[Self-narration] An American who worked at TSMC's US factory for 4 years: lived like a dog, daily filled with discrimination, harassment, and endless overtime...

A former employee who worked at TSMC's Arizona plant for four years posted on Reddit to share his experience, stating that despite the generous salary, one must endure disastrous management, a toxic workplace culture, extremely long hours, and discrimination... sparking discussions within the community. (Background: TSMC teams up with Marvell for a dual project, "2nm + Silicon Photon" plan swallowing the global market share of ASIC chips) (Supplementary Background: TSMC’s Arizona plant has shipped its first batch of wafers! NVIDIA AI chips need to return to "Taiwan home" for packaging) TSMC's Arizona plant has initiated mass production this year (4nm and 5nm processes). Although the costs are higher than those in Taiwan, AMD CEO Lisa Su pointed out that chips produced in Arizona are about 5%–20% more expensive than those in Taiwan. However, due to higher supply chain resilience, customers (such as AMD, Apple, Nvidia) are still willing to pay for support. Additionally, according to official sources, the structure of the Arizona plant (3nm) has been completed and is accelerating the mass production schedule, with plans to enter the production phase in 2028, looking like it is gradually getting on track. However, against this backdrop, an American who claims to have four years of experience at the Arizona plant and has now left shared yesterday on the forum Reddit, stating that although TSMC offers generous salaries, one must endure disastrous management, a toxic workplace culture, extremely long hours, and discrimination... The original translation is as follows: Hello everyone, I often comment under articles about TSMC's Arizona plant, and as a result, I have received quite a few related private messages. I want to write a post about my experience there; if you still want to apply and work there after reading this, at least you have been warned. Let me share my background: I was hired in 2021 and went to Taiwan that summer as one of the first employees to go. I don't need to go into too many details, but it was definitely a disaster. They changed our flight dates multiple times, gave us broken laptops, and lied about the size/location of our accommodations, etc. In short, I attributed all of this to pandemic restrictions, so I let it go. Then we arrived at TSMC in Tainan, and the disaster continued. They were unprepared with a training plan, there were almost no English speakers, and for my team, they refused to help us because "Americans make too much money, we don’t need to help them." In summary, fast forward a few years of "training" in Taiwan, during which about 20% of people resigned due to the already terrible working conditions and style, and then we returned to Arizona. Obviously, a new wafer factory is bound to encounter problems, but TSMC somehow manages to mess everything up. Engineering progress was behind schedule because they had no plan at all. They sent Taiwanese over to clean up the mess because they simply could not handle all the American blue-collar workers. They had engineers support us in factory work that we were not qualified or trained for, putting us in extremely dangerous situations. For safety, we had to refuse, at the cost of "possibly getting bad reviews at the end of the year." So, after going through all this, I thought, well, this is the growing pains of a foreign company opening a new factory in the U.S., the situation should improve, right?... Wrong! The situation got worse and worse. By then, about 70% of my colleagues who had started with me in Taiwan had resigned, so we continuously trained new employees. Moreover, all the former colleagues I still keep in touch with said they were better off after leaving. Every project came from the "mother plant" in Taiwan and had to be followed no matter what the logic or reason was. So there was no room for innovation here, not even a chance to think. Work turned into: show up, see what you are told to do today, then the plan changes, correct it, progress severely falls behind, and then repeat this cycle continuously. I participated in interviews for interns/new employees in my team (I guess it was because English is my native language, and some interviews conducted by Taiwanese were terrible). In short, the preparation instructions I received before the interview were very disturbing. I was instructed to prioritize Taiwanese, followed by anyone with a visa, because "people with visas are easier to control." They didn't want to hire Americans without immigration restrictions because once Americans find out how bad it is there, they will resign; they know this, so they treat people like hostages, dangling the green card carrot in front of them. I was also told not to hire people of Indian descent, and they even had a rude nickname for them, calling them "PhD people." Among the few who were hired after my interview, my boss told me that they had already been given the job before any interview took place; the interview itself was just a formality. They all had some connections with people who had worked at TSMC. I understand the concept of "who you know, not what you know," but the extent of nepotism was shocking. I was also told to emphasize "Taiwanese work culture" during the interview, meaning you would be yelled at daily and need to cope with impossible deadlines because the turnover rate for new employees is extremely, extremely high. Daily work was also a nightmare. They expect you to dedicate your life to the job. If it were hourly pay, it might be okay, but I am a salaried engineer, so no matter how long I work, my salary remains the same. Sometimes I would work until 9-10 PM. It was... normal for other engineers on my team to work 14-16 hours a day. Most people leave around 8 PM on a normal day, and that’s even on non-busy days. They deliberately assign "urgent" and "needs to be discussed tomorrow morning" projects at 4-5 PM, which means you have to stay overtime to finish them. The work culture itself is also very toxic. The Taiwanese salary structure is such that over 50% of income comes from bonuses. That bonus is not only based on performance, but it is also a popularity contest, and most importantly, how many things you screw up. So if you're in an environment where so much money depends on you not screwing up things, you might choose to hide in the shadows and avoid causing any trouble, right? Well, that’s exactly what most people do. So if you want to ask someone for help, they will either ignore you or push you to someone else because if you screw up what they told you, they will be blamed. This creates a very toxic work style: no teamwork, no one helping anyone, ultimately delaying all projects. You also have to remember that TSMC is not just a Taiwanese company; for most Taiwanese, it represents Taiwan. They are very proud to work here (and rightly so), but as a non-Taiwanese, I do not have the same level of investment in the company. I enjoy doing a good job at work and learning new things, but I will not sell my soul for the company, and most Taiwanese will. They view work as the first and only option in life, with family coming second, which doesn't suit me. I work to live, and they live to work. Speaking of Taiwanese, their culture is vastly different from that of the U.S. They rarely interact with other races, and as a result, they can become very racist. I have heard them mock others' accents, appearances, and disabilities. They usually do this privately or in Chinese, but because I lived in Taiwan and learned quite a bit of Chinese, I could understand what they were saying. They would mock or speak ill of others in front of people. They ultimately turned work into something like high school. Everyone has their own little gossip circle, and they date each other within the company because they have no life outside of work. They are also very gender discriminatory. When I was in Taiwan, a new girl was about to join the company...