According to Glassdoor:
Software Engineer: 20k USD/year
Senior Software Engineer: 24k USD/year
Principal Engineer: 29k USD/year
(https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/HTC-Taipei-Salaries-EI_IE41...)
I get that it's not exactly Silicon Valley, but, wow.
Funnily enough they've now all left, to mainland China!
Found this comment which I am going to blindly trust. ;) So, for reference, the HTC salaries were in the range of 50-70k NTD/month.
"90% of people working in Taipei make from 22-68k a month. College grads often make 22k a month out of College and those with a Master Degree start at 30,000NT a month. They spend about 5 years to make 40k a month. An Engineer might make 50k-75k a month. The only reason the Average is skewed to 70k is because Taipei has millionaires and billionaires that skew these numbers. It in NO WAY represents what the everyday working Taiwanese or Foreigner generally makes.
TAIPEI WAGES
Min Wage 18,000
Factory Work 18,000-20,000
Typical Office Worker 22,000-40,000
Nurse 30,000-40,000
Taxi Driver 60,000-70,000
Flight Attendant 50,000-60,000?
Foreign English Teacher 55,000-70,000
Engineer 50,000-70,000
Doctor 150,000-400,000
Foreigner Specialist with Foreign Income---150,000-300,000"
In short, it's cheap as hellllllll. Rent was like 270/month, food and fun was nothing, life is so so so good in Taiwan. I stress regularly about Chinese bluster regarding Taiwan, it is an incredible country I really believe is chock full of opportunity.
My journey to become a software engineer started there. Now that I've snuck my way into frontend, it's my goal as I get more experienced and senior to eventually move back there and start remote contracting or start my own business there. I'm still convinced I could get the best engineers in Taiwan to work for me by just paying them 50k flat out (they make like 20-30/year and are expected to work 9am-9pm, sometimes weekends, arbitrarily) and giving them reasonable (to an American) benefits.
[1](http://ablate.blogspot.tw/2014/05/what-does-it-cost-to-live-...)
Anyway this is just hearsay of course, before anybody would believe any of this I would say let's get the census in or something.
Or is Taipei that expensive?
edit: saw the comment bellow