How much can I make in Taiwan? The answer is : “it depends” . Salary packages are often a black box, people never really talk about it. HR team usually hide it to employees, and have strict policies to not share it.
When interviewing, we don’t know how much to ask. Taiwan salaries are completely different from salaries in other countries. Did you know a big part of it came from bonuses? If we don’t have data, we can’t make informed decisions . We don’t know if we get underpaid , or could make better decision to reconsider a job we currently have.
I’ve started this spreadsheet where people could share their salary anonymously. If you work for a Taiwanese / local branch (no remote), please fill that spreadsheet to help people asking what they really worth.
Thanks for people who shared their own salary!
There is now 80+ people who shared their salary in the spreadsheet. I guess that’s enough data to make it meaningful!
Makes for interesting reading, especially the comments. Great idea.
Very heavy concentration of jobs in tech and education, not surprising, shows limitations in terms of local job market especially for foreigners (govt and public jobs pretty much off limits…And very hard to become a citizen and untick that foreigner box ). Still the roles are quite varied which can give folks some ideas of potential jobs out there.
Average tech jobs catching up or exceeding education pay?
Bonus schemes vary tremendously but few get more than two months, again that’s known from other job surveys over the years. A lot of people don’t know if they will get a bonus or don’t get a bonus, that was me as well for years.
I will do an analysis now to see if foreigners are potentially being taken advantage of compared to Taiwanese (as many foreigners don’t know it is routine to get 13-14 months standard salary ), but I may need more Taiwanese respondents first to make an accurate judgement .
Another interesting analysis will be years experience versus pay. Can have lots of fun with this one.
Probably came in from overseas on a higher base into top management , only an assumption but. Good and surprising to see a foreign lady at the top of the pile.
Not regarding foreign professionals, who heavily skew to living in Taipei from the national immigration stats. Many of those roles would not exist outside of Taipei. Guessing fair number are working in Neihu science park.
To me it reinforces the notion that salaries aren’t great here, and “liveable” is subjective. There are some very low salaries, especially among Taiwanese who even have years of experience. This survey certainly has a foreigner bias, but even many foreign respondents have salaries that are low for global standards, and as many of you know, the work-life balance can be not great here sometimes. If you’re at a Taiwanese company, even standard working hours are one hour more per day than in America, and OT/weekend work is common. That plus often poor working conditions, etc. should be considered in compensation.
I think it’s interesting to look at the number of people in the survey who say they feel underpaid.
Also very notable, shockingly few are getting annual stock compensation but they work in TECH companies.
Greed of top management not to share stock compensation with lower management and staff .
There were very few high earners in this survey. Again that is borne out by other surveys I have read, if you earn more than 200k per month I think it puts you in the top 1% of salary earners in Taiwan .
Although there are a fair number making a decent wage for Taiwan in this survey (they should be since they are professionals ).
I’m at least relieved the teacher salaries are about in line with mine (I haven’t filled mine in yet).
As for that low of 30k, that’s about how much my brother-in-law makes on an assembly line in a factory, and it’s safe to say he works about 10 times as hard as me. Things aren’t really fair, eh.
A key point, as we all know, is the difference between what we earn and what we burn. Taiwan’s relatively low taxes and relatively low cost of living (except buying real estate) certainly helps.
Personally I think if you start hitting the 100k a month mark Taiwan isn’t too bad , especially if you have a partner that is earning. You could probably get a mortgage and save a bit of cash every month. But that’s still very far from high earner in some countries.
