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>Last year, the project trained about 5,000 students in AI technology and 50,000 digital marketers. I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no

>Last year, the project trained about 5,000 students in AI technology and 50,000 digital marketers. I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. I dream of starting an engineering company there that is literally a clone of some upcoming business model, and doing nothing but capping the work week at 40 hours and guaranteeing 4 weeks vacation. I could snipe the best talent on hand in the country, which is at the very least equal to some of the best silicon valley has to offer, at nearly half the rates. Lord forbid we target foreign contracts and the company can pay near US rates. I'd pilfer everyone's engineering department ;) Overworked, underpaid, extremely competent was my experience of Taiwanese engineering. Google is good to step up in Taiwan - I believe it will pay dividends for them. I wonder what the Google work culture and salaries are like for their Taipei 101 office engineers? Last I checked it was about 2,000$/month for entry level.

hocuspocus 8y ago
> I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. Yup. When I was in Korea I met a few Taiwanese that my employer poached from Asus, HTC, Benq, ... The state of their tech scene seemed quite dire. They would easily double their salary in Korea, for a pretty similar CoL. Eventually most got fed up with the Korean work culture and left for even higher salaries in... mainland China!
- z2 8y ago
  A lack of language/cultural barriers would work well for those who go to mainland China. 5-10% of Taiwanese currently reside on the mainland, due largely to China granting long term resident status (with full rights to work and public services) to virtually everyone. It's a masterstroke in increasing ties and knowledge transfer while undermining the island's economy through brain drain.
  - kenneth 8y ago
    Yup, that easily fits in the evil genius category
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  Plenty of Taiwanese and Korean and even Japanese SDEs work in the mainland because the pay is much better (this is how it was when I was working at MS China). China is almost second only to the states in programmer salaries.
csomar 8y ago
Tech companies are the ones to blame. There is insane numbers of untapped talent willing to work remote and to adapt to the bay area time zone if needed. They'll also work for less than 1/10th of their US based ones. There are two possible explanations: 1- Tech companies didn't try to expand overseas; didn't care and just tried to limit salaries inland (I just remembered their fiasco). 2- Tech companies failed to expand overseas. This might be due to concentrating in a single location (India) for all outsourcing. I think they should try to have satellite offices in most countries out-there. Instead of big ones, rather small ones that higher only the best of the best of that particular country.
- pard68 8y ago
  They don't even need to look abroad. Plenty of the flyover country and the south eastern USA would work Cali hours and accept probably half or less the pay for a better qol than can be had in the Bay area. Central VA has UVA and VTech, half the people I work with went to one, the other, it both. A lot of them pull maybe $100,000/year. Around my area that's a pretty comfortable pay, few acres and 3000sqft would cost maybe 150k all in.
  - MrMorden 8y ago
    And Charlottesville has Ting FTTH. The fiber in Silly Valley is AFAIK in SF and to the north.
steve76 8y ago
>> a clone of some upcoming business model >> target foreign contracts Both involve working for someone for a long time, then leaving on your own. Really high risk, and people will just dump all their problems on you.
- rootsudo 8y ago
  This is actually what I've been looking into - and the biggest issue is: 1. Capital 2. Crony/Local Graft. 3. Supply Chain/Logistics 4. Talented people/niche rows. Thankfully if it's software, Eastern Europe has best bang for buck, Filipinos are 50/50 and the language barriers for Chinese/Japanese are high (but not so high if you take some time to learn nuances e.g. JLPT N4-N3 for Japanese) 5. Local banking regulation/Residency/Working as a non-national (foreigner.) Especially if you're an American (FACTA) Tried, and tried again and just you need a solid team of people that know the natural climate/society and see if your clone can be molded to fit theirs. Still trying though :)
mc32 8y ago
This will be good for Taiwan and god Google. They already have a pretty decent presence in TW, though my understanding is there was some env but not a whole lot of eng. This will up the presence. It’s interesting they’re doing more in TW than in JP (if it’s strictly about talent rather than a kind of bridge to China). It be good if Google influences a better work-life balance given the propensity to stay in the office till the boss leaves even when there’s nothing to do (it’s not just a trope in their TV shows, it actually happens a lot for office workers).
jhallenworld 8y ago
Remember when (USA) mall bookstores had technical books (or at least programming books)? In Taiwan they still do. I remember seeing Pro/E CAD manual in Chinese there among many others.
- asaph 8y ago
  Do people still go to mall bookstores? There is a pretty big online bookstore now.
  - kerbalspacepro 8y ago
    Yeah. Going to a bookstore has the same feeling as going clothes shopping with respect to online shopping: it feels good to look at lots of product and to feel the pages in your hand. You can't tell if something will spark joy over Amazon.
theblackcat1002 8y ago
> Overworked, underpaid, extremely competent was my experience of Taiwanese engineering As an undergrad student studying both Electrical Engineering and CS in Taiwan, this is what I heard from my seniors. For most of the tech job, you are held "responsible" for the progress, so overtime is very common.
- komali2 8y ago
  We're held responsible for our work in San Francisco as well. My take is that the overwork aspect is raw culture - arbitrarily needing to stay as late as your boss while you fiddle with your phone, lacking any actual work to do. Underpay is because of market forces - the average salary is 30k because the average salary is 30k because the average salary is 30k. My advice to you is learn to pull solo contract work off US companies early.
jacob_rezi 8y ago
This is similar to what I am doing in Seoul with a side project called Current - http://currentdev.com http://currentdev.com
xyz23 8y ago
Are you saying that you want find a business model with potential that is being fudged by the silicon valley slackers, who only care about work life balance and spending quality time with friends and families, and try to get that built in Taiwan where you can overwork and exploit desperate workers. Talking like a true visionary.

hocuspocus 8y ago

> I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. Yup. When I was in Korea I met a few Taiwanese that my employer poached from Asus, HTC, Benq, ... The state of their tech scene seemed quite dire. They would easily double their salary in Korea, for a pretty similar CoL. Eventually most got fed up with the Korean work culture and left for even higher salaries in... mainland China!

z2 8y ago
A lack of language/cultural barriers would work well for those who go to mainland China. 5-10% of Taiwanese currently reside on the mainland, due largely to China granting long term resident status (with full rights to work and public services) to virtually everyone. It's a masterstroke in increasing ties and knowledge transfer while undermining the island's economy through brain drain.
- kenneth 8y ago
  Yup, that easily fits in the evil genius category
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Plenty of Taiwanese and Korean and even Japanese SDEs work in the mainland because the pay is much better (this is how it was when I was working at MS China). China is almost second only to the states in programmer salaries.

csomar 8y ago

Tech companies are the ones to blame. There is insane numbers of untapped talent willing to work remote and to adapt to the bay area time zone if needed. They'll also work for less than 1/10th of their US based ones. There are two possible explanations: 1- Tech companies didn't try to expand overseas; didn't care and just tried to limit salaries inland (I just remembered their fiasco). 2- Tech companies failed to expand overseas. This might be due to concentrating in a single location (India) for all outsourcing. I think they should try to have satellite offices in most countries out-there. Instead of big ones, rather small ones that higher only the best of the best of that particular country.

pard68 8y ago
They don't even need to look abroad. Plenty of the flyover country and the south eastern USA would work Cali hours and accept probably half or less the pay for a better qol than can be had in the Bay area. Central VA has UVA and VTech, half the people I work with went to one, the other, it both. A lot of them pull maybe $100,000/year. Around my area that's a pretty comfortable pay, few acres and 3000sqft would cost maybe 150k all in.
- MrMorden 8y ago
  And Charlottesville has Ting FTTH. The fiber in Silly Valley is AFAIK in SF and to the north.

steve76 8y ago

>> a clone of some upcoming business model >> target foreign contracts Both involve working for someone for a long time, then leaving on your own. Really high risk, and people will just dump all their problems on you.

rootsudo 8y ago
This is actually what I've been looking into - and the biggest issue is: 1. Capital 2. Crony/Local Graft. 3. Supply Chain/Logistics 4. Talented people/niche rows. Thankfully if it's software, Eastern Europe has best bang for buck, Filipinos are 50/50 and the language barriers for Chinese/Japanese are high (but not so high if you take some time to learn nuances e.g. JLPT N4-N3 for Japanese) 5. Local banking regulation/Residency/Working as a non-national (foreigner.) Especially if you're an American (FACTA) Tried, and tried again and just you need a solid team of people that know the natural climate/society and see if your clone can be molded to fit theirs. Still trying though :)

mc32 8y ago

This will be good for Taiwan and god Google. They already have a pretty decent presence in TW, though my understanding is there was some env but not a whole lot of eng. This will up the presence. It’s interesting they’re doing more in TW than in JP (if it’s strictly about talent rather than a kind of bridge to China). It be good if Google influences a better work-life balance given the propensity to stay in the office till the boss leaves even when there’s nothing to do (it’s not just a trope in their TV shows, it actually happens a lot for office workers).

jhallenworld 8y ago

Remember when (USA) mall bookstores had technical books (or at least programming books)? In Taiwan they still do. I remember seeing Pro/E CAD manual in Chinese there among many others.

asaph 8y ago
Do people still go to mall bookstores? There is a pretty big online bookstore now.
- kerbalspacepro 8y ago
  Yeah. Going to a bookstore has the same feeling as going clothes shopping with respect to online shopping: it feels good to look at lots of product and to feel the pages in your hand. You can't tell if something will spark joy over Amazon.

theblackcat1002 8y ago

> Overworked, underpaid, extremely competent was my experience of Taiwanese engineering As an undergrad student studying both Electrical Engineering and CS in Taiwan, this is what I heard from my seniors. For most of the tech job, you are held "responsible" for the progress, so overtime is very common.

komali2 8y ago
We're held responsible for our work in San Francisco as well. My take is that the overwork aspect is raw culture - arbitrarily needing to stay as late as your boss while you fiddle with your phone, lacking any actual work to do. Underpay is because of market forces - the average salary is 30k because the average salary is 30k because the average salary is 30k. My advice to you is learn to pull solo contract work off US companies early.

jacob_rezi 8y ago

This is similar to what I am doing in Seoul with a side project called Current - http://currentdev.com http://currentdev.com

xyz23 8y ago

Are you saying that you want find a business model with potential that is being fudged by the silicon valley slackers, who only care about work life balance and spending quality time with friends and families, and try to get that built in Taiwan where you can overwork and exploit desperate workers. Talking like a true visionary.