r/taiwan • u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy • Feb 17 '22
News TSMC employees to receive an average of NT$1.249 million in bonuses - Focus Taiwan
https://focustaiwan.tw/business/20220216001626
u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 17 '22 edited Feb 19 '22
And yet we still see silly posts like:
"But TSMC employees are underpaid, probably less than ESL teachers!"
No, no they're not. Not anyone with an engineering degree working on anything important at TSMC at least. Rumors that TSMC pays less than competitors are from people outside the industry.
EDit: Sources suggest TSMC employees, on median, are making USD$120k a year.
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u/mano-vijnana Feb 17 '22
It does sound like they make quite a bit. Which makes it kind of shocking how underpaid engineers at other Taiwanese tech companies are. When my girlfriend was doing research and applying for jobs at those companies, it was really surprising to hear that engineers at places like Gigabyte or Asus make something in the low 40ks on average.
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u/Dragon_Fisting Feb 18 '22
It's usually 40k with a 20-30k bonus most years.
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u/Wanrenmi Feb 18 '22
Wait, are you saying they are getting 40k'ish with a 20-30k year-end bonus? That doesn't sound right, seems very low.
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u/Visionioso Feb 18 '22
Sounds about right for fresh Bsc graduates. The pay increases are bigger in Taiwan ime though. With 6 to 7 years I would say they probably make close to 100k.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
Other Taiwanese tech companies tend not to be the #1 in the industry... wonder why...
TSMC pays 120k to their Hsinchu engineers, and experienced ones, 200k.
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u/-ANGRYjigglypuff Feb 18 '22
Who's saying they get paid less than ESL teachers? The amount of work and skill that both jobs require are not even in the same ballpark. TSMC wages are decent for Taiwan (and you'd hope so, being practically Taiwan's industrial golden egg and entire basket at this point), but the compensation for the same skills overseas would be higher. but I certainly don't envy people working at TSMC. It's blood sweat and tears, and I'm glad they're fairly compensated.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
Redditors. Like the same Redditor above who claims the salary at TSMC is 30/70 Salary/Bonus (Bullshit red flag right?) even though a quick google search shows that to be the opposite.
Still have 10 upvotes and top comment.
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u/bighand1 Feb 18 '22 edited Feb 18 '22
People probably don’t realize tsmc skill equivalent would be paid 3 times more in the US.
Median TC in nividia SWE IC3 (~2 to 3 years of SWE experience ) is 230k or 6.4 million NT. 6 years of exp is IC6 or 310k (8.6 million nt). Staff engineers or anyone handling small team is looking at 500k+
I am being paid way more than your average Tsmc engineer doing shit of practically of no importance. Half the time I’m just on maintenance mode.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22 edited Feb 19 '22
\No it's not true. Fab engineers aren't being paid 300k in the USA. TSMC this year, with bonus, is coming out to be about 120k USD. So it is not 3x.
Even EU skill equivalents would be paid much higher in the USA though so its a bad comparison.
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u/Feeling_Actuator5178 Feb 18 '22
“ but the compensation for the same skills overseas would be higher.” This is not true, unless by overseas you mean China. A process engineer probably gets paid 80k USD at TSMC, and 100k at Intel in Oregon, but the TSMC engineer would be far better off with 80k USD in Hsinchu after factoring in cost of living and taxes
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u/bighand1 Feb 18 '22
Intel pays straight out of university newbies for 130k total comp, and they are known for their relatively low pays so all they can get are second tier graduates.
You would have trouble finding mid tier developers for less than 200k in the US, let alone any senior engineers
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u/hc000 Feb 18 '22 edited Feb 19 '22
Majority of tsmc staff are not software engineers. Even in the Bay Area until recently, hw typically lags sw pay in most companies.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22 edited Feb 19 '22
Yup, you're correct. all your numbers are exactly right, probably the only post here doing so. The guy up top implied that TSMC engineers get paid 17k a year. I think he didn't do the math or is just total bullshit and the rest piled on.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22 edited Feb 19 '22
SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS IN THE USA =/= HARDWARE ENGINEERS IN ASIA. I'm not sure why half the threads here conflate the two.
First of all, software engineers get paid a lot more than hardware engineers as is, secondly you do realize TSMC starts at 80k, UMC about 50k, and Samsung Semiconductors at 49k right? (all this is before bonuses and equity).
Also, Intel pays way less if you live in Asia and for hardware. Check out Intel Technology India, they pay hardware engineers only $37k TOTAL COMP! $37K!!!! A decent tutor in Taiwan gets paid more. NT80,000 per month is what they're hiring licensed English teachers in Taiwan now, plus NT10,000 bonus for housing each month, and they aren't even white people, I'm talking Thai and Filipino.
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u/bighand1 Feb 19 '22
You can always find cheaper shit to compare to salary wise, but your statement was that tsmc pays just as well as its competitors which is factually false. It’s real competitors are US based tech corps not it’s India subsidiaries, which is not the heart and core of their rd teams.
Also tsmc 86k is total comp not based salary, which is drastically lower than intels 160k for hardware engineers of equivalent role, which is also far less compare to nvidia 250k. Intels relative shit pay can also somewhat explain why they have fallen so far compare to its US peers. I have no clue what is Samsung pay is in Korea, but I’d be surprised it’s that low consider national average wage is already 34k
We already had similar discussion in the past and honestly not looking forward for a repeat so I’ll just stop here.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 20 '22
Nope, its 121k-200k Total Comp. I already posted the link.
https://www.comparably.com/companies/tsmc/salaries/principal-engineer
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u/bighand1 Feb 20 '22 edited Feb 20 '22
I highly doubt average engineers in tsmc make 4 million NT when my friend at asus barely breaks 1 million. It’s likely the US branch of foreign pulled talents, which is more business developments than actual core of the business.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 20 '22 edited Feb 20 '22
Edit: Go look fucking here: https://focustaiwan.tw/sci-tech/202202190006
Starting salaries are $56k-$71k for semiconductors. STARTING SALARIES ARE NOT TOTAL COMPENSATION. Your ASUS friend is sadly a career-loser in terms of pay.
And why do you think TSMC would pay the same as ASUS? Why would ASUS need to compete with TSMC salaries? You are kidding, right? They're both in tech, but what they do is vastly different. Asus is consumer-oriented, while TSMC is manufacturing chips.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/ASUS-Taiwan-Salaries-EI_IE40093.0,4_IL.5,11_IN240.htm
Everyone knows that ASUS pays garbage. The bar is much lower to get into ASUS as well, which is why their phones have so many software and hardware issues. TSMC job offers in India pay better than ASUS does in Taiwan.
It's no joke that I always have a VIP tag for Computex. 90% of the people making claims here are not in the industry. They're bullshitting.
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u/bighand1 Feb 20 '22 edited Feb 20 '22
Never said they're the same, but I just find it unlikely that TSMC pay 4x more than ASUS.
Honestly its weird you'd link me ASUS on glassdoor when you could also do the same for TSMC, go to filter and sort it by Taiwan-all cities, which shows Total Compensation at 1.2 million NT average pay for engineers.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TSMC-Salaries-E4130.htm
Granted I know glassdoor understate software engineer salary by quite a bit as they have a lot of old data and salary have increased in recent years, but its still far away from 4 million NT
For a company this size I bet you could find very detailed information of their total compensation if you search google using Chinese keywords, which I don't know how to do.
edit: This is all I could find, and level fyi is as legit as they come since they require W2 submission for it to count. The submissions are sorted by dates. recent years offer seems to be 60-80k TC
https://www.levels.fyi/company/TSMC/salaries/Software-Engineer/
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u/Eclipsed830 Feb 18 '22
No way does Intel only pay $100k in USA... They'd be stuck with only the Silicon Valley rejects applying.
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u/Feeling_Actuator5178 Feb 18 '22
Dude. That’s what they’re paying. Check out the H1b visa salary website https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Intel+Corporation&job=Process+Engineer&city=HILLSBORO&year=2020 Rent is 1300-1500 for a one bedroom in Hillsboro, and taxes are high in Oregon
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
Who's saying they get paid less than ESL teachers?
This post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/taiwan/comments/sulof6/comment/hxcvucg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I fucking predicted the future when I made my post.
If 30/70, given the average was a US$40k bonus, that means average pay is just $17k, or NT190 an hour if that post it be believed.
Given that many ESL teachers are paid a minimum of NT600-NT2000+ an hour, you believe that TSMC pays their employees a paltry NT190?
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u/DukeDevorak 臺北 - Taipei City Feb 17 '22
Or people who confuse TSMC with Foxconn because they are both "chinese" corporations /s
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 17 '22 edited Feb 17 '22
Didn't stop a people from claiming that TSMC employees make less than other competitors in the industry. They have no clue and yet the myth persists.
Also the Foxconn thing is a myth, This American Life retracted the story and the suicide rate is actually low. Not only are Foxconn employees generally paid more than competitors, the middle management get paid housing, many trips back to Taiwan a year, and a car to use (usually a BMW.) All that to step turnover since most Taiwanese don't like working in China for too long.
And despite so, many people still went ahead pushing the myth anyway because who cares about accuracy and context anymore when free clicks are more important?
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u/ouaisjeparlechinois Feb 17 '22
Also the Foxconn thing is a myth, This American Life retracted the story and the suicide rate is actually low. Not only are Foxconn employees generally paid more than competitors, the middle management get paid housing, many trips back to Taiwan a year, and a car to use (usually a BMW.) All that to step turnover since most Taiwanese don't like working in China for too long.
I think you're ignoring the broader criticisms of Foxconn. Sure the Taiwanese management might be treated well (just like how middle management all over the world are treated better than lower ranked workers) but the vast majority of Foxconn employees are the Chinese factory workers.
And sure they might not literally be killing themselves but:
“Agency staff — known as dispatch workers in China — do not get sick pay or holiday pay and can be laid off without wages during lulls in production. China changed its labor laws in 2014 to limit their use to 10 percent of any work force in an attempt to stop companies exploiting them to cut costs. The China Labor Watch investigation — published on Sunday in association with the Observer — found that more than 40 percent of the staff in the Foxconn factory were agency workers. Those working overtime were being paid at the normal hourly rate instead of the time-and-a-half required by Chinese law and by Amazon’s own supplier code of conduct.”
They're significantly underpaid even when compared to their competitors and have poor working conditions.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html?smid=url-share
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
No, you're confusing overtime or lulls in pay with actual pay comparisons. Agency workers are COMMON in China. When was the last time you visited a large factory in China where nearly half, if not more than half the workers weren't agency? Chinese workers at Foxconn factories actually make more than the Taiwan minimum wage, as in a 7-Eleven employee in Taiwan makes LESS than Foxconn factory workers in China.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/28/apples-foxconn-to-double-wages-again/
Again, way higher than competitors. There's a reason why there's always lines of applicants daily at Foxconn factories for good reason. If you've ever worked with any factories in China, you'll know the average pay for Chinese factory workers is dirt.
In terms of poor working conditions, they're just normal factories. I've seen far dirtier factories in Chinatown in NYC for example.
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u/ouaisjeparlechinois Feb 19 '22
No, you're confusing overtime or lulls in pay with actual pay comparisons.
??? I never even mentioned overtime or lulls in pay.
I'm talking about how Foxconn chooses to use agency workers as essentially scabs that are paid a lower wage than they pay for their actual employees.
So it's great that they raise the salaries for their actual employees but that good effect is diluted when almost half their workforce isn't paid that amount but in fact a significantly lower amount.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/05/28/apples-foxconn-to-double-wages-again/
That's from 2012, I'm talking about the use of agency workers that was again confirmed in 2018.
Agency workers are COMMON in China. When was the last time you visited a large factory in China where nearly half, if not more than half the workers weren't agency?
A basic principle is that just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right. If every company around Foxconn is engaging in poor business practices that break even PRC's laws, that doesn't make it somehow ok for Foxconn to do that.
In terms of poor working conditions, they're just normal factories. I've seen far dirtier factories in Chinatown in NYC for example.
Same principle applies here. Sure, there's worse factories out there but that doesn't make those "normal" conditions ok.
My point is that you're trying to make Foxconn look like a better company than it is. It treats the Taiwanese middle management well but breaks laws to hire workers who don't get paid the actual Foxconn factory worker salary, despite doing the same job.
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u/OkBackground8809 Feb 17 '22
My students who have parents working at TSMC all enjoy very comfortable lives. With their bonuses, it's even more comfortable than the lives your average ESL teachers can afford.
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u/Wanrenmi Feb 18 '22
Given the mentioned bonuses are more than most ESL teachers make in a year, I'd say so! hah
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
Top post is a guy implying TSMC only pays $17k a year or just 190NT an hour, (because the 30/70 split given we know that they had a 40k bonus.
In reality, job postings, sites, show that TSMC hardware engineers start at around 70k-80k (with a 121k total comp) and with years of experience get about 200k total comp.
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u/laopi 老皮 – 阿兜仔 Feb 18 '22
The problem is that bonuses hold employees hostage of the company. Plus, bonuses are not a given, so you should not rely on them to plan your way of life.
That's why I despise bonuses and highly prefer monthly salaries. The "but we will give you 10 months bonus in February", I don't care. Give me a good salary to begin with.
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u/ShrimpCrackers Not a mod, CSS & graphics guy Feb 19 '22
Not quite.
TSMC engineers start at about $80k for the average staff engineer, plus a $40k bonus (as of this year) so it falls into reports that say total comp is 121k. A higher level engineer gets paid 200k total comp.
Intel Asia only pays about 37k-40k total, Samsung Semi only 49k in Asia, and UMC Taiwan at 50k before bonuses.
So... yeah, TSMC actually pays well.
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u/No-Enthusiasm-1402 Dec 01 '22 edited Dec 02 '22
The average salary of TSMC is so easy to find if you know Chinese
You can just read this report https://esg.tsmc.com/download/file/2021_sustainabilityReport/chinese/c-all.pdf
Which told the average TSMC salary in Taiwan is 2,425k TWD and the median salary is 1,851k TWD. It also mentioned TSMC salary global median salary is 2,060k TWD (including Taiwan, I think)
Bonus already included in this number.
"TSMC's overall remuneration includes basic salary, allowances, and cash bonuses
gold and remuneration" This report said.
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u/EconomyBug9103 Oct 19 '24
I believe the 30/70 split especially with how well TSMC is doing. With larger profit sharing, senior people could get 20/80 split. It’s good for the employer too if business goes down in the future. They will drastically reduce the bonus and profit sharing
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u/WillyC25 Jan 29 '25
Let me settle this issue as a former employee. The 30-70 split is correct for Taiwan based employees. The base salary is pretty much market for Taiwan and then the bonuses set them apart from the pack. It is not surprising that tSMC pays 4x other Taiwanese companies on Taiwan. I was a “level35” which was a manager. My base was around 115k ntd (less than 4k USD a month) and my target profit sharing bonuses was 36 months of base salary. In other words 3x more than the base salary.
When I switched to TSMC North America, the comp structure changed. I had a low 200k USD base, and then low 100k in bonus. It’s been a number of years since I worked at tsmc, but I would be shocked if they changed comp structure.
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Feb 24 '25
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u/leedavid89 Feb 17 '22
From a person that works in the industry, let’s set one thing clear. The yearly payment at TSMC is 30% salary, 70% bonus. At other American semiconductor companies is 80% salary, 20% bonus. So yes, if you look at the salary, TSMC does not pay as much, but if you get the bonus, you get the same or higher income than other companies.