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We pay junior engineers who work at social media companies six figures so why cant we pay taiwanese fab engineers enough?
by neither_color 5y ago
We pay junior engineers who work at social media companies six figures so why cant we pay taiwanese fab engineers enough?
- fragmede 5y agoThe risk model is different. The cost of setting up an gorgeous tech company office in pre-Covid San Francisco is trivial compared to setting up even poor-quality fab. Not that we (the US) should shy away from doing it - the Silicon Valley is called that because semiconductors are made out of silicon, but SV is also full of Superfund sites (for many reasons, but IC manufacturing isn't a light industrial process, and is ridiculously capital intensive. A few million dollars, and a few months, and that social media company will have an MVP and started proving traction in their chosen niche. (It'll take closer to a decade to actually get somewhere with it eg tiktok, but MVP can be demoed to investors far sooner.) A few years, and closer to a billion dollars, and you might have broken ground on the fab.
- 1270018080 5y agoWe do pay them "enough." They do the job for that price. Why are they not payed more? Consumers care more about price, and capitalism cares more about the bottom line, than the ethical treatment of workers.