TSMC needs to hire 4,500 Americans but it's "brutal" corporate culture is getting in the way
- Thread starter camrydriver111
- Start date
Work/life balance is important. It’s the most important thing to get right.
When you work 400 hours of OT, and are “no further ahead” but have a bunch of new cars, it’s time to examine the spending and lifestyle side of that balance that drives your OT.
I got through paying for six college educations. I have been where you are, but I did not have OT available. I had to make it work on a clearly defined Navy salary. I had to control the cost side of the equation.
I recommend you focus there.
TRUTH!
Remember there are chips and then there are chips. An auto chip does not need the density of an Apple chip. I understand the TSMC factory will deliver the 5nm technology node, and beyond. Companies like Renesas in Japan are big in auto chips.
5 nanometer node refers to the smallest traces (wires) and the spaces between them on the densest part of the chip. 5 billionths of a meter. Yup.
TSMC wants to come to America because of geo political issues and is bouyed by the recent US iniative to reshore production.
Samsung is huge; they are 2nd in production after TSMC. At least when I was in SEMI.
Yup. Millimeter = 1/1000 meter
Micrometer (micron)=1/1,000,000 meter
nanometer = 1/1,000,000,000 meter
Given that we can't even see items that are only 1 micron in diameter, it is incredibly hard for me to fathom objects in the nanometer range.
Micrometer (micron)=1/1,000,000 meter
nanometer = 1/1,000,000,000 meter
Given that we can't even see items that are only 1 micron in diameter, it is incredibly hard for me to fathom objects in the nanometer range.
5 billionths of a meter ?? !! ??
Visible light can't even resolve that. They have to use UV and liquid immersion to get to that level of detail.
No further ahead was poor wording on my part. Some progress is always being made.
I'm not sure where the "bunch of new cars" came from. In ~34yrs of driving and most of those being married and including my wife's vehicles, I may have owned 5 brand new vehicles. The rest were used. All of them modest. We put approx 25K miles/yr on our cars.
We have no motorized toys, live in a modest home,etc.
I always enjoy reading of other people's experiences and recommendations on this site.
That said, how does one in 2023 have this mandatory awesome work/life/family balance and yet have the ability to put 6 kids through college?
Welcome to my world. Nanometrics baby! I know TSMC is preparing for 3nm and 4nm geometries. 2nm is future...5 billionths of a meter ?? !! ??
Deposition is arguably the highest of the high tech. You need a machine to lay down the thin films in these architectures. "ALD", or Atomic Layer Deposition, deposits material one atom at a time. Yes, there are some smarty-pants engineers out there. The C-Level who run these companies are on a different level altogether. One mfg line in a fab could be $10B it tools. And you need people... In a bazillion level clean room. With miles of stainless steel tubing for the chemicals. Yup. That's Silicon Valley.
How many transistors does a chip have now?
Whereas chips in the 1970s only had a few thousand transistors, the 1 billion mark was hit in 2006 – and now we're indeed packing 60 billion transistors into a chip.
And people worry about thick vs thin...
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Saying any culture or race or nationality works harder is a gross generalization. Flat wrong. Personally I think working smarter is far more important than harder.
Yes some do while others do not across all cultures. I work in the tech field 35 hrs / week and spend 2-4 hours/week learning. My work is a melting pot and not convinced any specific generalization exists.
Yes some do while others do not across all cultures. I work in the tech field 35 hrs / week and spend 2-4 hours/week learning. My work is a melting pot and not convinced any specific generalization exists.
There are certain work cultures. Possibly the most infamous is of the Japanese "salaryman" who isn't necessarily overworked, but where loyalty to the company is paramount. The loyalty is to the employee who follows the (mostly unwritten) rules.
One of my managers went to one of my company's Japanese offices. While he had real stuff to do that kept him there long hours, he talked about how insane their work culture was. The typical salaryman is supposed to arrive before the manager and wait until the manager has left before going home. But he said the office had many employees who just sat around reading newspapers, surfing the internet, and drinking tea. They weren't necessarily productive, but were trying to show devotion to the "unwritten rule" of waiting until the manager was gone.
And while they do have vacation time, the "unwritten rule" is to show devotion to the company by not using it, and possibly showing up to the office when ill.
This is not measuring the same thing though.
This is measuring Productivity rates.
Not how many horus per worker or "hard" they were worked.
Automation, and streamlining processes know as industrail enginering ( paid for by the employer) are a large factor in per capita productivity per worker.
Plus it goes beyond work hours. If the manager wants an after hours meetup for drinks and supper then that extends the day.
Commuting is another part of the day. Spending two or three hours or more getting to and from work makes for long days.
Fair enough. What I will say is, I have dealt with a lot of workers who feel entitled. I just don't get it. An honest day's work for an honest day's pay.
Sure. The whole after hours drinking culture with coworkers is another thing. The whole devotion to your company even over one's own family. I believe that's one reason why pod hotels do well - to maybe skip going home drunk and then just come back to the office in the morning.
I don't know if Chinese workers necessarily work harder. I heard some news piece where a reporter went to a Chinese company and noticed that there were a lot of people sitting around, although it was over 20 years ago. He seemed to think they were extremely low productivity, but at the time the labor costs were considerably lower than they are today. I also remember what it was like visiting China over 30 years ago, and a lot of the service I got was abysmal, where it was later explained to me that it was very difficult to get fired from a job. But it's probably very different now with private employers. And for the Taiwanese companies like Foxconn and Pegatron - they won't mess around with poor employees - even if it's in China.
Samsung is a solid #2 in contract manufacturing in logic circuits, and a solid #1 in memory circuits. Other chip companies like Qualcomm and nVidia are design only / fabless so they ask TSMC / Samsung to make chips for them. I think Global Foundry is #3 but not sure how close it is to Intel.
Can US fabs work? I believe so as Intel used to be able to do their own very well. However once the accountants / sales took over the company they decided it is more profitable to just neglect instead of invest. This happens to UltraTech when they lost their stepper leadership to Nikon and Canon, and now Nikon and Canon lost their leadership to ASML.
I believe the best workers in Taiwan work just as hard as the best workers in US, if you pay them right. If you try to cut cost by paying them less and force the best to relocate to low cost of living places (i.e. from Santa Clara to Oregon or Arizona), you will lose a lot of talents to the competitors who don't move.
I think the pod hotel / drinking culture is more of a Japanese and Korean thing. Chinese business dinner thing is more of a customer / government relationship thing instead of manager / report thing. Based on what I know from coworkers in China, they are "low productivity" mainly because their average tenure is younger instead of the US where many stay technical for their entire career. In many Asian culture you must move to management or you are seen as a loser, so their technical staff tends to be younger (i.e. 3-8 years) whereas the US tend to have the same engineer stay for 10-30 years in the same position (may switch companies but same job). Another problem with Chinese employees at the moment is they tend to have a culture of pleasing your own boss instead of doing the right thing. In the US, at least in the larger companies, you are told to do the right thing and report your boss' misconduct, whereas this is likely not something often done in China, therefore doing the right thing may not be the best choices.
Also the best employees around the world tend to be recruited to 1st world for a better living standard. I know the best guy in China I used to work with was recruited into the US when he was going to immigrate to Canada, but we offered him a US job instead and he happily accepted it. We pay him US standard salary and he ended up being my boss too.
They’re beyond just UV, they’re into extreme ultra violet created by blasting molten tin with lasers. ASML’s system, when averaged out, is blasting those tiny tiny droplets with an average of 25kW over several seconds… with an instantaneous power over 20 gigawatts!
Excuse the click baity thumbnail (gotta play those YouTube algorithm games y’know?), it’s actually a pretty good if heavily condensed video.
Sam_Julier
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I agree with @Astro14 to focus on cost control.
We focused on costs and saving. It allowed us to put our two children through private schools and college.
There were no luxuries.
I had the good fortune of being on 100% commission. So the harder I worked the more I made.
But my work/life balance and time with my family suffered greatly.