Hacker News Reader

Comment by victorlin | Hacker News Reader

This is a joke, these people are good at hardware OEM, but they don't understand software. They are using hardware OEM thinking to build software. Maybe they think crafting software is all like to pipeline components and make cheap labor assemble them. Good try, but it won't work.

You never know how low IT salary it is in Taiwan, 20K USD is a pretty good annual salary for a new graduate Computer Science student as Software Engineer You can also see 8.8K USD annual salary for software engineer title everywhere here. How can you find talent with that shitty payment? All they can find is cheap labor.

Try to pay really good salary and find few but pretty top talents. It is better to have a 10 members elite team rather than 3000 not-so-good developers. Otherwise, go back and do your OEM.

View on HN

I'm pretty sure you don't realize that it's what people here in Europe have been saying about China for the last 15 years, until they started competing with us on the nuclear power plant and fast train businesses.

Then, we lost all our jobs in the industry (except for Germany, but for how long ?), and Europe now faces the biggest economical crisis it has ever known.

US still reigns the software industry, but should China decides to make that a top priority, you can be sure that it won't take long until we all start using "made in china" OSes and softwares.

> (except for Germany, but for how long ?)

We just work together with china and not against it. We sell them fabrication machines, together with services and skill around those.

(And in the end, we export enough weapons to not care.)

I'm all for the liberal way of thinking. Making business with someone is supposed to be good for both sides. But that works when you're making business with a democracy that plays it "fair".

Working "together" with China is a pretty idealistic way of seeing it. They've spent the last 20 years asking for european companies (both civilians and military) to give them their industrial and technological secrets before they buy anything, so that they could clone pretty much everything and sell goods back to us for 10% of the price, thanks to a workforce that lives in barely human conditions and no patent system or anything close to it (but also very smart and education oriented people, to be honest). With software, my bet is it's going to go even faster, since everything is pretty much open source those days.

Now, I know things are slowly changing and i don't mean to be too hard on the chinese regime, which managed to let that country grow tremendously, and probably improve the life of many citizens. I just wanted to balance your idealistic point of view a little bit.

You are basically right about China, they are raising fast. But what the news talking about is to recruit 3000 developers in Taiwan rather than in China, I think it could be so hard even to recruit 50 okay software developers in Taiwan. Actually there is no software/Internet industry in Taiwan. You can name Internet company as a long list such as Baidu, Taobao, Webo and what so ever in China, but you cannot find even a famous website which is from Taiwan. Taiwan is good at hardware OEM but not software.

As a software developer from Taiwan, I know the situation here. Hardware OEM industry makes money, they can offer better for getting talents. When CS students graduate, they would rather go to OEM company (such as TSMC) than go to software/Internet company or even startups. How can they complete OEM firms in recruiting battle?

It's really a bad environment for software development. Actually, software/Internet in China is much better than Taiwan.

Just like Hauwei crushed Cisco?

Huawei and Foxconn are totally different kind of company.

Foxconn is more like a military station, while people listen to command and act as orderred. No respect from manger to normal employee.

Huawei has an atmosphere where talents are respected by others, maybe like a laboratory.

I don't think Foxconn can achieve its goal as declared.

My point was more that people wouldn't use China-made OSes or hardware because of security concerns. Even knowing what I know today, I trust US equipment and software more.

> How can you find talent with that shitty payment?

I live in Somaliland. I make less than 20k USD as a programmer. I was making under 8.8k USD at the same job a few year prior. I am not cheap labor. Well, at least not in the sense of quality.

The cost of living of where I live makes $8.8k/yr a great salary, let alone $20k/yr.

The reason that salaries are so low is probably just simple economics. I'm sure* my company can afford to pay me a salary that would be competitive in places like the U.S. or Europe but since there aren't any other companies hiring they know sub $20k/USD is good enough.

* I know this because the last time I demonstrated that I was capable of getting another job by receiving a job offer, I received an obscene raise. I also know this because I know of folks who earn what would be considered a competitive salary for programmers in the U.S.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say it is not possible to find good programmer with that price, nor programmer at that price is not good. But at Taiwan, with 8.8K USD salary, people cannot even survive in Taipei. A plumber here can make more than that.

Are you saying there are programmers in Somaliland earning $50-$100k? They must be living like kings!

I don't think you should worry that you are not earning as much as you could be in Europe or the USA. You would be spending a lot more just to survive in those countries and probably not a lot better off financially.

I am interested to know what the income tax rate is in Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland? Do you have sales tax?

> Are you saying there are programmers in Somaliland earning $50-$100k? They must be living like kings!

Yes its possible though most folks here don't flaunt wealth considering the widespread poverty.

I'm not really worried about making more. It would be nice and I certainly look out for opportunities and you're probably right about the cost of living. I literally put half my pay into saving as I have nothing to spend it on.

There's no income tax. Though I do lose a bit of my pay automatically as payroll tax but I'm pretty sure it's been reduced than the amount it was supposed to be, though I could be wrong since I've got a weird contract where a significant portion of my income isn't my salary but from other benefits.

Nobody like paying taxes since no one trusts the government (even if they voted them in) so people always look for way to avoid or reduce the amount they pay in taxes. Mostly that means just simply saying no until they accept a lower amount or finding someone you're barely related to working in government. Big part of the reason why I don't see much of a future for myself here.

There was an campaign for a sales tax. I don't think it was implemented since I didn't notice an increase in prices of stuff due to it.

All of the above was with regards to Somaliland, I don't know about the situation in Somalia and Puntland.

I might be visiting Somaliland soon on business. HN office hours is down, would you mind sending me an email, I would like to ask you some questions about your country :) Thanks!

My email is here: http://pastebin.com/HcHGetBu

A fully furnished, spacious 1 bedroom apartment int Tapei city will cost you TWD13,000 (approx $450). A similar apartment in New York City will cost you the north of $1,500.

Same can be said for the cost of food,transport and other living expenses. Expecting employees to pay the $80,000 and over they are paying to a New Yorker , which has high cost of living to a developer in Tapei city, which as relatively cheap cost of living doesn't make sense.

And by the way because they are paying a developer $20,000 doesn't mean he's a bad developer. it is reflective of the economic condition and standard of living the developer finds himself.

I can bet you there are developers earning the amount you are deriding so much that have comfortable saving account and there are $80,000 in debt (all other things being equal)

I didn't derides anyone. What I want to say is that when employers can't afford reasonable salary for developers, they cannot find any good ones, even they found ones, it's only matter of time they will leave. The problem here is more than salary, it is about attitude, employers trend to treat employees as cost rather than valuable asset. When people are treated like disposable tools, nobody would stay.

Why isn't that salary reasonable? It seems like you're being ethnocentric and judging that salary based on your own home and your own salary.

When confronted with cost of living data for Taiwan, you pivot and say that people are treated like disposable tools -- but how is this different than 90% of IT in America? Not everyone works for a progressive, modern startup, and the trenches of American Corporate IT aren't known for their mid-20 something's hipster cultures like Google et al. Very much a cold calculation where people are treated like assets.

Taiwan is as rich as Japan. I've seen a documentary on Taiwan this week and considering people's fashion style, the high-speed trains and other cultural signs, I was totally convinced that it was a documentary about Japan.

I bet it is kind of wetware used as a strategy for negotiation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com