10 ms·
I understand the why, but I feel like they could also ask TSMC to pay their workers more. Say India did the same for software engineers leaving for the US, we'
by belval 6y ago
I understand the why, but I feel like they could also ask TSMC to pay their workers more.
Say India did the same for software engineers leaving for the US, we'd see it as government overreach.
- sularin 6y agoChina is offering triple the salary to those people.It's impossible to keep up for a country as small as Taiwan. The end goal for China is not to immediately outcompete TSMC but make Taiwan beg to be integrated into China.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoVery similar to how the US used military spending to cause the USSR to exhaust its resources.
- jonathankoren 6y agoThat’s a popular thought in the US, in particular among political activists, but from what I understand, economists dismiss Reagan’s unprecedented peacetime deficit spending on the military, and rather point to internal inefficiencies in the Soviet economy, and critically the global price of oil. Like Russia today, the Soviet Union’s economy was centered on exports of raw materials, in particular oil and gas. Wells were needing to be recapitalized, but with low prices the money wasn’t available to revitalize the economic engine of the country. Luckily for the Soviet Union, the oil crises of the 1970s jacked up the price of oil, thus allowing them to stave off collapse until prices fell back to their historical average. In other words, if it wasn’t for OPEC, the Soviet Union would have collapsed under Nixon or Carter. https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20070419_Gaidar.pdf https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/20070419_Gaid... https://www.rbth.com/history/331825-saudi-arabia-oil-crisis-ussr-collapse https://www.rbth.com/history/331825-saudi-arabia-oil-crisis-... https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/29/formation-and-evolution-of-soviet-union-s-oil-and-gas-dependence-pub-68443 https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/29/formation-and-evolu...
- echelon 6y agoWhat's your take on the future of China, Taiwan, Asia, and the US?
- MangoCoffee 6y agoChina - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_zsc0wf1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY_zsc0wf1Y I am not an expert on geopolitics and when it come to CCP's data. I'll always assumed false/fake then verify but one thing is real is the One Child Policy. Xi want dual circulation economy but I highly doubt that's going to happen with its population decline. China going to deal with labors, support older population, long term impact on economy...etc. if Peter is correct, China is becoming another old folks home like Japan. China's birth rate is already approaching Japan's level.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoAfrica and India have young populations, they’ll be the powerhouses of the second half of this century.
- eloff 6y agoSo if I remember correctly Soviet military spending reached 10% of their GDP which was unsustainable. I wonder if that was due to GDP falling with weak oil prices, or just rising military budget with a stagnant economy.
- jonathankoren 6y agoProbably all of the above. Fun fact: No one knows how percentage of GDP the Soviets were spending on their military, but 10% is the low estimate. (See second figure.) The fifth figure should put to rest the idea that the Soviets tried to meet an increase in US military spending in the 80s. They didn’t. In fact, the president exact opposite is true. The US increased spending due to an increase by the Soviets in the mid 1970s. Soviet spending didn’t really increase at all in the 1980s. https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-military-spending/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-military-spending/
- varispeed 6y agoTSMC had 17 billion USD profit last year, right? How come they are unable to triple or in fact pay 10 times they already pay? It's simple greed in my book. It's always CEO cry that they cannot find talent while flying a private jet and offering 5 digit salary.
- azurezyq 6y agoAlso note that 3x is not only for TSMC employees. Even for fresh CS graduates, China mainland pays way more than taiwan. https://www.payscale.com/research/CN/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/CN/Job=Software_Engineer/S... https://www.payscale.com/research/TW/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/TW/Job=Software_Engineer/S... It's about 1/3 more, if we only consider big cities like Beijing / Shanghai / Taipei, the difference is just larger. SWE is almost the best paid job kind there. Hardware is similar. I have to say the best way is to pay more. They deserve it. Just blaming the other side doesn't help.
- refurb 6y agoSimilar to the US poaching Canadian software folks.
- cdumler 6y agoBut, that's now how capitalism works. Capitalism is workers must compete for jobs, services and goods. Capitalism for companies and rich are how to buy off the right people and laws to prevent competition. I remember in business school how it drilled into us that there are only two important numbers in a company. The price of your product, and the cost of your product. "You can only dictate your cost of your product because your market dictates what you can sell it for." Every time I hear things like "we can't find enough people" or "yeah, but then we'll just pass it along in our cost to customers," I know how much we don't have capitalism.
- sularin 6y agoIt's a bit more nuanced than that.For Taiwan it's a matter of survival not a question of money.You literally cant compete with a behemoth like China.
- belval 6y agoFrom your comment I am not sure that I understand if you agree of disagree with the move. Capitalism here is not the issue. If China pays more they get the workers. That's capitalism as its core. If TSMC wants to retain their workers they have to dig in their 40% profit margins and increase salaries to compete for talent. If they want to increase the price of their chips to account for that payroll increase that will make Samsung (or whoever else) more competitive and that's capitalism as well. > Every time I hear things like "we can't find enough people" or "yeah, but then we'll just pass it along in our cost to customers," I know how much we don't have capitalism. I agree and it makes me angry, individual freedoms are and should stay a thing. If you can't pay your employees a salary that makes them want to work for you, they are not the problem and your competitors are not the problem.
- cdumler 6y ago> If TSMC wants to retain their workers they have to dig in their 40% profit margins and increase salaries to compete for talent. I agree completely. I was trying to comment on the Western narrative about capitalism: "Capitalism is all fine and dandy unless it impacts me negatively."
- xyzzy21 6y agoTSMC pays very well compared to other companies in the same market. I'm guessing you are hearing from people who've never worked for UMC or PowerChip! Of course, the other fun fact: ANY TSMC employees who went to China will never get jobs in Hsinchu et al. ever again. One-way decision only. Burned bridge.
- belval 6y agoTSMC here is really a placeholder for Taiwanese companies.
- varispeed 6y ago> TSMC pays very well Many big companies indeed pay relatively well in comparison to other professions, but workers are heavily underpaid. You can't justify the fact that companies have multi-billion profits and they pay "market rate" salaries at the same time. This is exploitation of workers, but because the amount they are being paid seems to be big, nobody seems to be protesting. Most tech workers should be earning in seven digits.
- fossuser 6y agoI think it's more akin to sanctions on doing business in Iran. The CCP is a direct hostile threat to Taiwan, I can understand why they're doing this.
- liuliu 6y agoThen just do a sanction on business with mainland like U.S. did with Iran. As it is, these are very targeted moves. Taiwan to decoupling from China would only be good for them.
- luckylion 6y agoWouldn't they do the same if it was France poaching them? The language and cultural barrier make it harder for European or American countries to recruit them, but I have no doubt they'd react similarly if they saw significant numbers leaving for Europe.
- ChemSpider 6y agoYeah, but the key difference is that Taiwan is under direct threat from China. Mr. Xi openly said that he will take back Taiwan by force if necessary. Weakening the Taiwan semiconductor industry is certainly part of this playbook, too. Imagine if the US would consider India to be part of its territory and asking for a "re-unification". I am sure that in this case India would try to prevent key software engineers from leaving, too. Actually, I am surprised that Taiwan has done so little so far.
- newacct583 6y agoAll that may be true, but the net effect of this policy is to artificially depress wages of people working in Taiwan. Even if one buys into the "existential threat" model, it seems like forcing that burden onto the backs of your most important competitive asset is... sort of horrifyingly counterproductive.
- ipnon 6y agoPresumably they would be poached to work in China and not Taiwan.
- newacct583 6y agoThat's the policy. But the effect is that TSMC doesn't need to raise salaries to retain workers, they can rely on the government to prevent the workers from being recruited in the first place. (edit: Can I say how amazingly hilarious it is watching all these notionally free-marketeer libertarians who believe in just compensation rush in to explain why it's totally OK for the Taiwanese government to shamelessly restrain trade as long as they're trying to stick it to the PRC?)
- threatofrain 6y agoTaiwanese workers may find their wages lowered due to lack of China bidding on their salaries, but there's still the rest of the world.
- bosswipe 6y agoThe Chinese companies are owned or funded by the government, they don't have to worry about profit. It is geopolitical economic warfare. A company cannot compete against that without government help.
- 8note 6y agoI could see apple or Google outspendimg the chinese government. Not worrying about profit is a function of wealth rather than government in particular
- powerapple 6y agocapitalism does not work any more since we have unlimited money supply, efficiency is not an issue any more. What you are suggesting is that to let the market work, which is a very conservative idea now.