Legal slavery.
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I’ve been here nearly twenty years, and this is the same song I’ve heard throughout this time. It’s not specific to the pandemic.
I do feel (and stats bear this out) that wages in Taiwan finally are moving up after remaining stagnant for so long. In short, I don’t feel as hopeless about this as you do. If you have stats telling a different story, let us know.
Guy
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I have a hard time believing you couldn’t just throw money at the engineers to quarantine for two weeks and come out ahead financially vs letting a factory idle. You can get engineers to go to Antarctica for a year at a time, warzones for a year at a time, but Taiwan with a 2 week quarantine is an issue? What kind of engineers are they waiting on?
Nobody argues that, but there’s a lot of things Taiwan can take from HK in the meantime.
You seem to have no clue about how it works.
Say you want an engineer from Europe - his base salary in Europe is 4000€ after taxes - that means the company has to pay 8000 a month (social security, taxes eat up 50%).
Now for 2 weeks quarantine Taiwan style that engineer will ask a 2 month bonus so he is willing to endure it. So thats 16.000€ for the quarantine. He will not agree to the dog food that he will get even in 5 star hotels (all hotels what I have seen except super luxury serve that dogfood in plastic bins) - but yeah he doesn’t know about the dog food yet. But add 3000€ for the 5 star hotel for 2 weeks. 2000€ for return flight in Premium Economy.
If you don’t manage to get proper food into the hotel - the employee will be disgruntled as fuck arriving at your site. Plus he has the 7 day self health management period a bit unclear - add 2000€ bonus for that one on top.
Now you paid 20.000€ for no work done yet just to have the engineer come to Taiwan.
People inside your company gonna know it - so you cannot pay it because it would beak your company pay structure.
So bringing an engineer in is out of question. You neither can pay someone qualified inside Taiwan because it will break your salary structure. If you get an engineer from the US - it’s gonna 50% more.
So now you end up spending 100.000€ instead per consultant to do that maybe 3-4 week work - because people aren’t gonna question why that consultant is earning soo much. Instead of maybe 10.000€ if there is no quarantine per engineer to get the work done. If the 100.000€ is too much - you put the project on hold. Which is what will happen in most cases.
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Hard to reply to your post as you are all-over the place and hard to follow what point you are trying to make
1). Taiwan’s economy is doing well. I’m not sure why you are so obsessed with tsmc. It’s doing well because of reinvestment from Taiwanese companies and then investment from Overseas companies. Loads of companies in Taiwan are doing well now. Of course some industries arent
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Taiwanese are underpaid. That has nothing to do with the pandemic. If anything wages are up significantly in the last couple of years and there has never been more belief in Taiwan. You go and fucking speak to people if you aren’t feeling this.
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HaVe no fucking clue what your point about the Sea workers are. Taiwan lacks blue collar workers. You dont think the average Taiwanese feels the benefits of subway lines being built on time? Again you go and speak to people
None of this has anything to do with the pandemic and no section of society wants to open up before back vaccination rates are high enough.
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Like what?
Yeah the “economy sucks” and there is no hope for young people narrative usually comes from old blues , and not based on any reality. Wages in Taiwan are low because bosses are cheap
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“Ghost island”:
https://www.ozy.com/around-the-world/lost-ambition-taiwans-millennials-drown-in-despair/87884/
It’s the latest term to wiggle its way into Taiwan’s lexicon. The number of searches for “ghost island” on Google over the first six months of 2018 is 86 percent higher than it was for the same period last year. Wend through Taiwan’s college lecture halls or buzzing online forums and you’ll likely overhear some using the self-deprecatory term. The topic has spawned more than 400 posts over the past year on PTT, Taiwan’s version of Reddit.
Here’s the SparkNotes version for you: “Ghost island” is shorthand for the global isolation, lack of opportunity, economic stagnation, government corruption and overall sense of despair that seem to be haunting Taiwan as of late. A 2016 HSBC survey found that only 32 percent of respondents believe that Taiwan is well-suited for their long-term career development. And this millennial malaise is now increasingly getting attention from contemporary artists and serious academic scholars too, particularly in the face of China’s rise.
“Every country has its own ghost,” says Ming Chuan University professor Wenhui Chen, who recently started studying the topic in depth. . . .
“It’s difficult to focus on driving these ghosts away from the island, and the impact of our wages, prices and costs of housing all reflect that degree of helplessness,” says Lisheng Xie, a millennial illustrator who published her book, Ghost Island , this year."
Yeah the Ghost Island shit is a bit passe now in 2021. That article is from 2018. I never hear that shit anymore and used to all the time. A lot of it was CCP propaganda anyway, disseminated through the KMT to make young people lose hope in Taiwan.
Things have changed a lot in the last few years. I know a lot of Taiwanese moving back from China as wages are going up here. We just had big investments from Microsoft, Amazon and Google who have built big R&D here. Taiwanese companies are moving back in their droves as well.
Taiwanese entertainment is having a renaissance right now and general belief in Taiwan.
Not sure if I am living in the same place
Thats over half a decade ago
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So Taiwan went from Ghost Island to Fantasy Island in three years, despite the pandemic? I hope you’re right but that hasn’t been my experience – unless you’re in semiconductor manufacturing, AI, or cloud architecture. Even then if you’re in those in-demand professions you’re making half what you could be making in the West.
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seems like a common trend amongst a lot of Taiwanese I deal with AKA my landlord. Another topic for another day, but the problem is the bosses in taiwan are generally complete assholes. I know some chemical engineers getting paid turdballs for working 10-12h a day. 40k for a chemical engineer? say fucking what? Nurses make turd level salaries and work their ass off. I’d be completely trying to get the hell out of Taiwan if that was me.
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I didn’t say that, I said things improved a lot. The pandemic has been good for Taiwan though, in so many ways beyond the economy
Exactly. When I worked for a multinational in semiconductor, we stayed in 5 star hotels, flew business class, and worked very hard for customers in Taiwan.
The policy for most multinationals is that your standard of living should be they same on business travel as it is at home.
Not to mention the burden on your family while you’re gone.
Another reason besides visa issues that you won’t see business travelers is that companies here are wary of people just leaving quarantine.
I can’t imagine my old company sending me on a business trip that required quarantine or that last PCR test fiasco where they hurt you.
Some of these travelers have unique, incredible skillsets and can help companies win market share due to hitting the market at the right time.
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So those international engineers can, by contrast, just fly right in to South Korea, or Japan, or the PRC? Where in Asia have governments just “opened up” as some of you are calling for?
Guy
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Has anyone here actually heard of a quarantine bonus being offered or paid?
I honestly don’t know about other countries. I’ve been away from that industry or anything corporate for awhile. I used to support clients in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China which required 50% travel.
I do know it will be hard to get a good engineer to endure Taiwan style quarantine while the job market is so hot.
I bet travel is limited for most companies.
There are layoffs in the Detroit auto industry due to lack of chips so those folks could be persuaded.
It will be expensive to get someone who installs semiconductor equipment or a hotshot electrical/embedded engineer to come here.
I am getting hunted by Taiwanese recruiters these days and they weren’t interested in me 5 years ago because of my over 50 age and salary requirements. That tells me it must be slim pickings.
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…Because…?
We aren’t vaccinated yet.
Simple as that.
For a country that hasn’t been fully vaccinated things arent bad.
You should see south east Asia ! Because many of those countries are screwed.
The mistake you made was coming back. I notice you didn’t love Taiwan enough to stick around during the Summer (by the way I don’t blame you ). A huge number fled after the the outbreak which contributes to the demise of said restaursnts and coffeeshops.
Last year they were doing just fine as there was no outbreak. The envy of the world in fact.
Now things have been improving in fits and starts…
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Could you explain this?
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It’s been good for national pride and sense of collective identity and goal. Not sure if you remember, Taiwan’s COVID response was the envy of the world and it brought so much positive attention on Taiwan from the foreign media.
I think it brought a new sense of pride and unity in Taiwan and changed how people felt about their country
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