Comment by jdw64
3 hours ago
Realistically, when it comes to the semiconductor market, there aren't many viable options outside of East Asia. I don't mean this in the sense that East Asians were somehow "chosen," but rather that the semiconductor industry inherently requires a large number of highly educated employees working together. The problem is that the working hours inevitably end up being very long. If you actually go work at one of those facilities, you have to wear a "cleanroom suit" (bunny suit), and it's physically demanding. What I'm saying is, you need highly educated personnel who can be mobilized at any time when a problem breaks out in the middle of the night, and who can be hired at relatively low cost. East Asia has a massive educational infrastructure — schools are very large-scale and the system is extremely well-developed — making it hard for other regions to compete. And indeed, the average working hours in countries that do semiconductor manufacturing are extremely long
In other words, it's an industry where you have to grind white-collar workers as if they were blue-collar laborers.
I’ve always wondered what is unique about semiconductors that PhDs need to work like assembly line workers. I’m sure they’re not solving partial differential equations all day, but what’s so different between different batches of chips?
The industry inherently deals with extremely hazardous chemicals, and on top of that, during semiconductor production, there are many things that have to be recorded and tracked.
A lot of the processes are automated, but at the points where automation hasn't reached, there are quite a few things that are genuinely complex to handle.
I think it’s more like highly skilled technicians, to scale up. Plus PhDs and other scientists to do the simulations and analyze the data for new designs.
I believe some of the earliest Intel fabs were in New Mexico (Shiprock and Rio Rancho). What combination of the above did New Mexico have?
When New Mexico and Germany had fabs, South Korea was still a developing country ruled by a brutal dictatorship.
What happened was simple - both Taiwan and South Korea and now China took concerted steps in investing into their semiconductors businesses. South Korea did this indirectly through favourable arrangements for the industry players via the chaebol system, while China and Taiwan did this with more direct government investment into the industry.
Sure, you can't just dump money into the industry and become a semiconductor player, else the Middle Eastern countries would have tried that ages ago. Yes, the talent being locally present is important but you're once again bringing up tired tropes about Asian working culture as being relevant.
I'm not saying Asian culture is the main factor. Yes, it's true that authoritarian governance driven by dictatorial regimes and chaebol politics has played a strong role, but fundamentally, the long working hours are simply inherent to this business.
You brought up the New Mexico story quite well, but that place is notorious for the exploitation of Navajo women's labor. In the first place, the factory was occupied and shut down by the American Indian Movement. You know full well that this is a story about the exploitation of Native Americans, so why are you bringing it up like that?
The history of Shiprock itself is, at its core, a history of "cheap, obedient labor." You frame it only as state-led investment, but the reality is that the culture behind it is complex.
What my post is pointing out is not that "Asian culture is superior." What I'm pointing out is the harsh working conditions in Asia — where working hours are extremely long, and even highly educated workers are inevitably subjected to grueling hours. Why do you think TSMC's Arizona fab in the U.S. keeps getting delayed? The U.S. invested money through the CHIPS Act, but American engineers refuse to accept the "military-style 24/7 on-call readiness and brutal shift work" that exists in Taiwan. TSMC founder Morris Chang himself has pointed this out before.
What I'm saying is that the educational infrastructure is so well-established that it's easy to produce a large supply of highly educated workers, and that these highly educated workers then have to be submissive to inhumane working conditions. This isn't about Asian superiority — it's actually pointing out something bad about Asia. But from the context of your comment, it seems like you misunderstood me as saying "Asian work culture is superior" and replied based on that assumption. That was never my intention.
Before you leave a comment, I'd ask you to show some basic respect to others.