A typical Chinese New Year bonus for a fab engineer is at least two months' salary, although mainboard makers usually give a one-month bonus. Though 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 here give a percentage of their earnings to employees in the form of free stock. The percentage of profits to be given to employees is determined by each individual company's board of directors.
Potential employees have to work the numbers though.
For mainboard companies where profits are essentially nonexistent, there are other ways to reward employees. The main company's stock might not be too valuable, but you might get a chance to buy stock in a subsidiary that is about to go public. If an engineer gets the startup stock at a low enough price and it becomes popular, the engineer can make capital gains in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Startup fever Startups can also lead to big money. AsusTek Computer Co., for example, specializes in making high-quality mainboards that it sells at some of the highest profit margins in all of Taiwan's IT industry.