Its honestly hard to describe how far the heads of leadership here must be stuck up their own butts enjoying the smell. but I will try.
The skills new college grads/brand new engineers learn here are not transferable to the rest of the industry or other industries. There is so many manual tasks that are completely trivial and managers force you to do them just to exert control. Often those who succeed here are just those who put in hours doing tedious manual operations on outdated systems that are error ridden. My training consisted of someone basically just saying "do this" and "don't ask questions"... not explaining why or actually helping to accommodate different learning styles. Many projects or experiments that succeed TSMC just wont even bother actually understanding why, they just mark it in their brain and create pseudo science to support their bs models. I honestly believe I became stupider after my "training". God forbid you challenge a manager on a concept, thus essentially attacking their manhood when they don't understand a concept. why hire an expert in the field who just came out of school studying this topic from a top university, then ignore them because you have "data that says otherwise" when half the data here is cherry picked to support a bs model some manager got behind in the first place? People will cherry pick data just to get out of doing tasks, and honestly it just feels wrong the way "data analysis" is treated here as a whole. lots of the questionable ethics I encounter on a weekly basis make me feel that this shady gorilla-esque chest-beating culture is permeated from the top down.
More, They do not believe in work life balance, and promotions are largely based on how hard you suck up to your superiors. you are encouraged to work late to earn respect, and are not fairly judged on your actual contribution. There is no acceptance of feedback from lower ranks because you don't understand the TSMC way, which leads to experienced engineers who know better looking for their earliest possible escape.
in addition, HR has been known to stretch the truth throughout the recruiting process. At least now they don't put hybrid in job postings, because you are expected to be onsite 10 hours a day if you want to get a middle of the road job rating. There is no flexibility for outside of work life unless you hit on the 1/50 lottery of having a somewhat decent boss. Honestly, it also feels every day now all the engineers worth their salt who are not stuck trying to earn a visa are leaving for better opportunities, leaving those of us who stuck around enjoying our retention bonuses, but wondering if its even worth the money to put up with this train derailment that is about to collide into a nuclear facility.
