American multinational tech giants, Google, Microsoft and IBM have recently zoomed in on the Taiwanese software engineers and professionals.
Tony Phoo, an economist at Standard Chartered bank in Taipei commented, “There’s no lack of hardware as well as soft talent that these institutions can take advantage of. Taiwan has some of the best talent around the region, and it comes cheap as well. If you want to establish a data center to be located in Northeast Asia, Taiwan looks attractive.”
All three American high-tech firms had announced its intentions to hire, train and establish centers in Taiwan. In January, the Google flagship had reported that the company will hire 300 people in Taiwan and train 5,000 students in AI for machines.
Following Google’s post, Microsoft issued a statement saying they are set to hire former 2,000 employees who had worked for the Taiwanese HTC company.
In March, the Taiwan general manager of IBM, Lisa Kao added that her firm would expand its R&D center in Taiwan with eyes on artificial intelligence, blockchain technology and cloud computing. Further, she anticipated 100 new hires in the year 2018, including developing a cloud research lab in Taiwan.
Kuo-yuan Liang, president of Taipei-based think tank Yuanta-Polaris Research Institute, said, “One thing they want: easily trainable talent. Taiwan’s engineering talent is easy to train for newer lines of work such as artificial intelligence (AI). Labor also doesn’t cost much. A lot of that labor comes out of universities trained in basic engineering, making any further training relatively easy.”
Even though, China has cheaper tech trained labor, the American firms are not ready to take chances on the country due to a possible future trade war.
According to the analysts, investments by Google, Microsoft and IBM in Taiwan can bring other businesses, generating larger revenues.
