Who’s afraid of TSMC’s management culture?

Viola Zhou has written an excellent investigative report into the culture clashes and growing pains at the TSMC factory in Phoenix, Arizona.

Before I dive in, however, I should note that in my opinion, the headline that the magazine gave to this article was not very representative of what’s actually going on. The headline is “TSMC’s debacle in the American desert,” but the plant so far doesnot look like a debacle.

The TSMC fab was scheduled to begin production in 2024. Most sources — including Zhou’s article — say that date has been delayed until 2025. But some recent reports say that the factory is now ahead of schedule and will start production in 2024:

It’s possible that TSMC was simply sandbagging in order to make sure they got their CHIPS Act money; the more positive reports came out shortly after the expected subsidy was awarded. It’s still not quite clear which dates are correct, and the company itself may not know.

But it’s helpful to remember that there was a huge amount of hubbub about a dispute between TSMC and Arizona construction unions back in mid-2023 and that a few months later a settlement was reached and the dispute evaporated.

So while declaring TSMC’s Arizona project a “debacle” might get a lot of attention from people who are ideologically invested in either the failure or the success of US industrial policy, there’s a very high chance that this headline turns out in retrospect to be panicky and premature.

That having been said, however, the actual reporting in the article is excellent. There are numerous anecdotes that illustrate the clash in workplace culture and management style between TSMC and the American workforce. Here are just a few excerpts:

Stories like these naturally feed into