DenverThe Taiwanese are arguably more efficient. Period.

• They expect them to work absolutely ludicrous hours
• They give them extreme deadlines/goals, and in turn expect their engineers to get it done at any cost, including changing machine parameters that often end up having tools go down/require vendor repair. When they get caught doing this (because these changes are always tracked by the tool itself), they claim they did nothing and try to throw the vendors under the bus
• They have zero appreciation for work life balance
• Heavy micromanagement
• Multiple managers expecting you to prioritize them, and your own manager will do nothing to help

PhantomTacoThat's one way to look at it. The other way is based on how they treat their engineers:

• They expect them to work absolutely ludicrous hours
• They give them extreme deadlines/goals, and in turn expect their engineers to get it done at any cost, including changing machine parameters that often end up having tools go down/require vendor repair. When they get caught doing this (because these changes are always tracked by the tool itself), they claim they did nothing and try to throw the vendors under the bus
• They have zero appreciation for work life balance
• Heavy micromanagement
• Multiple managers expecting you to prioritize them, and your own manager will do nothing to help

There comes a point where you need to ask where do you draw the line between excessive work demands and claims of "efficiency". Personally, I think that TSMC's current model only works because of Taiwan's cultural view on: Your life is second, your work is first. No other major fab player stresses this as hard as they do, and it's going to continue to be a rude awakening to TSMC as they try to branch out and set up manufacturing in just about any other country in the world.

EDIT: Just to talk to the first point, I'm not talking about 12 hour shift engineers on compressed work weeks. I'm talking process engineers etc that end up putting in 70+ hours a week because of demands from management.

TheinsanegamerNreminder that FOXCONN, the company with the suicide nets, was also a Taiwanese company. FOXCONN also struggled to find people stateside. Funny that….

DenverDo you seriously think that 100 dollars has the same purchasing power in taiwan and the US? I would say that in the US the purchasing power drops to 1/4 or less, houses that are not worth 200-300k USD are sold for millions. Everything is much more expensive.

I was referring to efficiency, from the point of view of salary paid vs result, in the US employees will be paid twice as much to have the same standard of living as Taiwanese employees receiving less.

FlankerYou just summed up my personal experiences in typical Taiwanese and Chinese companies, like totally hitting the nail on the head.

Minus InfinityI agree and it's far worse in many other countries other than health care costs. Australia was once the cheapest developed nation only 20 years ago, now it's one of the msot expensive in the world. Long before the latest dramas with inflation and fuel and food and mortgages Australia had been on a meteoric increase in costs in pretty much every thing you can name. The last 3 years have now just added misery on top of pain.


I can say 4 years working for a Japanese company was also a soul destroying experience and I even contemplated suicide at one stage. I've heard Korean companies are even worse. Never ever would I work for an Asian company again.