Nearly two-third of the nation's engineers are dissatisfied with shrinking incomes and are considering moving to greener pastures, according to a job bank survey released yesterday.
More than 60 percent of engineers polled in the survey expressed an interest in changing jobs, of which 70 percent of people are considering not only changing companies but also industries, according to Career, a local monthly magazine specializing in the domestic job market.
"With the development of the local semiconductor and compu-ter industries slowing down, engineers don't name these two sectors as their first choices any-more," said Kevin Zang (
Many engineers who are currently working in chip companies say they are interested in turning to optoelectronics companies or digital camera makers, he added.
The magazine polled 518 engineers between April 25 and May 15.
The survey showed that nearly 75 percent of engineers believed the nation's information technol-ogy industry has entered a "low-margin" era.
Employees of DRAM companies and made-to-order chip companies were most pessimistic among respondents, saying these sectors are not expected to be as profitable as they were.
In addition, engineers who used to make a windfall from stock options can't bank on this practice anymore.
"Most IT companies decided to slash the number of shares given to employees this year," Zang said.
MediaTek Inc (
United Microelectronics Corp (
Unprofitable companies can't retain talent, as engineers are likely to chase the money.
"Salary is the major factor when engineers consider whether to join a company or not," said Rocky Yang (
About one-third of engineers said high income is the number one reason they decide to work for IT companies, Yang said.
Meanwhile, Zang said the SARS outbreak has reduced the interest in working in China.
"Our latest survey shows only 41 percent of engineers still want to work in China, while according to our research in early March, 73 percent of interviewees were interested in working in that market," he said.
Zang said he thinks that feeling is just temporary.
"However if the SARS threat reappears this winter, the attitude of not going to China may be sustained until next year," he added.
The epidemic has undermined China's job market, with the market's job opportunities in last month sliding 7 percent compared to the same period last year, Yang said.
In addition, Taiwanese engineers are not expected to receive high salaries in China anymore.
Based on the current market situation, they will receive the same or 20 percent higher pay for doing same job in Taiwan, while years ago the income difference was about 60 percent, Yang said.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves fell below the US$600 billion mark at the end of last month, with the central bank reporting a total of US$596.89 billion — a decline of US$8.6 billion from February — ending a three-month streak of increases. The central bank attributed the drop to a combination of factors such as outflows by foreign institutional investors, currency fluctuations and its own market interventions. “The large-scale outflows disrupted the balance of supply and demand in the foreign exchange market, prompting the central bank to intervene repeatedly by selling US dollars to stabilize the local currency,” Department of Foreign
ENERGY ISSUES: The TSIA urged the government to increase natural gas and helium reserves to reduce the impact of the Middle East war on semiconductor supply stability Chip testing and packaging service provider ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday said it planned to invest more than NT$100 billion (US$3.15 billion) in building a new advanced chip testing facility in Kaohsiung to keep up with customer demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. That would be included in the company’s capital expenditure budget next year, ASE said. There is also room to raise this year’s capital spending budget from a record-high US$7 billion estimated three months ago, it added. ASE would have six factories under construction this year, another record-breaking number, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu
Intel Corp is joining Elon Musk’s long-shot effort to develop semiconductors for Tesla Inc, Space Exploration Technologies Corp and xAI, marking a surprising twist in the chipmaker’s comeback bid. Intel would help the Terafab project “refactor” the technology in a chip factory, the company said on Tuesday in a post on X, Musk’s social media platform. That is a stage in the development process that typically helps make chips more powerful or reliable. The chipmaker’s shares jumped 4.2 percent to US$52.91 in New York trading on Tuesday. The Terafab project is a grand plan by Musk to eventually manufacture his own chips for
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
RSS