I bet they can make a mean pow mien. 
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Every country in the world has different workforce shortages in different industries. Taiwan’s shortage is in ESL teachers and not engineers, hence foreign ESL teachers get paid twice as much as their local counterparts and engineers don’t get paid very high salaries.
I have a friend who is working as a chip engineer for UMC getting over 300,000 ntd a month plus he got something ridiculous like a 6 or 12 months salary bonus.
Not at all a bad salary for Taiwan
That’s not a bad salary for software engineers in the US (except for maybe the Bay Area), and a GREAT salary for Taiwan. If that’s what they are paid here then the OP has nothing to complain about.
Top talents for the tech industry can make a world of difference in economy so I think the ESL teacher comparison is a bit short sighted. ESL teachers don’t create products that scale like the products software and hardware devs can. Creating a hub can yield results u see in Silicon Valley, Seattle, etc.
Taiwan seems to have a mini hub, hardware driven. Tying that closer with software can yield great rewards if there is the vision for it.
That’s precisely the issue… for Taiwan.. $10K usd/month is nothing to sneeze at in the tech field for top talent hubs.
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The point was, supply and demand
Taiwan doesn’t really invent products that scale either. They specialize in low cost manufacturing. Bringing in expensive foreigners who don’t know the way things are done here is a waste of money and an inconvenience.
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I wasn’t comparing the value of ESL teachers and software engineers. I was comparing the shortages of the two in Taiwan.
I don’t disagree. I’m just saying top talent in the tech industry already exists in Taiwan. There is little shortage, and hence little need to hire many foreigners. Definitely very little need to pay them more than locals.
I have thought previously that a close relationship with India would be a good thing for Taiwan (for one thing, still no need to raise those salaries), but it isn’t likely to happen.
Chips scale. It’s just the more painful way to do so. China is able to get tiktok so it’s not a problem of being able innovate. Just changing mindset to be growth driven.
Diversity yields great products. Not the style of devs just found in Taiwan. The sooner people realize this, the sooner Taiwan will go back to growth like in the 90’s.
Because the companies don’t see expensive foreigners as value added, they’re an inconvenience.
The government tried the Gold Card approach, but expensive tech talent foreigners have difficulty finding jobs, because of the answer to the first question.
There are exceptions, but generally there is no need for the industry to suddenly pay a lot more for less convenient people when they don’t have vacancies needing to be filled.
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That’s not true at all. Taiwan and Korea make the most advanced by far. Intel is barely keeping up and burned through billions doing so and other countries like China are at least a decade behind, despite having practically unlimited money to throw at it. If it was as simple as Taiwan can do it cheaper, the Chinese would’ve bankrupted TSMC by now
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- The American schools (at least TAS) doesn’t register as particularly high compared to good private schools in major cities in the US
- Buying housing in Taipei seems close enough to bring co.parable, rent seems a lot cheaper to me still, the near burbs in New Taipei seems a lot cheaper. Would love to see a good comparison of this with data.
Bonuses appear to be generally bigger as a percentage of salary, but being salary is so much lower, so…
Generally, everywhere, companies pay what they need to. It’s all market based.
Competitive to / with what?
My parents eat a shit ton of biandang / dominos / noodles because they don’t want to bother cooking much (despite being good cooks), and it’s convenient (they’d eat better food that was more convenient, but eh). Eating out is so cheap and convenient in Taipei I doubt I’d ever cook there.
Whenever a company hires a foreigner for a specific role, they need to prove to the government that they have already exhausted reasonable means to find local talent for the job before the government will grant them an employment visa.
As much as I agree with you that diversity yields great products, I doubt that diversity alone is sufficient reason for the government to approve a visa at the expense of a local hire.
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This. Is very true.
Absolutely true. Not sure what people are smoking here, but it sounded like “if it’s something I don’t understand, it must be easy!!!”, words ignoramuses live by. Next they’ll say that it’s possible to do this semiconductor stuff in a garage at home.
Intel also has a couple of factories in Malaysia where labor costs are even lower than ones in Taiwan. They first operated in that country in 1972, way before the creation of TSMC, so Intel should be leading the pack right?
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Yep I’m aware of the gold card approach. I think it’s an interesting idea. The intention is right, need support from the big boys, mediatek, tsmc, etc. I don’t know how successful it’s been.
It doesn’t have to start with complete foreigners. I’ve seen a ton of Taiwan folks get educated in the US and come back to Taiwan. That’s the first level, and sort of ends there. Their kids stay in the US and visit occassionally. If we could bring more of those that would help (culturally aware and bring diversity). And finally bring more foreign companies with ties to Taiwan companies.
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There’s a thread on it.
Can you quote who you’re talking about here?
Actually, nevermind, I’ve given my opinion regarding your question.
That’s slowly changing. Taiwanese have historically not invested in software because it takes too long to see rewards. So rich people dump their money into real estate.
Now, you can get funding from anywhere, and some of the top VC firms in the US have Taiwanese American CEOs.
There’s the Startup Island podcast that highlights these startups, mostly software.
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