TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant • Hacker News Board

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#411

Post by oezi » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 7:57 AM UTC

iSnow wrote: post #255

suction wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that for a high-profile engineer or lead who expects to make 400k at least per year, the company would actually have to pay him 800k to make that much net. Labor cost in Germany is sky high. That times a thousand is not insignificant.

400K in Germany is upper management level, not C-suites, but most certainly not engineering either.

To be precise: 400k or higher is a salary only paid at the top 30 (Dax companies) to C-Level executives.

If you own the business there are other tiers of compensation available, but employees in Germany very rarely make more than 150k in any position. CEOs of medium sized businesses up to 500 employees would likely not be compensated more than 200k. Other C-level even less.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#412

Post by dmichulke » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:10 AM UTC

MarcusE1W wrote: post #90

suction wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be true, but in Germany, the salary you pay to your employee is also about 1% of all the labor cost for him or her. Which is hyperbole, of course, but Germany is one of those countries where the actual net payout is usually significantly less than 50% of the salary the company provides. I'm not criticising it as I think Germany is a good example of a well-working system but net salaries are low for most.

It’s probably true that the net salary is lower than some other comparable countries, although Denmark for example has also a quite low net salary. I feel the important bit is what you get for the net salary deduction. In Germany you have: - Free Education including University - A decent mostly free health system, health care insurance - unemployment insurance so your life does not completely unravel if you are made…

> child care (could be better)

Dresden child care is specifically good and affordable, probably due to Eastern German (Socialist) heritage.

It's also has one of the highest number of kids per family.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#413

Post by nicbou » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:28 AM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #305

nicbou wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money isn't everything to many. Life in Germany is good enough, and there's no guarantee that it would be betted in the US. Sure, more money is nice, but the pay in Germany is still decent, and the perks are considerable: 22% fewer work hours, for instance.

It's not, and that's perfectly fine from a societal standpoint, but people who are worried about working 22% fewer hours and are fine getting a "decent" salary are not the engineers you want to hire when trying to bootstrap a new enterprise. They can run your company steady-state, but they are not going to build anything internationally competitive.

I'm fine with that. I value employees having balanced lives more than GDP bragging rights.

For the record, yes they're the sort of engineers I'd want to hire. If we're making broad assumptions about a country's workforce, I'd want a happy, well-rested workforce that's not held hostage by their company's health insurance plan.

You say that as if valuing your free time is a sort of moral weakness in an employee.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#414

Post by nicbou » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:34 AM UTC

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #377

nicbou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh the salaries are alright. It seems to me like the salaries are higher in America, while in Germany they're lower but include things American end up paying for: pensions, insurance, and education. If I were American, a part of my net income would still end up going to health insurance, student loans and other things. My employer might pay less benefits, but pay a higher salary to compensate for those costs. I think…

> Eh the salaries are alright. It seems to me like the salaries are higher in America, while in Germany they're lower but include things American end up paying for: pensions, insurance, and education. While that's true, above-average earners like engineers/doctors/laywers definitely come on top in the US. Also for most of these people health insurance is paid for by the company. The trade-off is for everyone else bas…

I'd still consider quality of life because of vacations, sick days and parental leave.

Skilled US jobs pay more, no matter how you look at it. I'm just thinking that above a certain income level, other perks become a lot more valuable.

I have nearly unlimited free time now, and you'd have to drag me back kicking and screaming to an office. Even if you doubled my salary, I wouldn't go back to 2-3 weeks of vacation like my parents back in Canada. The extra 3 weeks I got when I moved to Germany were life-changing.

There's are also finer points about the differences in work culture, but that's not really a guarantee. There are plenty of overworked Germans, even if they're allegedly rarer.

It's really hard to compare what amounts to different values. It's just important to understand that total income isn't the only thing employees are chasing, especially if it involves relocating to a different continent.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#415

Post by nicbou » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:39 AM UTC

suction wrote: post #228

nicbou wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh the salaries are alright. It seems to me like the salaries are higher in America, while in Germany they're lower but include things American end up paying for: pensions, insurance, and education. If I were American, a part of my net income would still end up going to health insurance, student loans and other things. My employer might pay less benefits, but pay a higher salary to compensate for those costs. I think…

Yet how many people, even well-educated ones, have this balanced view on salaries? Most people see the bottom line on their pay statements. They "conveniently" forget that they still have to pay for health insurance, pension funds, etc. A big figure on the pay slip is a status symbol. If Germany wants to attract foreign high-profile human capital like the US does, they should create a similar system: Pay them their f…

You opine on a system you clearly don't understand.

Each of these deductions are clearly shown on your pay slips. They can be calculated in advance from your gross income.

In the end, the amounts you pay (reduced by half because of employer contributions) are relatively low.

In any case, it's impossible to have a balanced view on compensation, because of the huge differences between the countries you compare. I lived 6 years and Germany and the rest of my life in Canada. I still wouldn't venture to compare what a salary means in either country.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#416

Post by mbeex » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 8:43 AM UTC

rurban wrote: post #268

fxtentacle wrote: post #45

If you consider GlobalFoundries to be a valid competitor, then that move would make a lot of sense. Infineon and AMD used to do a lot of research and production in Dresden. The AMD fab has since become a part of GlobalFoundries. But there's still a healthy ecosystem of university research and medium-sized software companies. Or at least there was, when I visited GlobalFoundries in 2014. Also, there has been a growing…

We don't have enough water anymore in Dresden

Proof?

https://www.umwelt.sachsen.de/umwelt/infosysteme/ida/q/eg

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#417

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#418

Post by fundatus » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 9:36 AM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #373

fundatus wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not misinformation at all. The UK was just clever enough to hide the export ban in their contracts with AZ (unlike the US which did it more bluntly). The first xx million doses of vaccines manufactured in Oxford/Keele had to be supplied to the UK. Which is an export ban in all but name. But it gave the UK government the opportunity to claim that there was no export ban in place (even though nothing was exported…

>The UK was just clever enough to hide the export ban in their contracts with AZ (unlike the US which did it more bluntly). The first xx million doses of vaccines manufactured in Oxford/Keele had to be supplied to the UK. Which is an export ban in all but name. I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A hav…

> by having signed the contract first

Vaccines aren't distributed to countries one after another until each order is completed. Instead, the production is divided up and goes towards different orders. What the UK did was to force AZ contractually to only supply the UK from Oxford/Keele for the first xx million doses (while happily importing the vast majority of vaccines from other countries who did not do such thing).

> (The US never had an export ban, either. The US did the same thing as the UK; insist that they (which the US signed ahead of everyone else) would be fulfilled in the order they were signed.)

That's not true. The US government used the Defense Production Act to stop the exports of finished vaccines until some time ago.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#419

Post by wheels » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:02 AM UTC

rattray wrote: post #391

wheels wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, nowhere closed to that. There seems to be some confusion because Americans tend to quote things in yearly rates, while Germans tend to quote things in monthly rates. I pay just over €10k/year for my public health insurance in Germany, which is the maximum rate. (I'm self-employed, so I pay the full rate.) But that covered my whole family (wife and two kids) when my wife wasn't working. Now that she's a full-time…

Ah, ok. Thanks for the more apples-to-apples comparison. Sounds like the high-end California equivalent would be around $25k/yr, more than twice as much for a high-income self-employed head of household.

A couple other interesting points:

- You get that same coverage level at any income.

- There's no co-pay on anything (with some exceptions for higher-end elective dental work, e.g. if you want an implant instead of a bridge). What something costs is never a factor in treatment. The doctors simply decide what they think is appropriate.

- Prices, again, at the same coverage level, drop down to next to nothing if you have no income. I paid €1,400/year when I was living on savings and starting my company.

Re: TSMC eyes Germany as possible location for first Europe chip plant

#420

Post by volta83 » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #413

bpodgursky wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, and that's perfectly fine from a societal standpoint, but people who are worried about working 22% fewer hours and are fine getting a "decent" salary are not the engineers you want to hire when trying to bootstrap a new enterprise. They can run your company steady-state, but they are not going to build anything internationally competitive.

I'm fine with that. I value employees having balanced lives more than GDP bragging rights. For the record, yes they're the sort of engineers I'd want to hire. If we're making broad assumptions about a country's workforce, I'd want a happy, well-rested workforce that's not held hostage by their company's health insurance plan. You say that as if valuing your free time is a sort of moral weakness in an employee.

This might also help explain why so few startups survive in Germany.

If a German startup has a nice idea and start working towards it with 4 ppl 30h/week each, at say 50k$/year/employee, a US startup:

- has access to most VC funds

- the German startup might have proven that there is money there, which helps getting VC funds

- has access to (0) a lot of (1) top and (2) absurdly hard-working talent that will put as much time as necessary for the startup to out-compete everybody else,

- has access to an ecosystems of startups around that might help them,

- has access to better way to compensate these employers, like almost tax-free equity, etc.

- has access to better ways to cash out, IPO, SPACs, etc.

Once these startups outcompete and survive the competition, then and only then they can and do switch to 35h/week, etc.

Some of my friends from MSc. in Germany work there at startup incubators. They have 50k$/year salaries for 40-50h/week, and B2B startups get funded for 2 years, die, and they just move to the next one.

Most of them are trying to switch to bigger German companies like car manufacturers to get a 35h/week job that's higher paid, and are pretty burned out of the life of attempting to build stuff that ends up in nothing because they get outcompeted by the US, China, etc. every single time.

This type of international competition didn't exist 100 years ago at this level, and many DAX companies are that old. AFAICT the youngest company in the DAX is delivery hero which is 10 years old. The most valued company is SAP which is 40 years old.

Compare that with the 30 most valued companies in the S&P500....