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Comment by AnonC | Hacker News Reader

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

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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? :)

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.

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.

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)"

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