Sylvania

"The fourth was a company whose name I had heard, but the unit that wanted to hire me was opening up an industry I knew nothing about. This company was “Sylvania,” famous for light bulbs, televisions, radios, and vacuum tubes; the industry they wanted to develop was transistors made with semiconductors as the material. In mechanical engineering courses I had heard of “semiconductors,” but other than the name I knew nothing. As for “transistors,” I had not even heard the name. Then how did I go to Sylvania to apply for a job? It was entirely because of an offhand remark by my third uncle. In the period when I had failed the doctoral exam and was at a loss and unsure what to do, one day I went to my third uncle’s home, and he suddenly said: “A few days ago a Chinese friend came to see me and said he recently joined Sylvania working on transistors, and he said there are several Chinese people there. You might as well go and give it a try.” So I called Sylvania, and a few days later I went for an interview. The executive who interviewed me was the director of the semiconductor laboratory, a slightly chubby middle-aged American, very imposing, and he also seemed to know semiconductors well (later I learned that at that time people who understood semiconductors were as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns, and this director was not among them). He told me that his task was to turn the “laboratory” into a large factory, and in the process the manufacturing process would certainly need to be automated. And I was a mechanical engineering master’s graduate and had studied “automatic control,” which might be of some help to automation. With that one conversation, it neither aroused much interest in me nor stirred much hope. However, unexpectedly, the offer letter came—and the monthly salary was even one dollar higher than Ford’s: four hundred eighty dollars."

"When I joined Sylvania in 1955, there were already twenty or thirty companies engaged in the semiconductor industry, which could roughly be grouped into two categories. The first category was large companies already in the electronics industry or closely related to it. At that time the largest electronics businesses were radios and televisions, but the computer industry was about to emerge. Companies in this category included GE, RCA (Radio Corporation of America), IBM, Motorola, Sylvania, Sperry, and so on."

"Having “outsmarted myself” like that—if it were me now, I might just laugh it off, accept it, and without another word still go to Ford. But the young, hot-blooded me became furious from embarrassment. And in that fury, I began to “think in reverse.” I was confident about the work at Ford, but was I unwilling to take a risk and go to Sylvania to do something I wasn’t confident about? I thought I got along very well with the supervisor at Ford, but judging only from the personnel manager’s coldness, how unreliable was that fleeting impression! I thought Ford was large and my career would be secure, but semiconductor development might be fast and perhaps would give me more opportunities to grow. Turning it over again and again for a few days while the humiliation was still fresh, I actually arrived at a conclusion that would have been impossible a few days earlier: go to Sylvania!"

"Of course, relying solely on myself was absolutely not enough, because the book often contained passages that I read again and again, thought about again and again, and still did not understand. At those times, I had no choice but to ask someone. Ask whom? At that time I worked in Ipswich. Ipswich is a very small town, about sixty or seventy miles from Boston, and driving back and forth took more than three hours. Living in Boston was very inconvenient for me, but my wife was still working in Boston, so we were not in a hurry to find a home in Ipswich. For the first two months, I lived in the only hotel in Ipswich. Staying at the same hotel was a colleague who was recognized within Sylvania as a semiconductor expert; he became my first semiconductor teacher. I remember the hotel room was not comfortable, but it did have a decent restaurant. My “teacher” loved to drink. Every evening from 6:30 p.m. until the restaurant closed at 10 p.m., he spent all his time on alcohol. While drinking, he would also order a dish, to give the meal some meaning. My habit was to sit with him at dinner every day. At that time I still could not really drink, so I ate my dinner while he drank his alcohol, but when I asked him about parts I could not understand, he patiently explained them to me. Although he drank a lot, I never saw him truly drunk, and he indeed was a good expert—he could answer most of my questions. Every night, after I finished my meal and asked my questions, I went back to my room to continue reading. But sometimes when I encountered new questions, I would still go back to the restaurant to find him; as long as it was before the restaurant closed, he was almost certainly drinking alone."

"So when I entered the semiconductor industry, although it had only a few years of history, it was already in a Warring States era. Of course, I only began to understand these industry dynamics a few months after I arrived at Sylvania; when I went in, I was merely a clueless apprentice."

"Sylvania hired me because they wanted to make use of my mechanical expertise to automate the production line. So, as soon as I joined the company, I was assigned to work on a germanium transistor production line. Germanium and silicon are both raw materials for transistors. Because germanium can be processed at lower temperatures, it was adopted first. In 1955, except for Texas Instruments, which had already mass-produced silicon transistors, everyone used germanium. Texas Instruments’ masterstroke of achieving great results with small means was that, in 1954, it took the lead in developing the silicon transistor. Aside from TI, other companies were still in the experimental stage regarding silicon transistors; Sylvania was even further behind, and did not begin experimenting with silicon transistors until a year after I joined the company."

"My time at Sylvania can be said to have been the beginning of my fervent learning of semiconductor technology. After spending the first few months focusing on Shockley’s Electrons and Holes in Semiconductors, most of what I learned came from academic papers published at the time or from my daily R&D work. Fortunately, my new boss held a Harvard PhD and was quite proficient in transistor theory, which benefited me greatly. Starting in 1956, I began attending semiconductor academic conferences at least two or three times a year. In December 1956, I published my first semiconductor paper, and in 1957 I published two more papers. In hindsight, these papers were insignificant, but they helped quite a bit in raising my standing inside and outside the company."

"The new general manager immediately summoned “important personnel” one by one. I had never met him before, but I was also on the list of those summoned. Since joining Sylvania I had never been to the general manager’s office, yet now I had the chance to enter. It was an extremely spacious, luxuriously decorated office, far more lavish than the TI general manager’s office that I would later often enter, and it could even compare with the general manager’s offices of major companies in Taiwan today. The new general manager was very amiable and seemed sincere as well. While looking at a list on the desk, he said only a few short sentences: “I don’t know you, but as I understand it, your performance is good, so you are not among those to be laid off. However, the company needs to lay off about half the staff. Among the four engineers in your section, so-and-so and so-and-so are to be laid off; please inform them. Of course, the company will pay severance according to seniority. Your section will also be dissolved, and the remaining personnel will be merged into another section. Your salary and grade will not change, but from now on please contribute to the company as an individual engineer.” Even though he was amiable and sincere, every word of those sentences was unpleasant to hear. Our section—including me—was five young people; after two years of hard work, what we ended up with was two people being laid off. As for me? The new general manager seemed to think that not laying me off was already a great favor. But although I had not gone to other companies to look for work, I firmly believed that finding a job would not be a problem. I immediately protested on behalf of the two who were being laid off, but it was too late; he had already decided. The two who were laid off were both in their first jobs. Telling them this result was the hardest work of my life; both conversations ended in tears. In the end, the two of them said the same thing: “It seems enthusiasm and hard work still aren’t enough.” Youthful innocence disappeared within a single day, and that lost innocence could never be found again."

"And what a vigorous company Texas Instruments was! Employees seemed to walk a bit faster than at Sylvania, and their backs seemed a bit straighter too. “Tired” was practically an adjective you never heard. At that time, the standard workweek in the United States was forty hours, but TI’s working hours were at least fifty; it was common for someone to bring a canvas cot to work in the morning, planning to sleep in the office at night. Working on Saturday mornings was an unwritten rule, and except for the most junior employees, no one received overtime pay for extended hours. I also discovered that within the company, “failure” was never accepted; “setbacks” could be understood, even sympathized with. But the person who suffered a setback had to pull themselves together and start again; if there was another setback, start again—until success. I also found that this was a very talkative company, where no one was afraid to voice opinions, even if some were very naive. In my first few months on the job, several times the production line’s yield suddenly dropped or failed to rise as expected; not only engineers and technicians, but even line operators would offer suggestions—and do so enthusiastically. Their suggestions were not necessarily adopted, but even after repeatedly hitting a wall, they would still continue to express their views."

"What a young company Texas Instruments was! The people I saw all around seemed to be under forty. My supervisor was a somewhat older department manager, but he was not yet forty either, and other managers at the same level seemed even younger than he was; the general manager of the semiconductor division, Mark Shepherd, was only thirty-six. At Sylvania, of course there were young engineers of my generation, but the age of most people in the supervisory ranks was over forty. People in their fifties, even their sixties, were not uncommon."

"Pursuing practical results in modern high-tech enterprises is, of course, related to innovation; therefore, what necessarily follows close behind the pragmatic philosophy is the philosophy of innovation. Without innovation, one is eliminated immediately—there can be no results to speak of. In this autobiography there is a passage describing the Sylvania company, where Mr. Zhang Zhongmou once served with great enthusiasm. Because the leadership of the semiconductor division stagnated and grew complacent, it ultimately declined. The scene in which Mr. Zhang went to inspect the instruments and equipment to be sold is quite affecting."