TSMC Reviews

The work culture in Taiwan is really different than in the US. I am sure TSMC will have to change to an 8 hour work day five days a week or do what other companies do with Fabs and run three days on, four days off, four days on, three days off rotations. As it is right now in Taiwan The minimum amount of time at the company is 10 hours a day, but realistically is running up to even 12 hours a day. This is for those of us who are American training to go back to the new operation in Arizona. The reality for people from Taiwan is that they are doing even more than 12 hour days often. There's also the night shifts and weekend shifts on duty and/or on call. That last part is understandable as the fab lives 24/7. The training in this experience really depends on one person who is your "trainer". My experience has lacked any structure, but had no shortage of expectations. I came up with some process to approach learning new equipment and daily tasks, but to be honest don't know that I've arrived yet. TSMC doesn't seem to enshrine a sense of individual freedom. The company provides housing for those of us training from the states, but has very much micromanaged everything we do in our living arrangement. There's a curfew with no guests allowed for example. And the long term housing adds another hand hour commute.

Let me start by saying that I was with the first batch of engineers that flew to Taiwan to be trained in advanced semiconductor technology so that we could then help open the fab in AZ. There is a large list of things to be critical of but I think the biggest issue is that there is no plan. From the beginning, it was clear that the company had no plan for what to do with us. We arrived and no critical document was in English (including basic SOPs or other instructions necessary to perform our job functions). So, they told us that we need to translate everything ourselves (although speaking Chinese was not a job requirement). As you might suspect, Google Translate is not the most effective tool when trying to translate important documents. I have been in Taiwan for over 14 months now and they still have yet to translate everything into English. Upon arrival, we also discovered that there really is no permanent seating for us. They didn’t even try to set up a temporary spot for us. We kind of just had to squeeze between multiple of our colleagues and fight for space on a shared desk which is not equipped with any ergonomic equipment. Multiple people have already started complaining about neck, back, and wrist pain due to the poor seating arrangement. They try to integrate us into the Taiwan Fab, but it is near impossible with the language barrier. They make it very difficult for us to have access to the systems needed to do our jobs. To this day, I still don't have access to most critical systems that I need in order to perform my work. Our training is mostly dependent on what trainer we got. But most are too busy to actually train us. HR has admitted that they have very few actual company policies. This has led to them either deferring to Taiwan HR policies or just flat out making up policies on an employee by employee basis. The relocation package to Taiwan is absolutely horrific compared to what any other American company would provide and in many cases they misrepresented what the benefits were before we arrived in Taiwan. They only provide transporation to the fab during certain times during the day. We constantly have to beg just for them to pay for transportation to/from work if we have to take a half day or sick day. They stated that they only pay for a taxi for us to go home if we already worked longer than 12 hours that day (not to mention our housing is 1 hour away from the office so they are really asking for a 14-hour day). They make up covid policies on the spot and have kicked random people out of their housing if they get covid (and then a few weeks later will change the policy and try to hide it). They attempted to control our lives outside of work by controlling what other employees we can and cannot see (when there were only a few covid cases in the entire country). Our housing isn’t equipped with drinkable water nor dryers in each unit. The housing that they showed us before we moved to Taiwan looked nothing like the housing we actually moved into. They didn’t tell us until a year in that all tsmc rules at work also apply to our housing (they still have yet to officially admit that, presumably so that they can change rules as they see fit). They do not own the housing that we stay in and have yet to tell us why they are able to make up these random rules for our housing. For those that haven't been to Taiwan, understand that tsmc has so much influence that they can pretty much convince the landlords to follow any rules they set. I understand that living conditions are different here than in the US, but when you are asking employees and their families to upend their entire lives and move to another country for 2 years, you should at least try to make it appealing. An attempt has not even been made. Everything here is highly disorganized. There is very little documentation which makes it hard to replicate certain tasks (which would normally be pretty easy to replicate). Otherwise easy tasks turn into multiple hours of tracking down the right person who knows this specific information who then tells you to reach out to this person who is busy in a meeting so waiting another 1-2 hours before finally getting an answer and moving onto the next step. Over the course of my time here, I have already had 2 directors, 3 department managers, 4 section managers, and various other mid-level bosses. No entity on earth can function properly when there is this much management constantly changing and being moved around. I haven’t heard one Taiwanese employee say they like working here. Even my first week here I would ask some of my colleagues and they were very open about not liking it here.