In the weekly column we take turns writing about innovation and economic trends in Asia.
(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy)
Tokyo There is fierce competition for engineers in East Asia’s semiconductor industry. After they gave start-up aid for China’s chip industry from Taiwan, the governments in Taiwan and South Korea now seem determined to use legal and personnel policy means to prevent their neighbors, who are threatened with sanctions or even war, from catching up.
Taiwan’s police recently conducted the largest-ever raid on Chinese tech companies. They are suspected of violating regulations on poaching Taiwanese professionals. With the search of eight companies, the government underscored that it is serious about fighting the Chinese dictatorship for high-tech talent.
Last year, the government banned Chinese companies from hiring Taiwanese professionals, either directly or indirectly through shell companies. The sale of subsidiaries of Taiwanese companies to “mainland” companies must also be approved.
The background is a painful experience from a Taiwanese point of view: A top manager from Taiwan, who came to the world’s largest and Taiwanese contract manufacturer TSMC via Texas Instruments, founded China’s contract manufacturer SMIC in 2000.
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Taiwan is no longer alone in this struggle. Because South Korea is also trying to slow down the exodus of specialists in strategically important industries with concentrated action by the government and corporations.
An important pillar is the method of countering the high salaries that Chinese companies offer experts with high bonus payments. The memory chip division of the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Samsung Electronics, not only gave its employees the usual six monthly salaries as a bonus last year, but eleven.
South Korea: Hire earlier, retire later
But politics and HR departments are also developing more creative forms of employee loyalty. The government plans to build a database of professionals employed by Korean companies in 12 national key technologies. Their journeys are to be recorded in order to understand and contain the progress of intellectual property.
In addition, a new law allows companies to hire talented local young people in high school. Corporations can now work with universities to set up scholarships and, above all, training programs that high school students sometimes accept even before the university entrance exams.
For example, Samsung is already working with Sungkyunkwan and Yonsei Universities, and local rival SK Hynix with Korea University. Other universities also want to become sponsored talent scouts. In this way, the choice of university could already decide on the future employer.
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But companies not only want to hire earlier, they also want to fire later. Capable specialists should continue to be employed beyond the company’s internal retirement age, which is often 60 years. Because the South Koreans know from their own experience that the most energetic of this age group are good development workers. The country eventually accelerated its own development by importing personnel.
The fact that the former master Japan was overtaken when it came to car batteries, chips, displays and smartphones is also partly due to the poaching of Japanese specialists who wanted to rediscover themselves in their careers.
South Korea did not limit itself to Japanese pensioners. The South Korean car group Hyundai Motor, for example, was led to the top of the world with the help of German car managers such as Albert Biermann. The now 65-year-old is retiring this year.
The East Asian countries are now realizing how painful staff migration can be, where they themselves are the front runners. However, it remains to be seen whether they will be more successful than Japan in the global tug-of-war over scarce workers.
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