TSMC Receives 13k Job Applications For U.S. Chip Plant – Is An Expansion In Play?

TSMC's render of its Arizona fab shared during its tech symposium last month. Image: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) plans to build a flake manufacturing facility in Arizona might accept more to them than meets the eye. Taking stock of TSMC'south public announcements, the fab will invest $12 billion in Arizona over the form of the adjacent few years, with the facility prepare to produce semiconductors on the 5nm process node in 2024.

However, several rumors take hinted that TSMC is because going beyond the initial scope of its announcements. Now, task applications for the seventeen posts open up for TSMC'due south Arizona hint that perchance something larger might exist afoot, a fact that bolstered by the company hiring a decades-old Intel Corporation homo resources and recruiting veteran for the Arizona plant at the offset of this year.

TSMC's Acceptance Rate To Beat Harvard If Public Statements Hold

The get-go rumors of TSMC's management considering expanding its Arizona plans surfaced in Feb when Taiwanese sources reported that the fab offered fiscal incentives to its employees in the state for working in the Arizona foundry. These sources also claimed that TSMC'due south plant expansion consideration involved increasing its footprint to include six factories to bump its publicly outlined output of xx,000 wafers/month five times to 100,000 wafers/month.

To boost these rumors, when we await at the number of job applications that TSMC has received for its Arizona constitute openings and presume highly conservative credence rates, then it appears that we've found another potential link for the narrative that it might expand the facility's manufacturing footprint.

A brief look at the facility's job openings reveals that seventeen positions are open for applications correct now. Opening them up redirects us to their Linkedin pages, where data gathered from the job application site reveals that for all engineering positions, a total of xiii,166 applications have been submitted to the platform.

Applications for the role of a procedure integration engineer responsible for fine-tuning TSMC's manufacturing process and working with its customers reveals that 2,340 applicants have applied for the part as of yesterday. Image: LinkedIn

Publicly, TSMC has revealed that it plans to recruit 300 engineers for its entry-level positions in the U.Due south. institute. Assuming that the company does not expand the Arizona facility and ends up hiring but 300 engineers from the xiii g applications submitted reveals that the fab's acceptance rate would stand at 2.two%. This implies that it is more than selective than Harvard University, even though the comparison is ill merited.

Additionally, our assay also does not factor in the fact that some applicants should take practical for more than than i position. Assuming that a third of all applicants have done so puts the actual number of people applying for positions at TSMC at 8,777. Should the company rent just 3 hundred from these, its new credence rate turns out to be 3.4%, which is withal lower than Harvard's 5.two% charge per unit this year.

Another upshot that adds to the narrative that possibly something larger is afoot in Arizona is the fact that Intel'due south old Technology Manufacturing Human Resources Managing director, Mr. Benjamin Miller, joined TSMC in Jan this year. At Intel, Mr. Miller spent more than 25 years and started from managing teams made up of 12 employees to manage all of Intel's human resources professionals globally for technology manufacturing. Mr. Mill is at present TSMC's head of human resource, and perhaps he besides is motivated by the vast number of employees under his accuse in one case the Arizona fab kicks off product in 2024.

All in all, unless TSMC officially confirms that it will expand production at the Arizona plant, everything suggesting so is speculation. The fab's chief motivation in doing so will exist its customer demands, as its master executive officer, Dr. C.C. Wei, highlighted the rationale behind expanding a Chinese fab during its latest earnings call earlier this year. With the Usa Government seemingly going 'all-in' to heave homeland chip production, there is plenty of incentive for TSMC to make the shift already.