This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
"If an engineer [in Taiwan] gets a call when he is asleep, he will wake up and start dressing," he said. "His wife will ask: 'What's the matter?' He would say: 'I need to go to the factory.' The wife will go back to sleep without saying another word. This is the work culture."
Fuck that shit, that's not work culture, that's exploitation.
What the fuck needs to get done by a chop engineer on short notice at midnight anyway
Or are they just calling line workers engineers to avoid paying overtime
When I worked in electronics manufacturing, production engineers were frequently out on the floor. Common issues were:
If anything major (or potentially major) came up, production completely stopped until the problem could be assessed by an engineer. Assembly workers weren't allowed to fix things and they couldn't estimate the cost of continuing to run a job with defects. Our engineers didn't work 2nd/3rd shift though, so every time a job had issues we'd have to drop it and leave it for first shift. A downed line for 8+ hours is a LOT of money and for a bigger company would warrant calling someone in.
(I think the bigger issue is not "work ethics" like the article said or "need" like you said, but that the US has rules and pay requirements for on call employees)
Honey, I'm waiting you tonight.
Sorry, I'm busy.
I made something special...
No, I can't.
Please, just say you cheat on me. I beg.
Sorry, sug. It's just work. Again.
What a moodbreaker. Fifth time in a row. Fuck your boss.
Actually, he promoted me and said you can move in with me there.
Where?
Our quarters within the facility. We can have our time on my breaks. They can even hire you too! They've even built a kindergarten there, so we are full served as a young family.
Divorce. Now.
Our company is like that, but you're not going to get a call every night. Each person in our (small) support group does a rotation of standby one week every two months. During that week you need to be available after hours and have your cell phone on. The upside is that we get time off for working after hours and we get extra days off just for being on standby which more than compensates, plus we get good overtime pay.
I have no problem with that, as long as you pay for what is worth.
I know engineers who had work where their had to be on call like that. However they were doing rotation and they were being compensate for all the time they had to be on call.
From what I remember they were getting 0.3 days of paid holidays for each 12h they were being on call. This was on top of their 5 weeks+ of paid holidays (France).
I think the issue is not the work ethic of the employees, but the ethics of the employer in this case.
Edit: I forgot to say but if course if they are actually called then they get paid for the hours they spend at the factory on top of the compensation.
That depends on pay and other obligations.
Work ethic? Fuck you and your "work ethic." I do my job and I do it well because it pays me to do it and if I don't do it well, they could replace me. Why do I need a "work ethic?"
They want US workers to be cheap labor without sacrificing quality. It's impossible to do that so they're blaming the workers for being bad instead of blaming the companies for not paying workers well enough.
It's never been about US workers having the skills. It's always been that we expect to be compensated for our labor. Paying real wages looks bad for their bottom line so they export the work and import the product at a fraction of the cost.
Actually if you read some of the stuff TSMC's top guy has said, you'll see there may be a bit more than compensation involved. It looks a bit like good old fashioned racism. Something about Taiwanese brains vs American brains. It's not good at all.
Work ethic is code for we want labor to be cheaper and not need to poop.
"Work ethic" is just HR speech for "cheap and easily exploitable"
Alternate explanation: manufacturer from country with poor labor laws realises skilled workers are expensive.
Jobs at the TSMC semiconductor factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience.
They want slaves.
The Factory in Arizona could require long hours and total obedience.
Wft does total obedience mean. Lol what bullshit.
I work in a semi conductor fab and I assure you the most inept workers here are the upper managers.
I have to give 3 separate updates a day with the same information to the same people. They are constantly worried about micro-schedules and push backs, while also requireing endless meetings to discuss why we arent making the deadlines. Its fucking ludacris. Also their Internet doesnt work inside the fab so I have to stop work early to leave and then email them their fucking updates.
These are the same people who are attempting to use temp companies to fill every position and then wondering if their workers have the work ethic. Lol.
Pay people a living wage and stop making their jobs miserable.
I hope you are making bank lol I wouldn't put up with that shit for a week 😂
"You aren't sweat-shoppy enough to host one of OUR sweat shops."
Haha okay, xinny.
Ah yes, the skill to work 100 hours a week and be on call 24/7 and expect things like breaks. They should ask Amazon where they hire because that’s much of the same!
This exploitative just creates burned out engineers. It's a reason total productivity has seen increasing with reduced work weeks. Well rested and happy people are vastly more efficient.
This is just a negotiating tactic. An extra tax break will solve those problems. Nothing to see here. Move along.
That is a horribly lax attitude to attempted extortion.
Why would anyone know how to make chips, if we don't make chips. Who's going to teach them to make chips, the chip fairy?
Mr. Pringles
Hilariously, Pringles are not technically "chips" and can't be called that legally.
That's why manufacturering was sent over there in the first place, to exploit a labor market that works harder for less.
We are not lazy, we just know we are getting fucked and are not too afraid to speak up about it.
TSMC about to hold the largest allocation of H1B visas given to a single company in US history.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It's why the company, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., wants to get the US government to approve visas for up to 500 additional Taiwanese workers — a development that an Arizona labor union is trying to stop.
Differences in work culture between the US and Taiwan — where employees say extended shifts and worker obedience are expected — could bring challenges to not only the construction of the factory but also its operations after opening.
On July 24, a Taiwanese YouTube channel with nearly 3 million subscribers posted a video accusing the Arizona workers of being lazy and using their phones too much on the job, a bilingual newsletter on tech, business, and US-Asia relations reported.
But Focus Taiwan reported in June that when he was asked about US workers' concerns about the company's culture, Mark Liu, TSMC's chair, said: "Those who are unwilling to take shifts should not enter semiconductor manufacturing."
Liu also said that TSMC's US workers would not be expected to adopt the same work culture as those in Taiwan — and that he'd be open to changes as long as the company's core values were upheld.
"The TSMC Arizona fab is now in a critical phase of handling and installing all of the most advanced and dedicated equipment in a sophisticated facility," the company told Insider, citing the deployment of giant and complex tools.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That doesn't sound like jobs. It sounds like indenture.
If this story interests you, and you haven't read Chip War, definitely read Chip War.
Oh ok so we aren't being slaves enough is what they're saying
