Who's afraid of East Asian 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 does not look like a debacle. The TSMC fab was originally scheduled to begin production in mid 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 that schedule, and will start production in late 2024: Now, according to a report from the Chinese news outlet money.udn, TSMC is expecting to begin pilot production operations by mid-April, with the preparations for mass production to be completed by the end of the year. It is unclear whether both fabs or just the 4nm facility are now due to be in production ah

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 does not look like a debacle. The TSMC fab was originally scheduled to begin production in mid 2024. Most sources — including Zhou’s article — say that date has been delayed until 2025. But some recent reports s