The benefits and salary are pretty good
No matter where you go, every manager is a pain in the ass. Exhausting~
Many fellow students are here
The guardian mountain of the nation
Good company, decent salary
Very demanding
Serious attitude
Technician
At a joint recruitment booth in February, I attended an interview to learn about the job duties and other information. I subsequently left my résumé and waited for notification.
You also need to log in to TSMC’s official website to apply.
After two weeks, I received a phone call notifying me to schedule a telephone interview. The interview covered self-introduction, work contributions, crisis management, and so on.
After it ended, the HR representative said they could not decide whether to hire me. The information would be submitted to upper management, and if the supervisor approved, there would be another video interview.
There were too many applicants, so I would need to wait one to four weeks.
I was only interviewing for a general operator position, not a supervisor or engineer-level position, yet the entire process of waiting for notifications took more than two to three months.
If it were not for the high salary, I would honestly feel that it was a huge waste of time.
Previously, I interviewed for an equipment-related position, but the person hired was dismissed after only two months.
Anyone considering changing career paths should think it through carefully: the interview and notification process is estimated to take two to three months.
May I ask whether you must know someone inside or rely on connections to get in? I’m currently really short on 💰 and sincerely hope I can get in. My past experience has also been in semiconductors. After taking some time away to start a business and try working in sales, I still want to return to the semiconductor industry, but the salaries for technicians at general companies are very low…
Unknown
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.
Being a well-known major company is probably reassuring.
Overworked, with frequent overtime.
Interviewed for an IT position.
Interviewers:
1. Department Manager
2. Section Manager
Today’s interview was for TSMC’s IT department.
A man and a woman attended, but the woman did most of the talking.
During the interview, they mainly asked about my experience implementing both front-end and back-end systems.
They seemed to care more about the back-end deployment aspect.
The services provided by their department are primarily systems used by factories,
so deployment at the factories is required.
There may also be situations where I would need to go to a factory in person to resolve a problem.
User requirements would come from personnel at the factories.
The main task at present is to modernize overly outdated systems.
For example, by adopting the latest technologies or architectures,
with opportunities to work on either the front end or back end.
However, they also care a lot about whether developers have a habit of writing unit tests.
I have mainly done external testing, meaning testing through test tools.
According to him, TSMC’s IT department currently has more than 2,000 people.
The department he leads has 100 people.
At the end, he also shared his thoughts about me:
1. I may lack experience optimizing systems.
2. I am enthusiastic about new technologies and knowledge.
3. Seeing that I have written so many projects, he felt that I enjoy writing programs to solve problems.
4. He said I have strong problem-solving abilities.
5. He was concerned that I might not adapt to a closed network environment.
Finally, he said I had failed the online test and asked me to retake it.
Normally, failing would mean the process ended there, but because my résumé was very strong, they decided to have a conversation with me anyway.
...
Famous but no benefits
If you want both fame and fortune, don’t come here.
If you get in, people will say you work for TSMC.
If you don’t get in, people will say you interviewed at TSMC.
Whether you get in or not, you’re just a whetstone for sharpening others.
The infighting is extremely severe.
Everyone there has fought their way up.
They fight over family, teachers, and rankings, then continue fighting over fame and fortune after joining TSMC.
In the end, they fight away their families and children.
If they didn’t say it was TSMC, you’d think it was an endless rat race among Red Guards.
Module Associate Engineer interview process
For the first three months, work as an assistant engineer (AE) maintaining equipment → after passing the assessment, become a regular AE → then begin 3–9 months of module associate engineer and shift-duty training (MAE, equipment maintenance) → after passing the assessment, become an MAE
Work schedule per month: 2 weeks of day shift, 1 week of swing shift, and 1 week of night shift
Weekend duty is required (12-hour, two-shift system). Including the week of night shifts, there are at most four duty shifts per month.
Day shift: 08:30–17:00; swing shift: 15:30–00:00; night shift: 00:00–08:00
They said handover between shifts takes about half an hour; if there are issues, it may run later. They said overtime can be reported.
The supervisor clarified that MAEs do not receive AE salaries; the compensation is different.
Employees with no experience start at job grade 23.
Compensation needs to be negotiated with HR.
The future plan is for equipment engineers to no longer rotate onto night shifts.
Once enough MAEs have been trained, MAEs will cover the night shifts.
Equipment engineers will then be able to work on other improvement projects.
Basically, the well-known drawbacks are having to work shifts, being in the FAB, having to surrender your phone, and so on.
Interview for an information desk staff position
The lobby environment was nice, and the overall atmosphere was good as well.
It sounds like the monthly salary may not be high, but HR verbally stated that the annual salary would be at least 600,000, provided that you complete a full year.
The interview was more like a casual conversation. The manager wanted to get to know you as a person. Aside from a basic self-introduction, there were no other standard questions.
Except for the initial icebreaker, the main interview was conducted in English.
Upon reporting in, the first stage was an aptitude test and an English test (similar to the reading and listening sections of TOEIC).
For the second stage, while waiting for the manager’s interview, a team leader observed the conduct of information desk staff.
In the third stage, an HR staff member conducted a stress test, involving situations such as problem-solving, communication, and coordination.
The interview took quite a long time. Your phone had to be handed in, and during the waiting period you could only remain on standby in the lobby.
Information desk staff were also not allowed to bring their phones, so it felt like the downtime during work might be rather long.
A well-known contract manufacturer
They hold recruitment events all day, inviting people to interviews, and then reject many of them.
The place is very spacious
From an interviewee’s perspective, this company
Apart from its impressive appearance,
I can’t see the stature that has earned it a reputation as Taiwan’s pride.
I had long heard that the technology industry treats labor rights like shit.
I thought that since this was a leading major corporation,
and since it was willing to send me an interview invitation,
it would be worthwhile to observe its culture.
Although there were only four short days between the notification and the interview,
I still made a sincere effort to set aside time every day to prepare the general content of the test.
It was also quite difficult to request such urgent leave from my company,
because I live out of town.
The night before, I even booked a hotel near the Southern Taiwan Science Park,
then took a taxi there in the morning.
For an interview, this was simply the most basic level of respect.
But what did TSMC do to meet its job applicants?
In the industry I work in, whenever a company brings someone from out of town for an interview,
reimbursement for transportation is guaranteed as a basic courtesy.
It isn’t much money, but it represents a culture of mutual respect.
After finishing the test that day, I spent almost all my time in a long, drawn-out wait, with one manager after another.
It took the entire day.
HR only said to go home and wait for notification within two to four weeks.
Their attitude wasn’t particularly good either.
What made me angriest was that two days later,
I received a call from their HR department asking me to schedule another interview with a different department.
At the time, I declined because I couldn’t make time for it.
I even told them that the content of this interview could be handled through a video call or a phone call with the manager.
Why make me go there again?
HR replied that an in-person discussion would be more detailed and clear.
I wasn’t happy with that answer, so I hung up.
Are you fucking kidding me, making someone from out of town go through all that as if it were nothing?
Everyone has full-time responsibilities while preparing for your TSMC interview.
You waste an entire day of someone’s time and still have the nerve to ask them to come up again to be humiliated a second time.
Relying on the reputation of a large company, you act high and mighty because there are endless applicants.
I don’t know what the turnover rate is,
but it’s obvious that you spend a huge amount of resources on interviews.
The quality of a company’s public image depends on how its recruiters handle things.
From my perspective, HR handled this at the level of someone fresh out of school with no tact.
The process is full of problems; no wonder they’re underpaid too.
With interview efficiency this terrible,
all you do is leave people with a bad impression of the company.
My impression is that they insult people for no reason, making them pay their own way to come up just to boost their own performance numbers.
What the hell is the point of asking someone to come all the way there? What tangible benefit does it bring the company?
To help Taiwan Railways and hotels make money?
It wastes both the employer’s and the applicant’s time and money.
Providing transportation reimbursement would prevent HR from blindly casting a wide net,
and would encourage them to treat every applicant seriously.
At the very least, conduct an initial interview by phone; too often, managers only look at the résumé after someone has traveled all that way,
or realize after asking one question that the person isn’t actually who they’re looking for.
Taking a day off, plus transportation and accommodation, means losing at least NT$8,000.
I wasn’t even going to quibble with you over that.
But this kind of culture, which puts people last, will only fucking limit the company’s vision.
Aside from advances in manufacturing processes, the entire industry’s attitude toward workers is stuck 20 years in the past.
No one is willing to come forward and boycott this kind of malpractice.
Those who earn a salary are destined to be exploited.
I applied for the technician position. The questionnaire clearly stated that the salary is 22K for the day shift and 26K for the night shift, and asked whether applicants could afford the mandatory five-month rotation between day and night shifts, including personal monthly expenses (insurance and other related costs paid out of pocket). The relevant job details also mentioned... prolonged standing and working in the yellow-light area.
To enter the door for the interview, you need to “tailgate” an official employee...
Guaranteed annual salary of 14 months, allowances and benefits are decent
Regarding the day/night shift rotation for this position: six months on night shifts and six months on day shifts
That is incorrect; I had an interview once in 2016.
In fact, I was told it was every three months
It really depends on the department. I work in the software department, and even after the onboarding period, I still leave the office before 6:30. After factoring in bonuses, the compensation isn’t far off from what the news reports.
For software professionals, the company is quite closed off internally. Open source only makes its way in through various channels, so it’s easy to become disconnected from the outside world.
One of the few companies in Taiwan that remains competitive
The atmosphere is very much like a military camp; most departments do trivial, repetitive work
The essence of wafer manufacturing is that it is a factory, no matter how advanced the process is
There will always be some people who have to take the blame
Whether taking the blame in exchange for a high salary is worth it really depends on the individual.
Whether you want to work yourself to the bone for money is up to you.
The company won't shortchange you on what it should provide!
Look at how desperate you are for money.
I have just completed 3 years of experience in thin-film equipment.
Changes in actual annual salary received (base salary + bonuses + overtime pay)
0.89M --> 1.43M --> 1.97M
Liver enzyme GPT
45 --> 89 --> 123
Whether it’s worth it, you know best....
The salary and benefits are truly excellent, and the new colleagues are also very capable. However, many of the middle managers, who are probably around 40–50 years old, are incredibly useless... Is there no elimination mechanism to get rid of these deadweights?
High salary, regular working hours, and the skills you learn are not useful elsewhere. Ambitious people should think twice before joining....