TSMC has built a wide lead over rivals like Intel and Samsung in the race to make the smallest — and fastest — microchips. Largely because of the ingenuity of its engineers, TSMC has become one of the most geopolitically important firms in the world.
Today, many at the top of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry fear the tiny island territory will not be able to sustain the growing demand for a new generation of engineers. A shrinking population, demanding work culture and an abundance of competing tech jobs have meant workers have become ever more scarce.
The stakes are enormous. Some military strategists argue that TSMC’s dominance in microchips provides Taiwan a guarantee against an invasion by China — in part because the U.S. would need to defend such an important piece of its supply chain.
Taiwan’s talent crisis is intertwined with TSMC’s success. The company’s employee count has grown almost 70% over the past decade, while Taiwan’s birthrate has plummeted by half. Start-ups in promising fields like AI are luring top engineers. In recruiting, TSMC must compete with internet companies like Google and foreign semiconductor companies like ASML of the Netherlands, which generally offer better work-life balance and perks like free food.
TSMC’s leaders have defended the company’s famously tough work culture, which has helped it grow into a $440B behemoth with 73K employees... But in recent years, TSMC Chairman Mark Liu has repeatedly acknowledged that the largest challenge facing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is its shortage of talent.
Taiwan’s largest job search platform, 104 Job Bank, had over 33K listings for chip industry jobs as of August. Last year, Taiwan’s chip sector employed about 326K people, according to the government-affiliated Industrial Technology Research Institute.
TSMC has been forced to adjust its recruitment strategies. It has broadened hiring channels and increased its base salary for master’s graduates [to an average of up to $65K]. It begins recruiting Taiwanese graduate students in September, well ahead of the conventional job-hunting season of March, and has even begun to cultivate high schoolers with online classes about the basics of semiconductors.
“Many companies are struggling to find suitable candidates,” said Burn Lin, a former VP at TSMC and the current dean of National Tsing Hua University’s College of Semiconductor Research.
“Now when searching for talent, they are not very picky,” Mr. Lin said. “You don’t necessarily have to study electrical engineering or computer science.”
The college Mr. Lin heads is one of four specialized semiconductor schools that were established by the Taiwanese government in 2021 in response to calls for action by industry players like Mr. Liu and Tsai Ming-kai, chairman of the chip design firm MediaTek.
“In cultivating semiconductor talent, we are racing against time,” Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s president, said at the unveiling of Mr. Lin’s semiconductor college...
Taiwan Is Running Low on a Strategic Asset: Engineers
Taiwan’s world-dominating microchip sector was built by TSMC’s skilled employees. But a demographic crisis, demanding work culture and flagging interest threaten its lead.