The Wisdom Wall

“People would not respect us if we lay off by performance ratings. [1196] Ben Gilbert: And why is that? [1198] Morris Chang: Because it's very subjective. Performance reviews, the performance ratings are done by everyone's own supervisor. So, the 700 was performing people in the company. And who gave the 700 people…”

“If in a year you have to hire people back, you have to hire the laid off people back, then you shouldn't lay off, because the layoff, the separation expense is usually half a year, about half a year, and it takes at least half a year to train a person. So if you need the people back, Within a year, you shouldn't have,…”

“I really did not think that the foundry business, TSMC's business, uh, Was suitable for the divisional structure. Because, you know, we have almost the same group of customers.”

“my principle, when I was, ah, The chairman and not the CEO, ah, was, well, sometimes you have to let, you have to let the CEO make his own mistakes and learn from them, you know. Ah, of course, ah, not if the whole company is going down the drain, drain, so you, you, you have to interfere then, but only then.”

“The, the, the company that co-developed something with them will send its engineers to IBM, you know. And when we do that, we lose our ability to, to develop our own process. We'll have to depend on this co-development thing.”

“You know, we always had a pretty strong sales effort. But, uh, to me, sales effort is just, uh, uh, the tactical side, uh, uh, with the customers. Marketing is the strategic side to the outside world now.”

“Actually, back in my mind, I was thinking of the time when Kissinger was Nixon's national security advisor, and somebody else whose name I have even forgotten was the Secretary of State. And Kissinger, you know, probably had a couple hundred people reporting to him. Whereas the Secretary of State, you know, had…”

“Apple is a very close mouthed company. If you try to talk with, if you offer, you know, your service, I mean, they will just tell you to go away, you know. They will come to see you when they are ready, you That's what I knew about Apple, even then, and I knew, I know the same thing now, you know.”

“The difficulty was, you know, you, you have to satisfy a lot of customers, you know, and everyone, you know, wanted the factory to run his way, you know. But you can only run for one way, you know, which will satisfy more or less all the customers. And the advantage, of course, is you have a lot of customers, you know.”