I only know one engineer at TSMC and a bunch of people at Mediatek what they told me all fall within that range.
Edit: I should have read more before posting. Ya’ll covered it. Lol.
The question is how many are actually senior level. TSMC has tens of thousands of engineer 100 is nothing unless they are key figures.
That’d debatable…the stealing trade secrets part .
What is stealing and what is knowledge gained in education, training and the ordinary pursuit of ones job ?
The technology is already so complex and compartmentalized that even if your new foundry (propped up by the local provincial government) hired a bunch of key TSMC engineers and had them regurgitate everything from memory, your new foundry still wouldn’t catch up to TSMC. You might speed up the R&D because pathfinding is alleviated but you couldn’t build another TSMC from scratch overnight.
You don’t pay that kind of money for someone to be fully compliant with the NDA they signed with TSMC.
I understand that very well otherwise mainland foundries would have been able to catch up. It’s also the reason why TSMC moves ahead continuously to not allow time to catch up.
But I think it’s still not fair to categorise peoole who change jobs as ‘selling trade secrets’ necessarily.
Exactly 
Everything is right here so obviously an insider, except you left off the large bonus (effectively you get quarterly payments of 1/8 of bonus and then you get half sometime later to make sure you don’t leave or if you do you leave money on the table). If you have an NDA then you’re probably level 37 or higher. I came in as a 35 and had no such thing. That said, I wouldn’t worry about breaching an NDA, the legal department is a joke.
But I reiterate my entire position on this thread. Good for tsmc and all their success, but just don’t be surprised as all the best talent leaves. There are way too many engineers there who could do better elsewhere, and I think that fact is catching up to them.
If this were true it would’ve been true for more than a decade, but the fact is TSMC is doing better than all its competitors and that gap is not closing.
Usual bullshit of Taiwan HR clowns.
Exactly. They might get a big bonus on a small salary. So they might end up getting $2m. But they work 60 hour weeks and get no really vacations.
At a wedding on the weekend they were all sitting at the same table answering questions from senior management about utter bullshit. No need for the emails and lines but it’s like meetings. Pointless.
And they will work less in China? I seriously doubt that. Your comments about work culture and salary are valid if compared to Silicon Valley but total bs when it comes to China and even Samsung.
The report is about senior positions. There is literally zero possiblity non-enigneers get paid more in Chinese semi companies than TSMC. And when it comes to key figures I guess they can pay a couple people double or triple but they can’t afford to pay multiples of TSMC to all engineers or they will go bankrupt.
I will say this though. They are now on top and that means their employees have knowledge that can only be obtained either by massive R&D or by snatching up their employees. They have to increase salaries or this will just get worse by the day.
I disagree that the gap is not closing. Take a look at where mainland foundries were 10 years ago and where they are now. That gap has closed significantly. Samsung also caught up to them at 16nm within the last couple years 2015 I think (allegedly because of trade secret theft by senior executives because, surprise, he felt slighted and under appreciated but I don’t know if I fully buy it). I’d be surprised if the mainland didn’t fully catch up in another 10 years, likely sooner if they are already on Finfet it seems.
The mainland can’t catch up because they can’t access US IP. Even though I’m not in the industry I know that much.
TSMC around 1996 was 18 months or more behind Intel in technology.
Now ahead of Intel by 12 months roughly. About 1 month a year.
Yes, China fab (SMIC likely) will someday catch up to TSMC, especially with backing of government and demand from China-run IC design firms.
Yeah, that gap has closed, between Intel and TSMC.
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How?
They can’t use US IP.
How did TSMC do it?
Same way, hard work, R&D on the mfg side.
IC design firms will be Chinese companies giving SMIC orders.
Its not just TSMC though they are banned from anything western basically. If China wants to compete to needs to simultaneously compete with all of the supply chain. The equipment from the likes of ASML and Applied Materials are crucial for 5nm. The total investment required will be on the hundreds of billions per year. I’m not saying they can’t but it will be a huge undertaking. A small 7 billion listing is nothing.
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The Taiwanese government needs to stiffen penalties for industrial espionage in key industries.
Why do they pay more than 12 months salary per year? Why not just increase the monthly salary and pay regular 12 months salary per year ?