During an interview, you can almost see the candidates calculating the different mixes in their heads, trying to work out the total potential package. A typical Chinese New Year bonus for a fab engineer is at least two months' salary, although motherboard makers usually give a one-month bonus. Although it's not a huge amount of money, the year-end bonus is an important element of Taiwan's culture. Potentially more important financially is the annual payment of company stock to employees. Nearly all IT companies give a percentage of their earnings to employees in the form of free stock, with the percentage of profits to be given to employees determined by each board of directors.
Potential employees have to work the numbers, though.
Startups, though, can lead to big money. For example, AsusTek Computer Co. specializes in making high-quality mainboards that it sells at some of the highest profit margins in all of Taiwan's IT industry. Two weeks after the company went public several years ago, engineers who had received stock at par had multimillion-dollar paydays as their stock rose to 28 times the par price. Taiwan's IC industry has remained more profitable than its beleaguered PC business, where profits of 5 percent are now considered good. This has caused many EE students to plan for careers in the IC industry or the budding dot-com market for Chinese Internet services.