Smashed $40 billion! TSMC is still being played bad by the Americans, and the construction of factories is seriously lagging behind.

After three long years and huge capital investment, a total of more than 40 billion US dollars of capital squandering, but what is embarrassing is that TSMC, as the world's leading semiconductor manufacturer, has not escaped the mercy and manipulation of the United States. As we all know, since the beginning of 2020, in response to the call of the United States, TSMC has begun to actively deploy factories in the vast desert of Arizona, and has invested a huge amount of $12 billion for this.

Just two years later, U.S. President Joe Biden launched a policy plan called the "CHIPS Act", touting that he would allocate up to $53 billion in fiscal funds to subsidize the domestic chip industry. Against this backdrop, TSMC has once again stepped forward and announced the construction of its second wafer factory in Phoenix, and the total investment has soared to a staggering $40 billion. However, despite the funding available, the two plants have unfortunately not yet been completed. The first plant, which was originally expected to be officially put into operation in 2024, had to postpone its production date to 2025 due to serious delays in the construction schedule. There is a problem with the service that was originally planned to be put into production in 2026, so please try again later.

As for why there is such a huge difference in the efficiency of work between the two sides of the strait, friends with relevant professional backgrounds and understandings must know the reason, which is precisely the high degree of competition displayed in East Asian social groups. This phenomenon has challenged the balanced culture of the United States, and TSMC has become another typical example of the American factory model. We must realize that the reason why TSMC has been able to rise rapidly, in addition to its advanced technological strength, is that it has borrowed and absorbed Japan's economic management concepts and is committed to refining the work process, so as to effectively control production costs while improving work efficiency. In other words, TSMC is competing with competitors in the same industry by using its human resources to the limit and adopting efficient and low-cost business strategies. Looking back at history, we can find that the chip manufacturing industry in the United States and Europe is gradually declining precisely because of similar pressures.

It is said that the secret behind TSMC's remarkable achievements in its career is that it has created a highly tense and military-like working environment. Not only do the company's engineers work up to 12 hours a day, but they also often have to work overtime on weekends to complete heavy tasks, so that the actual number of hours worked per week often exceeds the legal limit of 50 hours. Within the industry, many people are critical of TSMC's mandatory work system and believe that their employees have a slave-like mentality. They firmly believe that TSMC's engineers are paid well and given generous bonuses mainly because they have to take orders constantly to get these rewards. However, for Americans who have become accustomed to a relaxed lifestyle, it may be difficult for them to adapt to TSMC's management model, which resembles that of slave owners.

In FY2021, with the official start of the construction of the Arizona factory, TSMC, a well-known Taiwanese company, began to actively recruit and hire a total of 600 experienced employees in the U.S. market, who will be dispatched to Tainan for a full year of professional training. However, unexpectedly, less than a year later, dozens of employees left the scene angrily, began to publish all kinds of posts in cyberspace, and even fiercely criticized and criticized the original workplace.

On the whole, the problems reported by these former employees are mainly concentrated in the following aspects: huge work pressure, strict militarized management system, strict prohibition of laziness during work, inability to sign in normally after work, and possible problems such as workplace power struggles and workplace sexual harassment. It's worth noting that while security guards haven't shown significant business improvement over the past year, their skills in producing slides (PowerPoint presentations) have improved significantly. Based on the collective feedback of many American employees, TSMC's workplace evaluation scored only 3.2 points, compared to 4.1 points for competitors in the same industry, such as Intel and Texas Instruments. This result was a blow to engineers who had dreams of working at the company.

From an objective point of view, it can indeed be seen that the pattern of the American people is relatively narrow. In the case of Mr. Zhang Zhongmou, if a piece of equipment fails at 1 a.m., the repair work in the United States may have to wait until the next morning. But on the Chinese island of Taiwan, the engineers were able to solve the problem at the same moment, and their wives were able to go back to sleep without even asking why. This is not just about TSMC's prowess, but also about the American public's lack of understanding of how people in East Asia work efficiently, and their ignorance of the loss of jobs for American workers due to competition from Asians.

Paradoxically, however, Taiwanese engineers, once known for their perseverance and hard work, faced the same serious difficulties after they briefly emigrated to the United States. At the end of 2022, the first batch of more than 300 TSMC elite employees brought their families and even their pet dogs to the production base in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, on a special plane provided by the U.S. government. According to the established plan, more than 3,000 TSMC employees will be dispatched to the United States in the future, and they will become the mainstay of the American factory.

Regrettably, although the first Taiwanese compatriots had just experienced the fresh air of American society, they quickly turned to criticizing the companies they used to work for on the mainland, claiming that there was a shortage of factory workers in the United States and that the companies had adopted double standards for their employees. Taiwanese engineers only have a 14-day grace period to travel to the U.S., while U.S.-based employees have up to 21 days of vacation benefits. In addition, the company had promised that the assignees would not work overtime when they arrived in the U.S., but once they arrived, those promises were in vain, as the company said that local employees in the U.S. were not willing to work overtime, so they had to hand over the task to engineers in Taiwan.

To make matters worse, Taiwanese engineers are paid much less than their U.S. counterparts, which makes them feel like second-class slaves at work, forcing many employees with personality to leave. We can fully understand that the U.S. factory of network processor manufacturer TSMC is a violent collision between Eastern and Western cultures. Taiwanese engineers can't stand the lazy style of American employees, and American employees think Taiwanese engineers are too harsh. In such an extreme environment of internal consumption and competition, TSMC's U.S. factory experienced a three-year intermittent construction process, during which there were also a series of conflicts with construction unions. It is understood that the construction company is facing a shortage of skilled workers, while the union believes that the company is trying to bring in cheaper labor from Taiwan. In short, after many rounds of tossing, the factory in the United States is still not fully completed.