Paying a salary of 4 billion a year still cannot recruit talented semiconductors

From the constantly increasing demand of the global supply chain, the semiconductor sector has become more and more exciting and has become a well-received industry. When valuing the booming market, companies also face the challenge of staffing to ensure their ability to maintain operations and expand.

The semiconductor industry is lacking in skilled engineers (Artwork)

Although not under financial pressure, to increase output to meet demand from a supplier’s orders, hiring enough qualified engineers is a real challenge for companies. semiconductors, especially small and medium sized companies. In any case, for chip engineers, they have entered a golden age.

The number of Chinese chip companies has increased

The chairman of the Circuit Design Branch of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, introduced at the ICCAD conference at the end of last year, will have a total of 2,218 chip design companies in China by 2020, an increase of 24. , 6% over the same period last year. As can be seen from the above figure, the number of chip design companies in China has maintained a fairly steady growth rate from 2010 to 2015, even decreasing in 2011, but after entering 2016, the Chinese chip design firms have soared.

Part of the reason is the influence from the Chinese government’s semiconductor industry promotion program, but most importantly the impact of the US embargo on Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE. In addition, with the licensing of IP Arm and RISC-V as well as the prosperity of EDA and fabs, along with the self-developed chip line from Google, Huawei, Apple, the terminal market has made great strides. ranks in the past. These are the factors that are driving the current wave of chip design companies to expand.

According to recorded data, China has up to 66,500 companies involved in the semiconductor industry. In which, there are 22,800 newly established companies, an increase of 195% over the same period last year. Since 2021, as a result of chip scarcity, this data has grown even more rapidly, up to 378% in the first two months of the year. During the explosion of the entire chip industry chain, the active multichannel funding behind it was indispensable.

The supply of talent is slowing down

As the R&D field in the chip industry continues to expand, the demand for integrated IC talent will also increase rapidly. With the current development of supply and demand, this gap will be widened more and more.

Data from the Chinese Integration Industry Talent Whitepaper released in mid-2020 shows that by the end of 2019, the number of employees directly working in this industry is about 511 thousand people, an increase of 11.4%. compared to 2018. According to calculations by the American Semiconductor Industry Association, on average, each job position in this field will create 4.89 indirect job opportunities. Thus, China currently has up to 2.5 million indirectly related jobs in the semiconductor industry.

With the current development trend and corresponding per capita output value, the demand in the whole Chinese semiconductor industry will reach about 743 thousand people by 2022. Of which 270 thousand people work in the field of essential equipment. design, 264 thousand people in the manufacturing sector, 209 thousand people working in the assembly and testing department. However, China’s integrated circuit business manpower supply does not seem to keep up with demand.

With about 200,000 graduates in 2019 related to the integrated circuit major in China, accounting for 2.39% of the total of 8.34 million graduating students, only 25.8 thousand people chose jobs. according to the right discipline, respectively 12.92%. This is a relatively low rate compared to actual needs, influenced by many reasons such as the salary is not attractive enough or the professional knowledge is not suitable.

Faced with restrictions from the US, as well as rising demand for semiconductor talent from Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, Chinese semiconductor companies’ ability to attract talent will also increasingly be shrinking. As skilled engineers have more options, they have become the “piece of cake” in the eyes of local chip companies, and with it rising salaries.

The golden age of chip engineers

” After the chip companies make a lot of money, the first strategy is to dig people, because only talented people are the foundation to ensure the growth, as well as the ability to mobilize finance of the company “, Truong San (the character’s name has been changed), says founder of a Chinese semiconductor company. ” Due to the fact that there are many competitors but the limited number of talents, this has fueled a rise in chip engineers’ salaries ,” she points out that many chip companies now have a sense of urgency, ie. hope to break out many competitors in the short term and become a leading company.

Li Tu, an employee of a startup company in China, said: ” The wave of recruiting local talent in the semiconductor sector has formed a true race. It is not uncommon for potential candidates to be ‘outlined’ with soaring salaries. At this point, all companies have to find ways to respond to an explosion in the expected chip supply crisis that is expected to continue .

Not only China, but also Japan and South Korea are facing a similar situation. In recent months, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are racing to recruit employees when the “super cycle” is about to hit the global semiconductor market. Samsung chip division recently announced plans to hire hundreds of skilled workers, while SK Hynix also wants to hire more than 100 people. Demand for talent in semiconductors and information technology is extremely urgent. Observers believe that the “wage inflation” at these companies is to attract the best.

In fact, in the past two years, the semiconductor startups have also offered double salaries of the leading companies in the field to “dig the corner” of their talent, which has indirectly ushered in a golden age for chip engineers in the country. Currently, the annual income of a chip engineer with a master’s degree and 3-5 years of experience is between 500,000 and 750,000 yuan (1.7-2.6 billion), and up to 1.1 million yuan. (VND 4.2 billion) if you have 8 years of experience.

Meanwhile, AI software engineers with 2-3 years of experience will have an annual income of about 800-900 thousand yuan (2.8-3.1 billion) and 1.3-1.5 million yuan. (VND 4.6-5.3 billion) for highly skilled engineers. Not only have high salaries, along with the shortage of talent in the current semiconductor field, the mentality of some people working in this field has also changed.

In interviews, many candidates make irrational requests beyond the employer’s ability to accept. In fact, the salary of an engineer with experience in China has surpassed that of a Japanese “engineer” in the respective position, but the gap in technical qualifications between the two is very large. This is also a difficult problem for Chinese semiconductor companies, but at present it seems that they no longer have any more options.