Pluspunten
Working for TSMC as a bilingual American employee (English and Mandarin) made it easier than my colleagues had it, since I didn't have a language barrier. Pay was solid for an "entry-level" position, but of course I did need some relevant admin experience to do well. Realistically my salary should and could have been higher being such a rare kind of employee (native English-speaking American also fluent in Mandarin). TSMC has a lot of financial resources, but tries to stay budget-conscious. They are very serious about being anti-fraud, bribery, and have a robust (if not overly redundant and slow) approval process for *everything*. My Taiwanese coworkers were amazing, all smart and qualified, But there were observable cliquey behaviors among the Taiwanese engineers/management/admin staff, exacerbated and/or caused by the language barrier. Amongst the ground-level, blue collar technicians, though, the Taiwanese and American techs get along quite well overall, despite the language barrier. Brotherhood forged through the hardship of the cleanroom?
Minpunten
Very bureaucratic and hierarchical company due to its Taiwanese work culture. Taiwanese employees have a deeply ingrained deference to their bosses, whereas the Americans aren't accustomed to that kind of corporate environment and expect higher standards of mutual respect and trust. The budget approval process for anything is ridiculously slow due to lower trust and high levels of bureaucracy between departments and levels of management - with upper management cracking down on lower management because *they* are getting cracked down upon by their headquarters management. So the lowest rung managers are often scapegoated and forced to come up with non-feasible budgets and plan workarounds that involve spending no/less money than what would be most efficient. Every bigger budget project has to be presented through PowerPoint to the fab directors/VPs, and it is common for these meetings to result in the disrespect and evisceration of the lower managers, particularly to Taiwanese lower managers. Americans generally seem less vulnerable to these attacks (again, partially due to language barrier).