Salaries in China are lower. That’s a fact. China pays higher salaries to some key foreign talent in order to steal tech. They will always be able to do that, even if Taiwan doubles salaries, the extra salaries paid by Chinese corp for Taiwanese tech is not a significant overhead for them since they pay shit to the Chinese workforce.
Tw engineers really get shit pay. Most dont get paid over 2k usd a month, that is less than what fast food workers get paid in the US lmao
Some (increasingly rare) folks in Taiwan genuinely identify with the culture in China. More are willing to tolerate it to do business (a deeply seated Taiwan trait). Many others view China and its way of doing things as unpalatable.
For some recent data (admittedly not from a very object source—lol): Nearly 90 percent of public identify with Taiwan: poll - Taipei Times
Guy
Some like me arent even paid 2k per month here. Engineers are paid less in Taiwan its because there are so many engineering graduates but most lack practical skills.
ive met some “engineers” in Taiwan who can’t change a light bulb.
but those talented still get paid like shit and have to carry the morons on their back including training them. ALL FOR SHIT LEVEL PAY compared to what they deserve.
don’t like this, they can label critical tech as anything and say you can’t go get your money, continue to stay in Taiwan and make piss pay so your boss can continue to buy his idiotic son more luxury cars to crash. enjoy your 40k.
This has been a recurring theme here, maybe my circle just makes more idk but the engineers around me all make 100k and up (bonuses and overtime included), with the median 20k-ish higher. Average is probably over 150k (TSMC dudes skewing the data lol).
I don’t think we can get anywhere with this with just anecdotes. I’m sure there are some official data on this.
Edit: This is all I could find, maybe others can find something more detailed and dependable.
Despite the growing demand, the average monthly wage in the semiconductor industry fell NT$195 (US$7), or 0.4 percent from a year earlier, to NT$52,483 in the second quarter, trailing the computer and consumer electronics industry’s NT$54,640, it said.
The average pay, including bonuses, in the local semiconductor industry was NT$1.7 million, lower than the NT$2 million to NT$3.5 million seen in the US, Singapore and Japan, 104 Job Bank said.
Seems reasonable to me, from a national security perspective 
Given the enormous boom and amount of money they are making the pay is too low. I guess they operate a bit like a cartel.
Well your information is wrong.
They are getting a lot more due to the boom. They usually got 30~ months of salaries in a year, last year they got more than 40.
But the numbers above say everything together is 1.7 million average.
Anyway…I don’t doubt that some engineers are making big money right now.
First of all, it’s median, not average. Average is 2.4 million.
And these reports don’t include executives but include those who make a lot less like operators.
And TSMC is not the highest. It’s actually 18th, though I think it’s safe to assume that many of the first 17 don’t have a lot of employees.
It’s low, pays in Taiwan are always low regardless of field of expertise, but it’s not less than 2k USD, that’s a ridiculous number.
Probably including foreign and local labourers. Foreigners on very low pay… Know a local supervisor in one of those places I think he makes 50k a mth.
If u think pay in taiwan isnt less than 2k USD per month , then u r living in a bubble.
If all the outstanding talent from Taiwan was still in Taiwan…wow…so much they could accomplish. However, the talent goes to where the money is more and the future looks brighter…whether China or the U.S. or elsewhere.
“Attracting” Taiwan is going to continue and probably escalate in China. The Chinese government and companies are under pressure to move ahead quickly. I remember a meeting I attended over 10 years ago with a high ranking provincial official. We were giving him the usual company powerpoint presentation which he interrupted after 5 minutes. He simply asked what we needed to make another investment in China. Our CEO listed one, two, three…and after each one the official said we can do that. Nine months later a huge new factory in China was up and running.
When they want to get something done they can…and will.
How very eloquent lol.
Probably before 2019, no one has been going to China since 2020 and a lot of those in China have returned last year.
There must be a lot of really low paid engineers too. The ones I know are still junior engineers but make between three and four million a year with bonuses.