More than 60 percent of the respondents to EE Times Asia's "2001 Salary & Opinion Survey" said they received pay raises in the past 12 months. Generally the raises corresponded to an increase in job responsibilities or a promotion, with almost 85 percent of the respondents climbing a step up the ladder in the past two years.

"Most Taiwan engineers enjoyed an annual 8 percent to 10 percent rise in the last couple of years," said Marcelle Yih, administration manager at M-tec Semiconductors Corp. "However, with the changed [economic] situation, several companies have frozen salaries; increases, if any, are likely to be very modest" in 2001.

"I think there will be a very aggressive dissipation in compensation packages [this year]," said Selina Wong, regional human-resources director at Tektronix Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. "There was a time when people switched jobs for significantly higher pay. These days, when engineers change jobs, they are seeing almost a similar pay packet. Of course, when the economy recovers, the situation will improve, but [even then] compensation increases will not be as high as we have seen in the past few years."

One of the most striking revelations emerging from the EE Times Asia survey is the huge gap in pay between engineers in Asia and those in the West. Six years into the profession and just past the age of 30, an electronics engineer in Asia draws a basic annual salary of about $14,000. In the United States, meanwhile, engineers earn more than $82,900 a year (see the salary chapter for more on U.S. pay scales) — almost six times the Asian salary.

The disparity in wages is not only between East and West. It also divides engineers within the Asia-Pacific area.

In mainland China, an EE earns a median salary of $7,000, about one-third of the $22,700 of his counterpart across the Taiwan Strait and roughly 50 percent below the mean salary for the entire Asia region, $13,500.

The mean salary recorded for the rest of Asia (countries excluding China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) is about $16,600. That number is skewed by the relatively high pay offered in Singapore, where an engineer earns, on an average, better than $30,000. Salaries in the Philippines, India and Malaysia, the other major nations included in the rest-of-Asia (ROA) segment, are meager in comparison — $7,400, $8,100 and $13,800, respectively.

"It is a big challenge to align the compensation and benefits package for engineers working with Tektronix China — including that for the different functional roles such as manufacturing, engineering and sales — with their counterparts in Singapore," said Wong, the regional HR director. "We've agreed upon a job-grade structure and, based on that, we continue to do benchmarking against similar operations in China."

Huge variations
The lower pay scales are, of course, part of what draws multinational companies to outsource manufacturing and even design jobs to Asia. Yet in some countries and in certain market sectors, Asian engineers have been enjoying rapid increases in pay.

In India, salaries of design engineers went up by 40 to 50 percent last year owing to the high growth rate of the design-services industry, said S.K. Basu, national head of the engineering-solutions business at NIIT, the authorized representative of Mentor Graphics Corp. in India.

"Demand for design engineers has been high," said Basu, with more and more companies opening design centers on the subcontinent. "Salaries will continue to rise, though the increases may be only about 10 to 15 percent."

Shambu Agrawal, northern and western region leader for the IT and telecom practice of ABC Consultants Pvt. Ltd., an Indian recruitment and manpower consultancy firm, concurred. "Over the last three years, engineers specializing in specific design areas — such as DSP design — have seen pay increases at a compounded annual rate of about 30 percent," Agrawal said. "Overall, they are getting paid quite well now. Last year, salaries increased by about 40 percent in certain high-demand engineering segments."

That's not happening nearly as often this year. In a real change of pace, the possibility of pay cuts is being raised. "Salaries increased steadily during the boom period. But now companies have severely cut back in the science parks, and many of them are concentrating on their operations in China," said Chih Wang, president of Menicx International Co. Ltd. in Taiwan. "I feel salaries for engineers will decline."

Indeed, earlier this month, several Indian software companies said they were cutting engineering salaries across the board in response to the worsening economy.

Nevertheless, the survey suggests that Asian engineers can expect, on average, a minimum 6 to 8 percent annual increase in basic pay.

How big a raise will depend not just on the economic climate at the moment, but also on where an engineer lives and how long he or she has been working. In mainland China and Taiwan, salaries grow faster for engineers with three to six years' experience than for those with more and less time on the job, our survey shows. The trend is reversed in South Korea and ROA, where pay rises faster for those with six to nine years' experience.

Also noteworthy is that it takes at least six to nine years on the job for an engineer to cross the mean-salary level for the respective region. While South Koreans start at higher salaries than Taiwanese engineers, the latter overtake their Korean counterparts in terms of compensation once they have a few years' experience under their belts.

Designers gain prominence
Design and development engineering is a more lucrative specialty in Taiwan than R&D or test and measurement engineering. "IC design engineers, system designers and field application engineers are in high demand," said Yih of M-tec. "With Taiwan still focusing on the semiconductor business, IC and system design engineers will be paid more."

Wang of Menicx agreed. "Experience and educational qualifications are highly valued in the job market — those with a degree in electrical or electronics engineering with a few years of experience will catch a prospective employer's eye more easily," Wang said.

In India, said Basu of NIIT, only the software and design-services segments of the electronics industry are likely to show any growth in the coming year. However, even design services has started to feel the downturn.

"There is a shortage of high-level design skills, mainly because of the migration of engineers with these skills to other countries," Basu said. "However, there is sufficient low-level and medium-level design talent in the country" to keep staffing levels where they need to be.

Agrawal of ABC had a word of advice for engineers starting out on their careers. "To market themselves and negotiate salaries better, young engineers should specialize in some of the high-demand areas, such as RF/wireless design, or master some programming languages, say C/C++, so that they can immediately start work — designing a cell phone or embedding software in ICs."

Product segments
When asked about the prospects in different product segments, Yih of M-tec said, "There is not a significant difference in the salaries in different end-product segments. It is also difficult to pinpoint a major trend in pay scales by specific job functions. However, I feel the price commanded by software engineers has definitely gone down." Contradicting this view was Wang. "Software engineers and IT professionals are still paid more," he said. "IC design houses also offer good compensation packages."

Surprising though it may seem, the computer and computer peripherals segment is one of the higher paying among key industry sectors in the regions studied. This sector pays particularly well in Taiwan and ROA, at $24,800 and $21,900, respectively. By comparison, the salary for communications engineers is $22,000 in Taiwan and $16,400 in ROA.

A common complaint among engineers in the past has been that technical staffers are paid less than people in more commercial or general-management jobs. But that seems to be changing as companies bank on innovation and greater customer satisfaction to enhance their competitiveness.

"Sales teams cannot guarantee that we are ahead of the competition or that we provide the best service to our customers. Hence, our technical staff is now getting a better package than before," said Ivan So, regional sales director, Asia-Pacific, at Tektronix Southeast Asia. "Some of our technical staff are also entitled to a commission plan, which is similar to that for sales or marketing." In fact, he said, in the past year or two, "Tektronix has also been benchmarking compensation against the market leaders."

Bonuses, stocks
Most companies operating in Asia offer other benefits besides the basic salary as part of the overall compensation package. Prominent among these are a guaranteed annual bonus, a performance-related bonus and profit-sharing plans. Guaranteed bonuses, generally a month's salary, are a common component of the pay structure in Asia, and almost 43 percent of the respondents reported receiving bonuses tied to personal or company performance in the past 12 months.

While employee stock-option plans are increasingly in vogue in the West, they are less common in most of Asia. Fewer than a third of the respondents said their companies offered stock-option plans. One exception to the rule is Taiwan, where stock options have become immensely popular: Almost 60 percent of the respondents in the island nation said they got options.

"Stock options are a good way to make employees think of themselves as owners of the company," said Yih of M-tec Semiconductors. "This brings about greater commitment from engineers to contribute and grow with the company. Eventually both companies and employees benefit."

Wang at Menicx attributes the trend to the mind-set of the Taiwan engineer. "The majority of Taiwanese want to be their own bosses; owning stock is like owning the company, and therefore, a great incentive for the engineer," he said. "Moreover, stock options are a cheaper compensation option for the employer."

Companies in the rest of Asia, particularly in India, are also beginning to offer stock options. With an eye on the Taiwan model, companies see the options as a way to rope in engineers with low basic salaries but attractive possibilities if the stock takes off, industry analysts say.

"Stock options are quite popular in India but the attraction of owning company shares has waned recently due to a steep slump in stock prices, starting in March," said Agrawal of ABC Consultants. Given the welter of government regulations, few companies in mainland China offer employee stock-option plans.

Among other benefits, medical/health insurance is the most common perquisite doled out to engineers in Asia, followed by pension plans. Other perks include low-interest loans, subsidized or even free housing, dental insurance and financial consulting/planning.

"Benefits in India tend to vary a lot from region to region and from company to company," said Agrawal. "Office transport is, in fact, a very common benefit with companies ferrying employees back and forth from home and office. Some companies offer company cars that become the employees' property after a certain period of service with the company. I also know of companies that reward employees with paid overseas holidays."

Also common in India, Agrawal said, are "interest-free loans to buy a car or household items." Employees repay these loans "by working with the company for a certain period of time," he said .

Engineers do not seem the kind to augment their incomes by taking on freelance projects outside of their full-time jobs. Less than 15 percent of respondents said they did freelance work, and for those that did, the income from such projects was not very substantial. This could be due to contractual obligations with their employers. Or possibly, the Asian engineers simply don't have the time. Our survey revealed that, on average, engineers work anywhere from 45 hours per week in China to about 55 hours a week in South Korea.

— Compiled by EE Times Asia with reports from Vivek Nanda and Kirtimaya Varma in Manila; Mike Pan and Karen Kou in Taipei.