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The world's largest chipmaker promised to create thousands of US jobs. There are growing tensions over whether US workers have the skills or work ethic to do them. (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology

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The world's largest chipmaker promised to create thousands of US jobs. There are growing tensions over whether US workers have the skills or work ethic to do them.::Jobs at the TSMC semiconductor factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience. Americans may push back on the company's culture.

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[–] bassomitron 53 points 10 months ago (2 children)

So many ignorant comments in this thread. First of all, Taiwan isn't some poor, developing nation, they're extremely modernized and highly educated. They literally rank among the highest education rates and scores in the world: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Taiwan

For comparison of a basic education stat, the US has around a 79% literacy rate among adults while Taiwan has around 98%.

Second of all, TSMC workers in Taiwan make decent money on average:

https://focustaiwan.tw/business/202307010011

And for their US operations it will be above average as well:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TSMC-Salaries-E4130.htm

https://www.salary.com/research/company/tsmc-salary

Now, I do agree that their work culture appears to be toxic. However, how many companies in the US are just as demanding and brutal? While Americans are stereotyped as lazy, we're actually the exact opposite when you look at our average productivity and workloads.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx

https://clockify.me/working-hours

https://www.bls.gov/productivity/

Compared to some Eastern countries, we're definitely working less, but not necessarily producing less, as it's pretty much proven that longer hours results in a sharp drop off in productivity.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241684896_Are_long_hours_reducing_productivity_in_manufacturing

Anyway, just food for thought.

[+] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] bassomitron 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

From that same website you sourced:

What are the rates of literacy in the United States?

Four in five U.S. adults (79 percent) have English literacy skills sufficient to complete tasks that require comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences—literacy skills at level 2 or above in PIAAC (OECD 2013). In contrast, one in five U.S. adults (21 percent) has difficulty completing these tasks (figure 1). This translates into 43.0 million U.S. adults who possess low literacy skills: 26.5 million at level 1 and 8.4 million below level 1, while 8.2 million could not participate in PIAAC’s background survey either because of a language barrier or a cognitive or physical inability to be interviewed. These adults who were unable to participate are categorized as having low English literacy skills, as is done in international reports (OECD 2013), although no direct assessment of their skills is available.

Even if you take away non-native English speakers based on the numbers on that website further down (which you also quote), that results in a literacy rate of 86%. My point still stands that Taiwan has a much higher literacy rate.

Edit: formatting

[–] pleasemakesense 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nah didn't you know every Asian country are developing countries fueled simply by American off shoring for lower wages?

I feel the competency issue is also something to just dismiss, Taiwan has large domestic workforce that's been involved in high end chip making for many years, it's natural you wouldn't find the same level of expertise (on a large scale) that you would have in taiwan

[–] bassomitron 2 points 10 months ago

I completely agree that Taiwan has had decades of shaping a consistent workforce capable of working within cutting edge chip foundries, while the US hasn't really, outside of Intel's foundries which are quite behind TSMC.

I feel the simple solution is for the US government to subsidize an intern/training program where Taiwanese engineers and line workers train US counterparts. I suggest the US subsidize it because our government is the main reason TSMC is even building foundries here to begin with (the DoD correctly views our reliance on TSMC as a critical national security issue due to open hostilities from China threatening Taiwan's independence).