Texas Instruments is confirmed to have laid off its Chinese MCU team, and employees can only transfer jobs or voluntarily leave.

In May last year, it was revealed that Texas Instruments (TI), a major American chip manufacturer, had laid off its MCU R&D team at its Shanghai R&D center in China and moved its original MCU R&D line to India. Subsequently, Texas Instruments officially issued a statement in response, saying that "Texas Instruments China has not laid off any employees" and "will continue to invest in the Chinese market."

At that time, Texas Instruments issued an official statement titled "Texas Instruments (TI) Statement on Related False Reports/Information on the Internet",Texas Instruments did not directly respond to the rumors of "layoff of the MCU China R&D team" and "relocation of MCU R&D to India", but only emphasized that there will be no layoffs.

However, the latest industry news shows thatTexas Instruments has indeed abolished the MCU R&D team in China, retaining only the market and applications, and moved all the original MCU product lines to India.

All team members have been dispersed and assigned to other product lines, with nominal positions and salaries remaining unchanged.

The company gives employees two choices:Either accept the arrangement to work in other product lines, or take the initiative to resign.

Data shows that Texas Instruments’ MCU R&D team in China is mainly focused on the MSP430 product line. This product line has been a series of 16-bit ultra-low-power, low-cost MCUs launched to the market since 1996. So far, it has more than 500 products in the MSP430 series, which are widely used in industrial control, automobiles, consumer electronics, medical and other fields.

The Texas Instruments Shanghai R&D center was established in 2010, and the Chinese R&D team for the MSP430 product line was established in 2011.

Previously, according to the "History of IC Male Struggle" who had worked at Texas Instruments, after the establishment of the Texas Instruments MCU China team, it went through several years of development and growth, reaching its peak around 2017.

At its peak, the team had more than 60 people, making it the largest and most comprehensive team in the Shanghai R&D center of the old employer.

From marketing/system engineers to digital/analog design, from verification to back-end layout, from ATE testing to chip application, and even customer quality-related positions. "

It was reported at the time that Texas Instruments had abolished the MCU R&D team in the Shanghai R&D Center, and part of it was merged into the LEDDRIVER chip team. Only the market and application-related teams were retained.

A person in charge also revealed, "Currently, TI has two product lines, LEDDRIVER and BCS, in Shanghai, as well as one product line each in Beijing and Shenzhen. The MCU team has at least a dozen R&D projects in the country."

The revelations also show,Texas Instruments forced the original MCU product line R&D personnel to transfer to the analog chip department, directly switching from mixed-signal chips to pure analog chips. Not only did it not consider the employees' feelings and technical expertise, but also because the original MCU team had a large number of people, there were actually not that many vacancies in other product lines, so there was no work for the transferred employees, and the performance of the transferred employees would naturally be the worst.

If you don't accept it and feel that the assigned position is not suitable, you can only resign yourself.

"IC Male Struggle History" believes:"This trick is actually a disguised form of forcing employees to resign voluntarily. They don't want to go through the layoff process, let alone compensation."