A well-known large company with a comprehensive and stable benefits system

The department is F3ETC, and the position is MAE. Although it is an older fab, the work is still extremely demanding. You can clearly feel that the company moves at a very fast pace as soon as you join. Although you are assigned a buddy, everyone is busy, and your direct buddy also has to rotate between day and night shifts. As a result, new hires are passed around to different senior colleagues. The manager subtly indicates that you need to take the initiative to learn PM tasks as quickly as possible so that you can get up to speed and help shoulder other people’s workload. The older fab also places great emphasis on yield, and the quality of equipment PM is directly related to wafer yield. ETC is arguably the worst department: there are piles of PM tasks to do every day. Sometimes, when engineers cannot figure out what is wrong with a machine, they tell you to clean the machine and perform PM first. This increases your workload and affects your leaving time.

During conversations with senior colleagues, shift-work issues also come up. In addition to rotating day and night shifts, there are holiday shifts and rotating on-call duties. Because there are fewer people on holiday shifts, the work often cannot be finished, so you may start work at 8:30 a.m. and not leave until midnight. For on-call duty, if the person on duty that day decides that more manpower is needed and you are scheduled to be on call, you have to rush to the company to help handle the equipment problem as soon as you receive the call. I really dislike this work pattern. There is absolutely no leisure time to spend with family. During the daily handover meetings, the manager also wants to look at a pile of charts to see where the equipment problems are.

TSMC currently also has difficulty recruiting MAEs. The neighboring department even hired a woman as an MAE because it could not find anyone else. This is not meant to discriminate against women; rather, MAE work is genuinely exhausting. In the ETC department, especially during PM work, one chamber can weigh 20 kg. The machines are placed very close together, leaving little room to move. You have to lift the 20 kg chamber onto the machine for installation, place it steadily, and avoid hitting anything. Perhaps you get used to it after doing it for a long time, but in addition to the heavy workload and long hours, you also have to be careful not to inhale toxic gas.

You also do not learn much from MAE work. If you want an annual salary of one million, you first need the determination to stay until your second or even third year before you can receive the full bonuses and profit sharing. As for overtime, if you report more than the allowed hours, you are basically treated as if you were doing charity work. Young people under 30 who are single, have no family, and do not have many specialized skills can give it a try and may be able to save some money. However, those who are older or have families should think carefully, because spending time with family is also important.

The resignation process really feels like it is designed to make things difficult for people who want to leave. At the Hsinchu Science Park site, after reporting to your manager and submitting the resignation request, you not only have to print out the resignation-process form but also make a special trip to the central control room at Fab 7 to complete the final items. You also have to go through each item on the resignation form yourself, one by one. Finally, at the central control room at Fab 7, in addition to handing in your ID badge and parking pass, they will settle your salary. You need to bring your bank card because they will calculate the value of any excess leave and transfer the corresponding amount back to TSMC. In short, it is extremely troublesome and takes at least half a day to complete the resignation procedure.