMC’s Expansion Struggles in Arizona
Viola Zhou, reporting for Rest of World on TSMC’s massive, but now much-delayed, chip fabrication campus outside Phoenix:
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.
Some 2,200 employees now work at TSMC’s Arizona plant, with about
half of them deployed from Taiwan. While tension at the plant
simmers, TSMC has been ramping up its investments, recently
securing billions of dollars in grants and loans from the U.S.
government. Whether or not the plant succeeds in making
cutting-edge chips with the same speed, efficiency, and
profitability as facilities in Asia remains to be seen, with many
skeptical about a U.S. workforce under TSMC’s army-like command
system. “[The company] tried to make Arizona Taiwanese,” G. Dan
Hutcheson, a semiconductor industry analyst at the research firm
TechInsights, told Rest of World. “And it’s just not going to
work.” […]
TSMC’s work culture is notoriously rigorous, even by Taiwanese
standards. Former executives have hailed the Confucian
culture, which promotes diligence and respect for
authority, as well as Taiwan’s strict work ethic as key to the
company’s success. Chang, speaking last year about
Taiwan’s competitiveness compared to the U.S., said that “if [a
machine] breaks down at one in the morning, in the U.S. it will be
fixed in the next morning. But in Taiwan, it will be fixed at 2
a.m.” And, he added, the wife of a Taiwanese engineer would “go
back to sleep without saying another word.”
Even the use of wife rather than spouse speaks to the culture clash.
★
Viola Zhou, reporting for Rest of World on TSMC’s massive, but now much-delayed, chip fabrication campus outside Phoenix:
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.
Some 2,200 employees now work at TSMC’s Arizona plant, with about
half of them deployed from Taiwan. While tension at the plant
simmers, TSMC has been ramping up its investments, recently
securing billions of dollars in grants and loans from the U.S.
government. Whether or not the plant succeeds in making
cutting-edge chips with the same speed, efficiency, and
profitability as facilities in Asia remains to be seen, with many
skeptical about a U.S. workforce under TSMC’s army-like command
system. “[The company] tried to make Arizona Taiwanese,” G. Dan
Hutcheson, a semiconductor industry analyst at the research firm
TechInsights, told Rest of World. “And it’s just not going to
work.” […]
TSMC’s work culture is notoriously rigorous, even by Taiwanese
standards. Former executives have hailed the Confucian
culture, which promotes diligence and respect for
authority, as well as Taiwan’s strict work ethic as key to the
company’s success. Chang, speaking last year about
Taiwan’s competitiveness compared to the U.S., said that “if [a
machine] breaks down at one in the morning, in the U.S. it will be
fixed in the next morning. But in Taiwan, it will be fixed at 2
a.m.” And, he added, the wife of a Taiwanese engineer would “go
back to sleep without saying another word.”
Even the use of wife rather than spouse speaks to the culture clash.