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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) faces challenges managing employees at its new fab in Arizona who are unaccustomed to the long work hours and management culture that in Taiwan have helped make the company the world’s largest chip foundry.

“The work culture in Taiwan is really different than in the U.S.,” said a person identified as a TSMC Arizona fab equipment engineer on Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies. “TSMC will have to change to an eight-hour work day five days a week.”

To maximize profits, fab operators need to keep expensive and highly sensitive capital equipment running 24/7. To help prevent production halts resulting in billions of dollars of losses and scrapped silicon wafers, production engineers must monitor and tweak their equipment constantly. TSMC engineers remain on-call after ordinary working hours in the event of an emergency.

“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.”

TSMC should expand its workforce so employees can work reasonable hours each day and still enjoy good benefits, according to the employee who has been with the company for about a year. “I think TSMC might at least approach this in Arizona as it has to compete to retain and attract talent against companies like Intel right across the street.”

TSMC is in the midst a hiring spree as the demand for chips soars.

“We are increasing the number of employees big time,” said TSMC spokesperson Nina Gao. In 2020, the company hired about 8,000 workers, or more than 10 percent of the total headcount of 60,000. In 2021, the company hired a similar number, she added.

Face time

Long meetings at TSMC are another frustration for the American engineer who posted on Glassdoor. “These meetings add up to three hours in a day easily,” said the new recruit. “That’s a lot of the work day. Some of the solution may be in software. Most of these meetings could be automated. The engineer who last worked with the equipment would record tool status and changes and make recommendations” to the next shift.

A senior TSMC engineer largely agreed. The principal engineer spoke with EE Timesanonymously because he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.

“I think some software may be modified so that it is more in line with the Americans’ habits. It’s too old,” he said.

“Our analysis software has been passed down since the establishment of the company [in 1987]. There may have been some slight improvements in the software along the way, but the interface remains