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Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

I suspect instead a wage shortage, not a lack of people to hire.

Sorta. If the internet is to believed:

> “The reality for people from Taiwan is that they are doing even more than 12-hour days often,” said the American engineer on Glassdoor. “There’s also the night shifts and weekend shifts on duty and/or on call.”

- https://www.eetimes.com/tsmcs-arizona-culture-clash/

>“Sure, TSMC might allow a reasonable expression of opinion [on work-related matters]—but only from an engineer or deputy manager to the department manager,” Joey, who has worked as a 5-nanometer chip engineer for TSMC in Taiwan for nearly six years, told Fortune. “It’s impossible for managers to express their opinions to upper-level management. This simply cannot be done,” Joey said. (He asked to be identified only by his nickname due to fear of reprisals.)

> [...]

> “Our salary is only [for] 10 hours [a day], [but] we don’t leave until we’re done. And we’ve never been willing to report it,” a member of a private 85,000-person Facebook group for current and former employees of TSMC in Taiwan wrote in February.

- https://fortune.com/2023/06/03/tsmc-arizona-plant-jobs-salar...

This doesn't sound like it's only a wage problem. This sound like TSMC trying to use a work culture that just doesn't mesh with what Americans are willing to tolerate.

Pay high enough and people will tolerate everything that you describe.

Just imagine if every chip assembly worker made 500K/year - would they care that upper management isn't listening? No, they wouldn't. Would they be okay with 12h/day? A lot of people absolutely would.

The problem is rock bottom pay for rock bottom work environment.

While I completely agree, there might be something else, i.e. the elephant in the room. While having TSMC factories in the USA is great for everyone, it's not ideal for Taiwan as a state. Therefore it's in the best interest of Taiwan to prolong the current situation where the whole world depends on TSMC factories located in Taiwan, and not anywhere else.

TSMC Taiwan is keeping their leading-edge nodes in Taiwan with a 3-4 year delay, which appeased the Taiwanese public/officials.

The bigger issue is that China might catch up to TSMC USA fabrication by the time that they actually start fabbing due to all these delays and China will have a superior chip capacity, making the defense aspect completely moot.

> Making the defense aspect completely moot

The biggest defense aspect (for the US) is preserving supply in the face of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, not beating China in chip capacity?

I would not be opposed to the gov subsidizing 50% of salaries of chip manufacturer salaries to achieve this.

It's a crucial part of industry growth and military superiority. We have some of the top-tier minds for chip design, we need top-tier manufacturing.

Nvidia/TSMC has already proven that hardware superiority is a huge advantage. We absolutely need it.

Unfortunately, this will set America behind.

Big tech all had employees working 10-16h days in the beginning. Even now, software startups are working their employees hard. If Americans aren't willing to work extra hard, we're heading towards what happening in Europe (negative GDP growth, increasing wealth gap, high youth unemployment).

I agree. Labor shortage is mostly just lowball pay most the time. List the work and salary range and then let's see if it's a real shortage

I suspect this is just the start of such stories being an extremely common theme for almost all industry other than white collar prestige careers moving forward.

The demographics are pretty much written in stone at this point for the foreseeable future.

The world is running out of children:

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...

And soon, the world will run out of people:

https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/1676590258857603076

Run out of people... for what? For buying Tesla model 3s? For logging the Amazon?

Pffffff the Amazon will be long gone by then.

they'll be fighting over arable land in now-tropical Upstate New York

I suspect not...

BLS national semiconductor industry-specific occupational employment data[1] circa 2022 suggests there are roughly as many 15-1252 title-specific "Software Developers"[2] (13,220) as there are all positions categorized under 49-0000 "Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Occupations"[3] (13,410)...never mind that what requires specialized handling is bleeding edge ASML EUV tech for which there is a single deeply backlogged global source of, substantially increasing risk to TSMC at what is clearly a critical phase.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_334400.htm

[2] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_334400.htm#15-0000

[3] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_334400.htm#49-0000

I'm not so sure - this is incredibly technical work so it doesn't ring as hollow as it does when McDonald's or whatever claim the same.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

For something as exotic as chip manufacture, you genuinely can have a labor shortage. We are idiots not to immediately green light any visas for people with these skills.

It can also happen for skilled craft professions. It takes time to train people in that stuff, and if there's been a prolonged period of reduced investment in domestic manufacturing we might genuinely not have enough. Sometimes not having key people like welders, electricians, skilled plumbers, etc. can hold up a project since other things depend on those things.

You could argue that it still ultimately is a wage shortage, but even if the wages are high it takes time to train.

It will take a while for the US to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity and talent base, but we can do it.

>but even if the wages are high it takes time to train

Exactly. There's also a brain surgeon shortage even though salaries are great, but not everyone has the will, skills, time, money and patience to study and become a credentialed brain surgeon despite the high pay.

Same with semi jobs, you need a hard science background that not everyone has or is willing to go through, including SW devs. Increasing wages might not fix the shortage because not everyone who can do other well paid jobs, can also do semi work.

>Sometimes not having key people like welders, electricians

I would add to this list the specialized construction workers and engineers who can build the buildings required to house a fab. This is similarly specialized, I imagine, as things like hospital construction. You can't just pull 100 crews used to building homes and say "Hey build this fab mkay?"

>We are idiots not to immediately green light any visas for people with these skills.

Are we, though? Isn't there some potential for industrial espionage? You know, the kind where the people that desperately want that tech for themselves are kind of the enemy of the main people that have that tech?

Yes, although paying people arbitrarily large amounts makes most shortages go away.

That said, there are a ton of things with a large labor component--and probably most things have a large labor component if you look far enough up the chain--that myself and others will just find a way of doing without if the price increases by 2x/3x/4x/10x.

> For something as exotic as chip manufacture, you genuinely can have a labor shortage. We are idiots not to immediately green light any visas for people with these skills.

All evidence suggests these roles pay between 50-70k USD, require insane hours, and a short course at the local community college is all it takes to be qualified (or qualified enough) to do the job.

For high-end computer-engineering grads? absolutely. For the fork-and-spoon operators in sector 7-G who just press the buttons? nah.

They ain't trying to recruit PhDs or brain surgeons, and may be trying to drag their feet as they do so.

what evidence do you have to suspect that? any info on current wages in that field vs what TSMC were offering etc?

Labor is a market, which means that the only two possibilities are 1) the offered pay is too low, 2) literally nobody in the entire country exists with these skills (in which case, the company needs to pony up the money to train them).

They have to be able to sell chips at a competitive price. In the extreme/absurd case they could pay each employee $1B/year and I’m sure they could find qualified people but they would immediately go out of business.

So thus, the right salary to hire the people they need is somewhere between what they're currently paying, and $1B/year. My guess—and this is only a guess, mind you—is that they'd still be able to staff up on something significantly lower than $1B. But I'm not an economist, so I might be wrong there.

TSMC has a long history of increasing double digit profit margins, in the range of $10B+ per year, and is amongst the most profitable businesses in the world. I would err on the side of TSMC deciding not to pay sufficiently to incentivize labor (which may still be the optimal move for TSMC).

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...

Or 3) we are talking about real markets instead of spherical frictionless cows. The market will eventually balance itself, but it doesn't happen immediately.

Consider yourself (and your family, if you have any). Assuming that the pay is right, how long would it take for you to uproot your life and move to a faraway place where you don't know anyone. And how long would it take for you to familiarize yourself with the new job and become reasonably productive?

My answer would be 1-2 years.

> how long would it take for you to uproot your life

If the price is right, I can be there tomorrow. Companies pay to relocate employees all the time; show me the money.

> how long would it take for you to familiarize yourself with the new job

According to this article, Intel and TSMC have waived any need for an advanced degree and have endorsed this program from Maricopa Community College, which takes ten days to complete: https://qz.com/you-can-now-become-a-semiconductor-technician...

'Traditionally, semiconductor technician jobs required an associate degree. Dropping this educational requirement helps widen the talent pool amid the ramping up of a domestic supply chain, Pearson said. Employers are realizing that “as long as they just get the skills, they really don’t need the degree,” he said.'

I didn't mean temporary assignments. I meant a permanent relocation and everything that it involves. Leaving your former life permanently and building a new life in another place. And dealing with this not only for yourself, but also for your spouse, children, other family members, friends, and pets.

And once you start in your new job, you still need to familiarize yourself with it until your productivity reaches what was expected from you. After all, the goal is not just employing someone but getting them to make substantial net contributions towards the organization's goals.

Not OP, but here's a link to their job listings for AZ. I checked a few random job descriptions and none of them mentioned hourly wage/salary, which is usually a bad sign.

https://ro.careers.tsmc.com/search/?createNewAlert=false&q=&...

On an interesting note, I did notice the wording of what was said in the article was odd

> [...] skilled workers and technicians needed to move equipment into the facility.

> [...] specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility

This doesn't sound so much like the day-to-day factory work that they struggling to hire for, but more so something like: delivery of equipment, warehouse receiving, and equipment install & maintenance personnel.

> I checked a few random job descriptions and none of them mentioned hourly wage/salary, which is usually a bad sign.

It's simply not a legal requirement in Arizona to disclose wage/salary range on job listings.

You need to look at TSMC listings in states like California[1] or Washington[2].

[1] https://ro.careers.tsmc.com/search/?locationsearch=CA

[2] https://ro.careers.tsmc.com/search/?locationsearch=WA

Which is an even worse look for TSMC. They could easily do it, since they already do for other states, but they want to pay bottom dollar so much that they would rather retain that card (a relatively minor one for an employer) in their hand than play it.

Is Intel voluntarily disclosing in Ohio job listings? Nope.

Is Samsung voluntarily disclosing in Texas job listings? Nope.

A "worse look" argument simply has no basis in reality when this corporate behavior is effectively status quo across all relevant competitors in the industry.

Relevant competitors would include higher paying software technology businesses because a smart enough person to work at TSMC doing advanced microchip work will instead choose to go into a different field.

I'm not saying such a thing isn't status quo, but simply that, if TSMC wishes to be perceived as "competitive", then an exceedingly easy way to that is to buck the status quo by listing their salary ranges - a competitive action. It seems disingenuous that they would prefer to have it both ways, to cry that they are struggling to attract/keep employees in those positions, yet choose not compete with other companies in that area, by listing information they aren't required to supply.

It just seems like that classic quote, "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." That is what makes it a bad sign - they're excited to complain, but (apparently?) completely incompetent when it comes to fixing the problem they're in.

The evidence is an informal thought experiment: if the salary was $100 million for each position, they would have every role filled. Therefore, there must exist a clearing price for each role between $0 and $100 million such that each role would be filled at or above it (and below which it would not be filled). If there are unfilled roles, it is because the role is below the clearing price.

EDIT: all other effects can be ameliorated eventually by paying more. If there isn’t enough specialized labor for the role, the unspecialized labor will be incentivized to specialize themselves. If there isn’t enough labor in the local market, they will move there.

> The evidence is an informal thought experiment: if the salary was $100 million for each position, they would have every role filled.

If the salary was $100 million for each position they might fill every position--but could they keep them filled? If I were getting paid $100 million a year a single month's salary after taxes is enough to retire on at well above my current standard of living. I suspect it would be hard to retain people if they have the option to at any time quit and will never need to work again.

The other lever is quality of life at work.

The relevant measure is the ratio of pay to quality of life at work, not just pay.

What happens after the position is filled doesn’t matter for this argument. The point is that there is a price that will cause somebody to say “this is a good deal for me” and fill the position. If there’s a better deal somewhere else, they’ll go do that instead.

> EDIT: all other effects can be ameliorated eventually by paying more. If there isn’t enough specialized labor for the role, the unspecialized labor will be incentivized to specialize themselves. If there isn’t enough labor in the local market, they will move there.

Proof in the pudding -- working at oil / gas / mining camps in Canada.

All you need is the ability to climb a ladder and be a proud 8th grade graduate; pay is $100k+ CAD, and often much higher for skilled or specialist roles with degrees and certs; easily 200k+ in some cases.

No shortage in finding bodies. Working conditions are brutal, long times away from home, and no shortage of Dear John letters, but there wasn't a shortage of labor.

When there is good $$$ on offer, people will line up around the block. Esp. if all it takes is a 2-week course at the local community college.

I think they were offering like 140 for senior positions. There was a post 3-6 months back I can’t find it at the moment

Someone posted some jobs listings a while back. They pay on the low end and they want a lot of work in return. It’s not surprising at all.

It is also a shortage of workers willing to take slave driving conditions.

Most definitely.

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