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TSMC Pays Firefighters As Much As $120,000 To Join The Company
TSMC Pays Firefighters As Much As $120,000 To Join The Company-July 2024
Jul 1, 2025 11:37 PM

This is not investment advice. The author has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Wccftech.com has a disclosure and ethics policy.

According to a fresh report from Taiwan, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is attracting firefighters from local fire departments by offering them lucrative salaries. TSMC is the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, and the firm has risen to prominence as it becomes a key supplier of crucial semiconductor firms such as NVIDIA and AMD, alongside aatering exclusively to needs of Apple. The report reveals that TSMC is paying firefighters as much as $120,000 to entice them to join the company. The compensation also includes multi-month bonuses to make up for their loss of public sector employment.

TSMC Recruits Six Firefighters From Taipe Fire Department By Offering Lucrative Salaries

Semiconductor fabrication is one of the most capital intensive operations in the world, requiring billions of dollars of investment over a multi year time horizon to get the machines up an running to print billions of tiny circuits on silicon. At the same time, fabs also have to invest in expensive clean rooms and other equipment to maintain purity levels necessary for chip performance.

Companies like TSMC, which supply most of the world's latest chips, must also be careful about their equipment runtime. Even a sight shutdown can disrupt the global supply chain, which is intricately balanced on orders made months in advanced and being work in process. This is compounded by the delicate nature of making the chips, since even a small shutdown can waste inventory being processed.

Amidst this backdrop, chipmakers have to invest to ensure that their facilities have the right emergency response measures, and it appears as if TSMC is going all out with its firefighting capabilities. According to a United Daily News (UDN) report, the fab is hiring new firefighters and offering them lucrative salary packages as compensation for leaving public sector employment.

TSMC NANKE Fire

Smoke billows from an under construction water plant near TSMC's 5nm chip manufacturing plant in Nan-ke, Taiwan in 2021. Image: Xie Jinsheng/UDN

The report outlines that salaries for the firefighters ranges uo to NT$1.5 million per year, and the highest monthly compensation is for the chief engineer who is offered T$120,000. While this translates into an annual salary of around NT$1.5 million, the package is beefed up by lucrative bonuses that can offer as much as 30 months of salary, enabling the engineer to earn as much as NT$3.6 million during their first year. At the current exchange rate of 1NT$ being equal to 0.033 USD, this translates into a $120,000 package which also comes with a five year contract.

TSMC is a highly sought out company in Taiwan, since it offers lucrative salaries and plays a crucial role in the region's economy and geopolitical strategy. It is often referred to as a 'sacred mountain' by the local media, as some believe that it offers Taiwan protection from any security threats due to its criticiality in the chip supply chain.

The fab is currently facing an industry downturn which has made its management warn that the first half of this yearwill be tough for growth as the industry digests excess inventory in the aftermath of the demand supply mismatch of 2022. While chip design firms had based their orders for 2022 on forecasts of elevated demand in the prior year, inflationary pressures reduced the demand for their products and led to excessive buildup. Comanies such as AMD and NVIDIA are now trying to reduce this buildup in their channels, as they undership products with the hope that consumers will buy those already in the pipeline.

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