Yes, we need to go back to the days when parents chose their kids’ majors for them. 
Yep , for example programmers in Taiwan, easily earning half or one third or even one quarter of the US and Europe.
I still know small but definitely high tech scientific companies in Taipei offering 30-35k per month for product abd project managers. In Taipei ! (Yeah they call iNew Taipei…Whatever).
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Programming salaries are quite high here relative to other jobs. It’s actually really hard to find good talent - if you have a decent resume in software engineering, you can expect to make 1 to 2 million ntd a year, which is really high in Taiwan. It’s actually not far off from most other locales - it’s only the USA that has insanely high salaries.
Would surely get paid a lot more in Ireland, UK, Canada, Australia , Scandinavia too…Don’t know much about other places. The thing is a bog standard programmer could still pull in a very decent salary in many countries but not here.
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Is that really a high income in Taiwan, compared to asset costs and incomes of engineers , senior managers , other professionals or company/biz owners ?
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The reason talent is hard to find is that many people with skills and experience go abroad to work.
The Taiwan salaries for engineers with advanced degrees and years of experience is frequently in the range of what fresh grads make in numerous other countries. And the advancement opportunities are greater in other countries as well.
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The big problems with this proposal:
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Many foreign STEM professionals who graduate from the top 500 universities would have little reason to come to Taiwan given the salaries. Taiwan might be of interest to graduates from SE Asian countries, but I’m not sure how many universities there will make the cut and the treatment of people from SE Asia here is mixed too which could be a turn off.
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Language is a big barrier. A lot of foreign professionals won’t speak Chinese (or well enough to work effectively in a Chinese-speaking organization) and the English speaking ability of many/most engineers here isn’t great.
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That’s less than $100k a year and the cost of living is about what you would pay in states like Texas. It’s low.
Yah but those countries also are richer too so it’s not unexpected to also have higher salary levels in general. Those countries are also stronger for software and IT so the engineers there are also going to be more productive on average. Swistzerland Australia and Singapore are among the richest countries in the world and salaries there for fast food workers is quite high, relatively speaking way higher than Taiwan.
But Taiwan compares relatively well with other East Asian states as it isn’t that far off. Japan and Korea both are in the same ballpark, a lil higher but not excessively so.
To be honest, 50 to 60k usd is typical for much of the developed world for sw engineering salaries and Taiwan is in that ballpark. USA is in its own tier, and some other really rich countries are higher too. But Taiwan compares well with other countries outside those, especially relative to non sw salaries.
Definite issues there.
Where there’s a will there’s a way to create an international IT company and environment, it could potentially work well in Taiwan.
Is Trend Micro one successful Taiwanese /Japanese IT company that does this?
It’s good to see the giants such as MS, Amazon and Google talking about investing in Taiwan maybe things will improve a lot over the next few years.
I don’t doubt you are right but I don’t think that programmers are getting paid that well compared to other professionals in Taiwan actually. Compared to your regular Joe soap office job,not bad.
I’m guessing contract day rates here are very low compared to Western developed countries. Partly due to lack of international finance and pharma companies I would guess. Stingy Taiwanese employers. Anybody got any numbers ?
Yeah a decent EE is also around the 2 mil mark. Those other jobs aren’t necessarily above 2 mil either. Ofc some make more but the number of ppl making more than 2 mil in Taiwan isn’t that high probably less than 10%.
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I should know this, but I don’t. Students get into the best unis based on their overall scores. So, you could be great at a STEM subject, but still end up in a lower ranked uni.
That feels to me like the biggest issue.
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Taiwan COL is less than Texas and a 60k salary there wouldn’t be that bad for most typical office jobs. Taxes are lower in Taiwan as well. Like 60k in Taiwan is really quite comfortable.
Taiwan property purchase cost is not cheap, that needs to be included in COL. Also groceries certainly not cheap. Imported cars not cheap. Other stuff I’ll give you.
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I mean taiwan salaries are low across the board so you are right about that. We all know Taiwan employers are stingy. My point was that in this low pay reality sw engineers get paid reasonably well. Like someone else said the best go off to the states so the ones that are left aren’t even that good globally. I’ve had to find engineers and interviewed many. The talent here isn’t good so IMO their salaries aren’t even that unfairly low.
If any of you are engineers then these are the questions i ask. I don’t ask any leetcode style cuz I know those will too difficult. I ask really basic questions like what’s static what’s volatile write a circular buffer and implement a linked list. Less than 20% of candidates can answer those. To someone that can we offered 1 to 2 mil depending on resume. It’s just really tough and these sw engs are far under us level.
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Houston Texas col is 66 Taipei 65 according to this website.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/region_rankings_current.jsp?region=019
Once salaries inch up, the brain drain will reverse itself. Like it did in the 80s.
They don’t have to be as high as in the US because hometown discount.
This Businessweek article from 1992 captures what I’m saying really well.
Weichen Tien knows what he’s after–and goes for it. As president of the Development Center for Biotechnology, he has been angling to lure Taiwan’s best and brightest back from America. Strutting down the corridor at this burgeoning research and development institute, Tien has a lot to show for his efforts. The center’s eight directors all came back from the U.S. over the past five years. “I got this guy from Kodak,” says Tien, pointing to one executive suite. “This guy came from Monsanto, this one from Upjohn, and that one from Abbott.”
As never before, U.S.-trained engineers and researchers are being lured back home to help direct Taiwan’s climb up the technology ladder. With its coffers spilling over, Taiwan is pumping increasingly hefty R&D funds into critical technologies of the future: $280 million for submicron chip production, $120 million for biotechnology and pharmaceutical research, and $120 million for high-definition TV. As U.S. blue chips cut back sharply on personnel and R&D, thousands of highly experienced Taiwanese employees are bolting for greener pastures back home (chart, page 134).
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1992-12-06/bringing-it-all-back-home
Or they work for TSMC and Mediatek. Together they employ 65,000 engineers.
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