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
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.
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.
They never finished the sentence in the news articles.
Business unable to find the labor it needs! Is usually where they stop they leave out the "at the price they want". From the sentence.
It really should say business unable to find the labor it needs at the price it wants
Journalists really shouldn't let businesses get away with not saying the quiet part out loud.
Very rarely is it really something like there's 13 people in the world who can do this. And none of them live here. That's an interesting story, but that's not the story that's often told. It's usually local laborers too expensive we want to import some external labor that's less expensive. At least in the United States then they craft a job specification that can't be matched locally but it's tailored specifically for an external candidate to get a visa.
171It'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.
58Most 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"
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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.
11It 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.
3A 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.
1Sounds 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.
6No 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.
4It 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.
3The 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.
2Fair, agreed, I dont understand the problem.
2Sounds 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.
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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.
60I 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.
21Having worked a summer job as a clean room protocol inspector during construction of a clean room I saw that the vast majority of construction workers there didn’t give two shits about violating even the most important protocols and would I regularly be threatened with violence for enforcing them. The various contracting companies didn’t care enough to fire them.
American construction workers definitely have the skills, but they would have to work to find ones that are more disciplined than the ones I worked with.
12Money. It's not just about skill, people don't give a shit because they have poor pay/working conditions/quality of life. This whole article is about not finding skill labor at the right price.
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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.
8This 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?
7Why 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.
0Agreed. 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?
0No, 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
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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/
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