Indeed, South East Asian countries like Singapore offer a starting graduate pay that is more than double that of Taiwan. But this era is also almost over… as these countries are closing their doors to their foreign labor or talent intake too, which may explain why more graduates are abandoning their university skills to start up cafes or re-invent culturally creative niche products.
With Taiwan having approximately 130 Universities for a population of 25 million, it is probably not a bad option.
Your life will be hell now and they will never forgive you
I’m not sure I entirely agree with the cost of living part. I always phrase it as it’s possible to live cheap … one of the big differences I have found between where we live now in Canada, and our life in Hsinchu, is that I find we are locked into a certain cost of living without options to escape. In Hsinchu there was always the option to downsize or eat cheap if money was tight.
I’ve never heard run of the mill web devs or marketing folks in Taiwan making 200k+ a month.
Me too, would be very unusual. Most of them probably earn 40-80k per mth.
Pah!..My previous life was hell, this is easy.
Never met anyone making 200k TWD in taiwan. I met few TSCM people with like 3 to 5 years of work and they did not make over 2 mio twd. This is what they told me…
I believe around 10 % of population making 75k twd+, so 200k will put someone in top 1 - 2 %
Money in taiwan coming from business ownership, corruption and commercial property renting, not from salaries.
When it comes to west, i partly agree living in London can be hard, but is way more opening place for immigrants. Taiwan is closed, is xenophobic, is chinese conservative place. I have a cousin starting with selling shoes in London and these days she makes above 10k + as IT consultant at american company. Probably it did help she is ex model. Another cousin making way more in Brussels, but ok, as a high diplomat she is out of league.
Still waiting for Filipinos labor girl to make it to top in best Taiwanese companies. She will never make it, Taiwan is racist place.
My friend , lovely Filipino girl, was doing night sifts, in illegal factory for 20k twd, got married to Australian, and she makes like 75k (australian dollars) yearly as nurse . She has such a big smile on every photo now. What must be her opinion of Taiwan?
Put it like this, taiwan is great place for few, can be best place in whole world for certain kind of people, but most immigrants would better off somewhere else.
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It’s really bad sense to compare Taiwan to Australia (or any Anglo country for that matter), but seeing that it’s coming from you…
Actually, the Taiwanese kids are going to Thailand, Vietnam, even Cambodia. It is quite revealing. And the SEA have yet not reached the peak of the wave, like China. There is still room for growth.
Damn man nail on head!
Your stat about only 1-2% (salaried workers ) earning more than 200k per month in correct. I checked it on the govt statistics website before.
Revealing what? They get “expat” packages to go there by crap Taiwanese companies to exploit the locals. It’s been going on for more than a decade. Hardly good news for those countries.
It’s really bad when the standard work month is 160 hrs everywhere else.
It’s confirmation bias. There won’t be that many people being paid >50k or even 100k like you’re asserting when the average net salary for the whole country is barely 25k. Those who receive the fancy pay are the minorities of the minorities, as is the case in Taiwan. 3500 EUR after tax would put you in the top 10% in most W. European countries. The numbers you’re describing also only belong to the 1-2% percentiles. Like I said, the only European country where this is not the case is Switzerland, where the salary is 2-3 times higher than in the rest of Europe.
We should compare like with like, true . Capital city to capital city, industrial city to industrial city.
Let me look into it .
Still the average industrial wage in Ireland is 45,000 euro. In Taiwan it is 14,000 euro.
And believe me you can earn 45000 euro almost anywhere in Ireland if you have a college degree. You don’t need to be in the capital. You could possibly earn as much or more working on building sites. It’s not a great salary.
After income tax in Ireland it’s 35,000 euro . Still thats a very significant gap with Taiwan.
The gap further comes down when you consider cost of living (especially rent), but at a certain point pennies are just pennies and you are saving by compromising on food quality, safety etc.
I’m not denying there isn’t a significant underclass in Europe , poorly paid immigrants and a lot of poorly paid workers in Southern Europe and Eastern Europe . But Western Europe seems to be two to three times more prosperous overall than Taiwan if looking at salaried workers .
I feel like we are going in circles. I’ll just leave you with this.
It’s from Eurostat.
If you’ve got a degree from a prestigeous school, it is definitely true that you would get better offers in W. Europe than in Taiwan, probably far better offers if you know the right people or if you’ve got great credentials, but that also means those who don’t have a good degree are doing very poorly.
Nope, not Taiwan companies. That is the interesting part.
Expat packages a la China have also gone the way of the dodo.
And with the governments down there, for exmaple, exploiting the locals is problematic. Not as easy as here.
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Wow, can’t imagine how much corruption there was to get that whole scheme to operate !
A lot of those slaughterhouses employ illegal migrants , saw some news from Taoyuan a while back.
Yep. And they come, sweep teh workers… do not penalize the “workplaces”, which are back online with a fresh batch the enxt day. Last time I saw one on the news, it was because they were locking the workers in metal cages…
You can read the same stuff in CNA, BTW. Official story is putting the blame on the students -they have to pay the school next year´s tuition, unbelievable. Really disgusting.
Then there was the lady a while back that was working in the tofu factory for seven years like a slave or something…
Very suspicious… the school claims it had no idea and they were victims too. Meanwhile students were entering on visitor visas and not a student visa and they supposedly had no idea.
Now that the scam is caught they don’t want the kids there to study anymore since they have no money.
Where exactly is immigration in all this.? All these kids from Sri Lanka coming in supposedly as visitors? Lol
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