Pros
Great industry leading silicon manufacturing and you can learn about all the reasons they are the best. Make products for Apple, AMD, Nvidia and everyone else needing chips. Great country leading pay for the assignees and good pay for the local US hires but comes with complete life sacrifice, challenge your sanity and balance of what is right. Tight like family community, think Band of Brothers or Platoon as that is what it is like and forces that kind of community, wink wink.
Cons
Absolute crazy hours and unmerciful and unreasonable daily request from your manager. The first line section managers are just the poor messengers trying to survive the unreasonable and unmerciful request from the department managers and directors and above. The higher up you go the more you find them numbed and brainwashed into accepting the TSMC way for success and money. Task are assigned and expected to be completed with no consideration of the cost or practicality. That is part of the secret of the success at huge human cost. HR has no control or ability to create or coach a better environment. Multiple HR directors have left because no real considerate and caring HR could accept the way Senior managers and higher ups talks and belittle their subordinates. Things in Taiwan were rough but at least attempts were made to train. Things now are such a mess and behind engineers and managers are told to do tasks they have no skill, background but must do. Moral and morale is terrible and almost everyone that can is leaving. Those tide down due to family, immigration find making the move harder and the assignees have the worst. Given visa can ‘t leave, can’t return early back to Taiwan without ruining their career. Reputation of the place is terrible in Taiwan and nobody there wants to come. It will be a disaster when the first wave of assignees all want to go home with no replacements wanting to come. Not sure how the company thinks they can hire more locals or promote enough to support Phase 2 forget Phase 3. People are leaving faster than they can be hired making more work for the poor people left here. I had no problem working hard, but with no chance of change, all the role model managers leaving gave me the obvious clarity of what I needed to do for health, life and sanity! If you are willing to work and work and work and do whatever you are told and do whatever it takes under high pressure with no tradeoffs this is the place rich in opportunity!