Pros
- Pay is good. TSMC states their target pay is in the 75th percentile range, which based on my research for competing companies like Intel and Samsung, I would believe. Night shift workers or "swing shift" for engineering positions will provide a pay differential of 16%, which adds up especially with overtime.
- Plenty of overtime opportunity for those who want it. If you felt like it, you could easily do 50+ hours every week. For hourly positions like technician ones, this adds up to quite a bit of money and could be considered a "pro". However for engineering positions that are salaried, and for those with time-sensitive personal needs like parenting, you are negatively affected by this overtime culture. Read more about this in my cons though.
- Benefits are solid. There's employee stock options, 401k, health coverage, dental coverage, vision coverage, and more. It has been significant for my personal finances to have these even disregarding the higher pay compared to other similar positions.
- Coworkers are generally good people, including the Taiwanese. I have experience interacting with people from nearly every department, and I have generally had positive experiences. There are the inevitable bad eggs, but most people are decently personable and willing to work with you as needed.
- The job allows for lots of creative liberty with finding and implementing solutions to problems. If you can get around the "big company bureaucracy" and the slowness that ensues, possibilities for learning about semiconductors and manufacturing are nearly limitless. I find this to be very fun and personally rewarding, however you need to be the type of person to read further into things to see it and appreciate it, as the job can be tedious.
Cons
- Company culture. The culture of TSMC is essentially to be a slave to TSMC. Although TSMC has more money than one can possibly imagine, they somehow lack the ability to support their workers' needs and will blame people for not meeting their high expectations.
- Time management. This is the main con of this job. For technicians, there are only four available shifts, which I'll refer to here as "A, B, C, and D shift". A and B are front end of the week, day and night, and C and D are back end of the week, day and night. All four are 12 hour shifts, either 6am-6pm or 6pm-6am, with a 3-4-4-3 schedule of days worked and days off. However, you are often expected to stay late by up to 30 minutes to hand over to the next shift, which can be quite egregious especially if you're a night shift worker with long commute. Also, to keep pay similar between workers, day and night shift are to be switched every 6 months. I have seen some managers who do this and others who don't, but for those who do not want to work nights, this job is NOT it.
- Overtime is practically a requirement. Currently as of October 2024, there is a shortage of technicians. This company has a policy that requires its workers to delegate somebody to cover their shifts if they take time off, and this is especially true in the case there's only one worker on a shift, which happens to me frequently. This is compounded by my next point.
- Hiring is slower than I ever imagined possible. The hiring process took me 3 months due to how slow the communication was. TSMC relies on external recruitment companies to do all of their hiring, which adds an extra and unneeded layer of complication. Turnover is quite high, and my department has been short for technicians for multiple months, and yet has not hired on any new ones. I imagine this issue will become far worse when many of the work visas expire in late 2024 and early 2025, as some of the essential Taiwanese assignees will be forced to return home with time.
- Language Barrier. What feels like roughly half of the workers are Taiwanese natives. Some of them speak excellent English, yet others can barely speak English, which hampers communication to a large degree especially given the context of complex semiconductor manufacturing. That being said, it doesn't make the Taiwanese bad people, and most I have met have been a pleasure to work alongside. They are definitely trying very hard and should be commended for learning about as foreign of a language as possible for native Mandarin speakers. TSMC also mandates some English testing for the Taiwanese "assignees" to keep English skills to certain standards, and I believe this issue of the language barrier will eventually become a non-issue due to the company's efforts.
- Management is extremely hands off. Although I prefer a less micro-managed approach, I think at least once a week should be a minimum to speak with your workers, and yet I have gone over a month without discussing my work with my manager on multiple occasions. Although there are consistent daily handovers for what is being worked on, not aligning goals with managers and other coworkers causes folks to stumble over each other at times, creating inefficiencies.
