
Google will open a new office complex and add hundreds of jobs in Taiwan - jrwan
https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/26/google-will-open-a-new-office-complex-and-add-hundreds-of-jobs-in-taiwan/
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komali2
>Last year, the project trained about 5,000 students in AI technology and
50,000 digital marketers.

I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other. I dream of
starting an engineering company there that is literally a clone of some
upcoming business model, and doing nothing but capping the work week at 40
hours and guaranteeing 4 weeks vacation. I could snipe the best talent on hand
in the country, which is at the very least equal to some of the best silicon
valley has to offer, at nearly half the rates. Lord forbid we target foreign
contracts and the company can pay near US rates. I'd pilfer everyone's
engineering department ;)

Overworked, underpaid, extremely competent was my experience of Taiwanese
engineering. Google is good to step up in Taiwan - I believe it will pay
dividends for them. I wonder what the Google work culture and salaries are
like for their Taipei 101 office engineers? Last I checked it was about
2,000$/month for entry level.

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hocuspocus
> I feel like Taiwan represents a talent opportunity like no other.

Yup.

When I was in Korea I met a few Taiwanese that my employer poached from Asus,
HTC, Benq, ...

The state of their tech scene seemed quite dire. They would easily double
their salary in Korea, for a pretty similar CoL. Eventually most got fed up
with the Korean work culture and left for even higher salaries in... mainland
China!

~~~
z2
A lack of language/cultural barriers would work well for those who go to
mainland China. 5-10% of Taiwanese currently reside on the mainland, due
largely to China granting long term resident status (with full rights to work
and public services) to virtually everyone. It's a masterstroke in increasing
ties and knowledge transfer while undermining the island's economy through
brain drain.

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kenneth
Yup, that easily fits in the evil genius category

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cowmoo728
I visited Taiwan recently and was shocked by the weird economics there. Rent,
food, clothing, and labor are extremely cheap. Foreign goods and property are
insanely expensive. It's clear there's wealth, as I saw several dozen rare
BMWs and Audis, and some Lambos, Ferraris, Bentleys. But then I read that the
average annual salary of a new university graduate is $11,000 USD.

It's also a very friendly place to foreigners. I'm surprised there aren't any
enterprising people jumping from Shenzhen to Taipei now that Shenzhen is so
expensive.

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goobynight
If you're a Taiwan local that is able to sell the local talent in the form of
offshore services for even 70% of US rates or even just have a remote job that
pays well, you will have a Lambo/early retirement/whatever faster than you
know it, because you will be able to save the entirety of your post-tax
salary.

~~~
jklepatch
As someone who is doing exactly that I can confirm!

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ilamont
I am glad to see Taiwan getting this type of attention from a major tech
company. Taiwan's economy really needs an economic lift, after decades of
brain drain and economic dominance by the People's Republic of China, the
United States, and Japan.

I am concerned, though, that this is Google's way of getting around issues of
not being able to operate with a free hand in China, i.e. it will serve as a
platform for developing Chinese-language services and be ready to release them
in the PRC when they can do so without attracting negative attention. There's
some history of this -- in the 90s and 2000s it was a common strategy among
global corporations to launch and iterate ideas and products in Taiwan before
moving them over to China.

ETA:

Another more depressing assessment: Google is placing a bet on annexation, as
the PRC has repeatedly insisted it will do by any means necessary (see "Xi
Jinping Warns Taiwan That Unification Is the Goal and Force Is an Option,"
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-
tai...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-taiwan-
china.html))

~~~
scythe
>Google is placing a bet on annexation

Why would that possibly be a reason to invest in Taiwan? Unless you can
somehow imagine that "annexation" is a purely _de jure_ arrangement that
leaves Taiwan's regulatory structure untouched ( _very_ unlikely), any
corporate structure you erect will have to be totally rebuilt upon annexation
(employment law changes, people move, etc); if you're _lucky_ you can keep the
buildings (assuming they aren't bombed).

The better reason IMO would be that Taiwan is at this point cheaper than Japan
or South Korea, safer than mainland SE Asia, and has (much) more room for
growth than Singapore. As a base of operations in East Asia it is one of the
best choices, political stability notwithstanding.

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vram22
> safer than mainland SE Asia

Safer in what sense? crime? traffic? other?

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scythe
I was primarily thinking about corruption and political stability, and civil
rights (particularly women’s rights) are a concern wrt Malaysia, which
otherwise leads in the EDBI for the region.

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vram22
Got it, thanks.

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jimrhods23
I lived in Taiwan for a couple of years. The cost of living is also extremely
low, which will benefit Google and many other companies that open offices
there.

A nice apartment in a great part of town was only around $350/month USD. I
also had the benefit of making US wages contracting at the time.

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komali2
> I also had the benefit of making US wages contracting at the time.

Ohhh, do tell more. This is my plan sometime over the next 5 years. Lived
there as a broke English teacher in my early 20s, can't wait to go back as a
working engineer.

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jimrhods23
I quit my job before I left with enough to last me about 6 months, in savings,
just in case I needed it for expenses, etc.

While I was there, I started consulting and found a remote gig that didn't
really care where I was located. The only downside is that you are now 12
hours off from the EST timezone in the US.

Morning meetings are now your night-time, which can be inconvenient, and you
just won't be able to communicate during part of the day, but I was able to
make it work.

If you want to stay longer than 3 months, you will either need to study
Mandarin (which I did) and get a student visa (you will need to find a
university/school that will allow you to do this..which is pretty affordable)
or do a visa run where you leave and come back (I think you can do this up to
2 years).

I studied Mandarin for about a year and then traveled around Asia every few
months for another year. It was a great experience.

I wanted to do this since I was 19..but couldn't make it happen until I was
30. The only issue I had was that making friends with other expats was
difficult.

Most expats are in their early 20s and only interested in partying and
drinking every night and teaching English during the day. If that sounds like
a disaster, it is.

Many of the English schools also aren't really picky about the teachers they
hire, so you will get some people that shouldn't be anywhere near a
classroom..especially with elementary aged kids.

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sinstein
I think Taiwanese engineering is a great bunch of seemingly underpaid
developers. I visited Taiwan for 2 weeks from India and had a few
observations:

1\. Food and transport are quite cheap. So cheap that almost everyone eats out
for all their meals.

2\. Everyone stays far from the office. They said the area around the offices
is expensive but the rent I heard did not sound so high. Most of my friends in
Mumbai, India already pay rent close to that figure and they get by just fine.

3\. Consumerism is quite high. Almost everyone in the office had fancy clothes
and gadgets which are usually considered signs of good wealth in India.

My conclusion was that people are not paid a lot, and they spend a lot of what
they make on clothes and gadgets but that is just the picture I could paint.

Would appreciate some input from people who have more knowledge about
Taiwanese culture.

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d_burfoot
I think this is a great opportunity for some Asia-oriented Americans. I lived
in Japan, and the quality of life there is amazing when compared to what we
get in US cities. The problem is that most Japanese companies are terrible to
work for. If you work for Google but live in a modernized Asian country, you
can probably get the best of both worlds.

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rangersanger
When I visited last AWS was planning to open a large data center near taipei
with similar AI ambitions. It's a small island and it's interesting to me that
these two giants are both headed there with similar projects in mind.

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microdrum
Good for Google –– and smart to open in the sovereign democracy of Taiwan
rather than China.

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dennyqoo
After google acquired HTC's mobile department, the salary in google Taiwan is
localized too. One day, the world-wide capitalist finally realized: "Wow, we
can hire good engineer with pennies...in Taiwan."

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kenning
In 5 days:

"whoops nevermind"

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rrggrr
How long until the office is closed as a result of PRC protestations?

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dgemm
PRC can dream all they want but they have no authority on the island.

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umvi
At the end of the day, laws and authority are just a bunch of humans playing
make believe with each other.

It all comes down to enforcement. Without enforcement, laws and authority are
meaningless.

Take the USA and England as analogous to Taiwan and China.

In the 1700s, England had a "One-England policy" and claimed authority over
the US colonies. The US colonies disagreed. Some of the international
community acknowledged the One-England policy. Some didn't.

At the end of the day England tried to enforce their authority/laws and lost.
Thus, England actually didn't have authority over the US colonies.

I suspect something similar may happen someday with Taiwan (though hopefully
with less violence than the American Revolutionary War).

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i_am_proteus
A key difference is that the governments of the British colonies in North
America were officially installed by, and reported to, Britain.

cf. the Taiwanese government, the KMT, which at one point controlled the
mainland, but was pushed into exile on Taiwan by the communists. The existence
of a free Taiwan threatens the legitimacy of the communist government on the
mainland: the PRC, like most propaganda-fueled authoritarian regimes, does not
like anything that suggests there's an alternative to their system.

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kajecounterhack
It's also just not a good analogy because Britain didn't have missiles pointed
across the strait, or a humongous military that Taiwan has even acknowledged
they can't contend with. Diplomacy is the only thing that's kept Taiwan free
in the current state of affairs.

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perennate
Well, the threat of nuclear war with the U.S. also helps with stability a bit.

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patcon
Interesting. If I were Taiwanese, I would be very wary of the aspirations, and
perhaps keep a #BlockSidewalk campaign idling in the driveway. I don't trust
Google's ability to steward and govern a thoughtful city-building project that
respects local agency and cares to tread softly around local power and
autonomy

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KerrickStaley
The article is not about Project Sidewalk or smart cities, it's about opening
an office campus.

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patcon
I recognize that. But it's plainly a big connected operation, at least until
we break it up. They operate via succession -- one subsidiary moves in and
helps create space for the next.

fwiw, you do people a disservice when you assume they don't know what they're
talking about, just because you don't see the connection. If you took a second
to offer me good faith and maybe presumed I'd read the article, then you could
have responded with substance or asked a question, like a curious person
might. Or not -- I wouldn't particular mind if you passed by. But your
response was condescending and silly. What you said was obvious, and so the
implication for others to follow was that I'd simply read the title and you
were "calling me out". Basically, I feel very hackernews'd through our small
interaction :/

Disclaimer: I've spent months on a civic research fellowship in Taipei. I live
in Toronto. I've done community organizing in both. I work in tech. I have
tons of experience with both places and topics -- not just an article.

~~~
KerrickStaley
I downvoted the comment because you didn't connect what you were saying to the
article, and so the comment reads as off-topic. Google has offices in dozens
(if not hundreds) of cities around the world and has only launched Sidewalk in
one of them, so it's not clear that a new Taipei office would lead to a
Sidewalk launch there.

I hope this makes sense. I unfortunately cannot remove the downvote at this
point.

