“Everything comes from working hard. Without this culture, TSMC cannot be number one in the world,” he said with passion. “I want to support TSMC to be great. It’s my religion.”

This work “culture” of literally just having no self esteem is pure cancer. It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to work at such a place if you have options

TSMC workers were asked to draw up reports and keep other documents in a PowerPoint format so that they could regularly make presentations to upper management. The Taiwanese employees were used to it, while the Americans became impatient with typing up weekly work reports. The Americans also resented that Taiwanese colleagues stayed late at the office for no good reason. “That pisses me off,” Bruce said. “They were just doing it for show.”

Five former employees from the U.S. told Rest of World that TSMC engineers sometimes falsified or cherry-picked data for customers and managers. Sometimes, the engineers said, staff would manipulate data from testing tools or wafers to please managers who had seemingly impossible expectations. Other times, one engineer said, “because the workers were spread so thin, anything they could do to get work off their plate they would do.” Four American employees described TSMC culture as “save face”: Workers would strive to make a team, a department, or the company look good at the expense of efficiency and employee wellbeing.

So the long hours aren’t even necessary. Just shitty management and busy work.