Technicians like Royale Lee, 31, are one reason Taiwan is the world’s largest contract manufacturer of the microchips that power nearly every electronic device.
When a computer virus crippled the machinery of his employer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Li worked a 48-hour shift to fix the problem. For years he answered the phone day and night. But at the end of 2021, after five years of sacrifice, he became terrified of phone ringtones. His annual salary of $105,000, an enviable amount in Taiwan, was not enough to keep him working.
Over the past decade, TSMC has built a significant lead over rivals such as Intel and Samsung in the race to manufacture the smallest and fastest microchips. Thanks in large part to the ingenuity of its engineers, TSMC has become one of the most geopolitically important companies in the world.
Now many of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry leaders fear the small island nation will be unable to sustain the growing demand for a new generation of engineers. A shrinking population, a tough work culture, and a growing number of competing tech jobs are exacerbating the labor shortage.
The stakes are huge. Some military strategists argue that TSMC’s dominance in microchips will give Taiwan a guarantee against Chinese aggression. One reason is the need for the United States to protect such a vital part of the supply chain.
Taiwan’s talent crisis is intertwined with TSMC’s success. The company’s workforce has grown by almost 70 percent over the past decade, while Taiwan’s birth rate has plummeted by half. Startups in promising fields such as artificial intelligence are attracting top engineers. For hiring, TSMC has to compete with Internet companies like Google and foreign semiconductor companies like ASML of the Netherlands, which generally offers good work-life balance and perks like free meals.
TSMC executives have defended the company’s famously tough work culture, which has helped it grow into a $440 billion behemoth with 73,000 employees. Founder Morris Chan recently defended the military discipline he expected. He said his spouse would simply fall asleep when TSMC called employees to work late at night. In recent years, however, TSMC Chairman Mark Liu has repeatedly acknowledged that the biggest challenge facing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is a shortage of talent.
104 Job Bank, Taiwan’s largest recruitment platform, posted more than 33,000 job listings in the chip industry as of August. Taiwan’s chip sector employed about 326,000 people last year, according to the government-owned Institute of Industrial Technology.
TSMC has been forced to adjust its hiring strategy. We’ve expanded our recruiting channels, increased base salaries for master’s degree graduates, and can now expect to receive an average annual salary of up to $65,000. The company started recruiting Taiwanese graduate students in September ahead of March, which is the conventional job-hunting season, and has also started nurturing high school students through online classes to learn the basics of semiconductors.
“Many companies are having trouble finding suitable candidates,” said Ban Lin, a former vice president of TSMC and now dean of the National Tsing Hua University Semiconductor Research Department.
“Nowadays, when they look for talent, they are not very picky,” says Lin. “You don’t necessarily have to study electrical engineering or computer science.”
Led by Lin, the university is one of four semiconductor academies set up by the Taiwanese government in 2021, responding to a call to action by industry officials such as Liu and Ming-Kai Tsai, chairman of chip designer MediaTek. be.
President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan said, “It is a race against time in human resource development for semiconductors.” Said At the unveiling ceremony of Lin’s semiconductor college.
The challenges facing Taiwan’s chip industry come amidst the global crisis. In China, as authorities try to lure Taiwanese engineers to foster an emerging chip industry, the government-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences annoyed About a “serious shortage” of qualified workers.one estimateChina’s microchip industry was short of 200,000 workers.
In the U.S., government efforts to lure semiconductor factories with billions of dollars in subsidies have spurred the likes of Intel, Samsung and TSMC to announce plans for new factories. But a survey of executives showed that talent shortages remained a problem.
At TSMC, the hiring gap at home has made the effort to build factories and train workers outside of Taiwan more urgent. Unlike most big hardware companies that had research and production all over the world long ago, TSMC built most of its chip manufacturing plants, known as fabs, in Taiwan. A cluster of talented employees, suppliers and state-of-the-art factories have helped the company over the years, but the company needs to start looking beyond Taiwan, according to Harvard Business School professor Willie Shi. .
“If I were TSMC, I’d be really serious about looking elsewhere for that talent,” he said.
Wu Chih-I, director of the TSMC-National Taiwan University Joint Research Center, said semiconductor manufacturing requires skilled and disciplined employees, which is one of the reasons why TSMC excels in the field. Stated.
Wu, who worked as an engineer at Intel early in his career, said today’s tech workers are more interested in jobs that match their interests rather than simply pursuing a paycheck as his generation did. said there is.
“If you don’t have a lot of financial pressure, you might choose a less demanding job, even if it means giving up a high-paying and promising future in the semiconductor industry.”
Lee, a former TSMC employee, said young Taiwanese are less willing to endure the harsh experience of working in a factory.
“It’s not as glorious as it used to be,” said Mr. Lee, who now works as a web developer for an American company.
Jason Chin, senior vice president of 104 Jobbank, said TSMC and other semiconductor companies could never stop turnover without improving working conditions.
That’s true not only for workers like Lee, who face the grueling task of keeping plants running, but also for key researchers figuring out new ways to make chips ever faster.
Thirty-year-old Frank Lin is another TSMC researcher who left the company because he found his job boring and unrewarding. His role as product engineer and chip designer wasn’t as high pressure as others in the company, but he still struggled and craved more meaning and accomplishment. Despite having a master’s degree from one of Taiwan’s most prestigious universities, he was given little responsibility and was assigned daily mechanical tasks.
“I’m making more and more money, but is this life worth living?” Less than three years into the company, he went on his own as an independent financial advisor. he hasn’t looked back “People want to work for themselves. There’s a lot of potential in the outside world now,” he said.
