this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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In this case, it's not a lack of engineers. Taiwan leadership burned through their staff too quickly.
I've run into that a lot (mostly with India, but I'd assume it's Eastern society as a whole). Leadership isn't used to being questioned. There's a very clear hierarchy that must be respected at all costs. I think it comes from the caste systems possibly. When US engineers roll in and propose changes, they're dealt with swiftly and brutally.
(If you want to get philosophical about the culture difference, it's why the US comes up with big ideas, and why Asia is so much better at execution).
There's just an expectation that workers march in lockstep to the death, and US workers simply, culturally, are not like that. Especially not when they have valuable skills they can get paid for somewhere else.
Go look at Glassdoor for TSMC, it's not a pretty picture.
The US has enough engineers...no one wants to pay for them or put up with their whining.
Chang has been a throat slitter from the beginning. But the problem is lack of available engineers. TSMC even commented on that risk before breaking ground. They warned apple about it in 2018, even. This has been a know risk, and now there's a fab that will be waiting for staff rather than the other way around like it normally is in Taiwan.
If the US was smart, they'd offer targeted VISA programs for industries that have historically exported engineers rather than importing them. But that's a whole other incentive system with its own political issues.
I'm no industry expert, but I'd assume there's also a shortage of other things necessary for a chip fab as well. Machining, component parts, etc. It's not just the chip fab but also the local supply lines and economic infrastructure. That all has to be established from the ground up in AZ whereas it already exists in Asian locales like Taiwan, Korea, and China. Economist Noah Smith has been hammering about this for a while - he calls these network effects "agglomeration"
The wafer equipment market has more US roots than the fab market, as many tools are designed here (even if built in Asia). Their supply chains are different than TSMC/Samsung and less localized to "home country only". Also, TSMC was bringing their supply chain with them for AZ.