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Comment by odiroot | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't be as harsh, but indeed that decision is a bit weird. They cannot really count on cheap labour, or "friendly" economic incentives. And seeing the case of Tesla factory, it's not so easy and fast.

One great thing about Germany is the central location within EU with good logistics overall. Not sure it matters for semiconductor manufacturing.

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I wouldn't say Teslas Brandenburg factory shows a problem with red tape per se, but it does show that ignoring it won't save you time in Germany.

Also, salaries usually only account for low single digit percentages of opex in high tech production, so ready availabilty of the needed specialists is probably more important.

For those companies involved in semiconductor industry, where machines cost 100M usd EACH... People are just a rounding error. Should we hire 100 more? 1000 more? Whatever

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.

According to [1] if you make 400k a year your employer has to pay 413k in total

[1] https://www.brutto-netto-rechner.info/gehalt/gehaltsrechner-...

no engineer makes 400k a year in Germany. This is not the US, sadly.

Yes, if you get 400k gross, your employer has to pay 413k, but you only get 221k net after deduction of taxes and obligatory insurances (according to that very same calculator).

I assume they mean 400k net, if the employer pays 413k you only get 206k after tax. While the tax burden seems huge in this case, it's not that different in the US, though. For example you'd get around 225k in California (with no deductions).

"net" is the keyword here.

sure, but that's an unfair comparison then, when people say they make 400k they mean before taxes

And that 800 is what you see on your paycheck. The company pays around double that in total.

No, there are only very little payments beyond the pay check. The employee does of course only get payed out a large part of the pay check, the rest goes to taxes and social insurances.

Huh, I may have (wrongly) assumed it'd be the same in Germany as in Austria.

I don't know where you get the 400k number for an engineer, typical salaries are rather about 100k, somewhat more, a lot less.

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.

That‘s different from the US how exactly?

$800k/year in San Francisco as a single is $436k/year net. In Germany that’s $431k/year net.

You should argue with lower (more realistic) salaries. Social insurance (including health insurance, pension) is capped, meaning if you earn above a certain level you won’t have to pay any more. This means that those aspects play a diminutive role (about $15k) at your named salary level.

> And seeing the case of Tesla factory, it's not so easy and fast.

Its not actually delayed much. The incredibly optimistic plan was to be ready in September, but that was Elon Time.

So far the bureaucracy has not really held them back that much.

If you compare progress in China, Texas and Berlin so far its not clear that Berlin is meaningfully slower.

Germany just committed to put billions into a chip IPCEI, so lots of funding incoming.

Taiwan as a country was not allowed to buy vaccines (since China views them as an administrative sub-unit, Taiwan should not be engaging in international relationships from their perspective) and are still getting hit hard by COVID. At one point recently TSMC itself was negotiating with an EU pharma company for vaccines (to be purchased through a Chinese intermediary) as a proxy for the national government (due to the aforementioned "china says we're not a country" politics) and I wonder if these two things aren't linked. Give us a fab so we aren't wholly dependent on Taiwan for supply flunctuations in our automotive industry, and we'll grease the skids with China and make sure you get your vaccines.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3140662/tsmc...

I guess arguing against that idea is the fact that Japan also got a 28nm fab recently and I dunno if they've done anything particularly special for Taiwan lately in return.

But up until recently TSMC was very much "negotiating via the press", protesting that Germany was not a good location due to lack of supply chain, etc (despite GloFo having the Dresden fabs nearby and all - certainly not cutting-edge anymore but they are 14nm/12nm fabs, they aren't chopped liver either).

There clearly has been a sea change lately though with TSMC and their policy regarding fabs outside of taiwan. The US got a 20k wafer/month fab (later upgraded to a 100k wf/mo "gigafab") based on the cutting-edge 5nm node, which would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Japan got a 28nm fab for their automotive industry as well. Clearly the chips shortage has been a factor in all this but particularly the change in position on the 5nm fab is pretty stunning - the exclusivity of TSMC's cutting-edge nodes in China is effectively part of their national-defense strategy and there must have been some pretty good trades made in order to get that fab in the US. That is not an automotive fab and it's completely contrary to the well-established policy of TSMC never to let their cutting-edge nodes outside Taiwan to use the potential damage to the world economy as a suicide bomb should china try to invade.

> done anything particularly special for Taiwan lately in return

Hinted they might come to TW aid in event of invasion.

> some pretty good trades

Or coercion. Subsidies and vaccine diplomacy are good carrots, but TSMC is wholey dependant on US/EU tech and JP supply chains. Push comes to shove, US/EU and even JP will get their fabs. Only US has enough leverage to get the crown jewels. Even US weapons sales aren't scheduled to be delivered after fab completion. Though one has to wonder if these expansions are serious, whether TSMC/TW will try to delay/undermine for national security.

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