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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I've read a few articles on Bloomberg and/or NYT (drawing a blank on the exact source) that a very large portion of the workforce was taken directly from Taiwan and the American workers were having a hard time adopting to the Taiwanese way of doing things (long hours, on call all the time, constantly stepping outside your predefined roll, etc.). Is this currently now, or will it in the future, affect the overall success of the factory? (It also might simply be untrue for all I know.)

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Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC was reported [1] by Nikkei Asia in March 2023 as saying this about the work culture:

> "Design is the U.S.'s competitiveness. On the other hand, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea have competitiveness in manufacturing...It's also about the work culture and the people."

> The TSMC founder cited chip production equipment as an example. Because these machines are so expensive, they need to be running 24 hours a day to justify their cost. "If it breaks down at 1 in the morning, in the U.S. it will be fixed in the next morning, but in Taiwan, it will be fixed at 2 a.m."

> "If an engineer [in Taiwan] gets a call when he is asleep, he will wake up and start dressing. 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," Chang said. "This is the work culture."

[1]: https://archive.ph/LqV4M

As a person who runs manufacturing in the US, this is our work culture too. Also the same at the other 3 previous places I have been at. The company culture asks for something, if it is not provided, you find someone who wants to be a part of that type of culture. There is an expectation to pay for it though.

Having to wake at 2 am on call is just bad for cardiovascular health, it's really just paying for one's life at retirement age and there's no real salary that can level that.

Having to wake at 2 am on call is just bad for cardiovascular health, it's really just paying for one's life at retirement age and there's no real salary that can level that. Young people have an invisibility bias in psychology, they underestimate the physical toll of late nights and workplace stressors, which is cumulative over time.

The west has the same work culture when the industry and the pay demand it. The difference is that it may well be the woman who tells the man she's on the way to the factory. Or the wife who tells the wife. Thank goodness for liberalism.

Hard to feign sympathy when companies trout the "no one wants to work" line when they always forget the second part of the statement that is always implied: "for how little we pay."

"There is a shortage of qualified Software Engineers (who want to work 60 hour weeks for $40k per year)"

This isn't all so unusual if its written into the job description. SREs in tech companies are expected to respond within a few minutes if they're paged in the middle of the night. They are usually compensated for their oncall time, however.

Expecting a worker to come to the factory out of fear or good will is not the way. Just write it into the contract/expectations/evaluations.

Out of the major players, Google is the only one I know of that compensates SREs for oncall time (and they do so fairly generously).

All European tech companies I know compensate fairly well for oncall.

There's a rate for simply being on call (you'll get paid extra without even getting any calls), there's a rate that gets summed on top for actually working off hours and this rate increases depending on the time of the day you worked, whether it's the weekend or a holiday.

Yes, in Germany all months when you are expected to in the oncall rotation are basically an addendum to your usual contract that you sign and receive more money even if nothing ever happened during your shifts.

...and do machines really break as often as software in production? :)

Sounds a lot like corporate slavery.

When the machines need to be running 24/7, why do they not hire qualified workforce that runs in 3 shifts?

Or, hopefully, the engineer who is paid to fix it is paid for their time.

As far as I know, they do. I think the bigger problem of the US manufacturing industry is that the most talented and motivated people have gravitated towards Wall Street and the "ads" companies. They not only pay significantly higher (due to cost/revenue structure) but also have a comfy working environment compared to factories.

If you believe there has been a decline in American work ethics, this actually seems like a good thing. Optimistically they could reach a good middle ground here.

I am not sure framing it as work ethic is right. It is simply the cost of labor. Some people might argue American's are more or less productive the hours they are working, which means just because someone from Taiwan is willing to be oncall 24/7, doesn't mean you'll have to hire exactly 3 American workers at 8 hours each to match productivity. You might need 5 because Americans truly are that lazy, or you might only need 2 because the on-call isn't that demanding since Americans are more productive.

Not saying any of these specifics are true, but framing it as work-ethic is not accurately capturing why it is more expensive to run factories in one country vs another.

To be clear, you are saying work ethic does exist and it is a factor but it's not the only factor, with productivity being another one?

Yea agree that it exists, but work ethic is one variable in the cost of labor equation.

I was commenting on a story about how americans had problems adapting to taiwanese work culture, and saying how they could benefit from this cultural exchange to optimize their productivity. Like you, I also do not thing this really captures why it's more expensive to run factories here, because I've never even suggested this.

Many of those articles came out before TSMC received CHIPS Act grants. As soon as the CHIPS Act money was committed to TSMC, the factory was suddenly ahead of schedule. Noah Smith called it out here:

> Three months after TSMC announced further delays at its $40 billion Arizona fabs, the chip manufacturer has now said the plant is expected to be operating at full capacity by the end of [2024].

> The announcement comes several weeks after it was first reported that TSMC is set to be awarded more than $5 billion in federal grants under the US CHIPS and Science Act…

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...

I've seen those same articles, but also ones saying that was largely a ploy. There were billions of dollars in subsidies that took some time to lock down, and the reported problems with American workers evaporated right after the money was committed to TSMC.

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