However, the levels of wealth are different in Taiwan from the United States, both in terms of base salary and what can be made off an initial public stock offer. Salaries in Taiwan are poor compared to those in the United States, which is why so many Taiwanese work in America. A green EE just out of college can expect to make only a little over $1,200 per month in Taiwan-in fact, even a middle-level EE is only going to make a bit less than $2,000 per month.

"To the best of my knowledge, the starting salary for someone right out of school with an MSEE is from $1,200 to $1,400 per month," said a midlevel manager at a major Taiwanese mainboard manufacturer. "Midlevel, it goes from $1,500 to $2,000. High-level engineers are still not that high compared to the United States at about $2,500 to $3,500 per month."

For mainboard companies where profits are essentially nonexistent, there are other ways to reward employees. "Companies will offer individual valuable employees special deals in order to get them to stay," the mainboard engineer said. "The main company's stock might not be too valuable, but you might get a chance to buy stock in a subsidiary that is about to go public. If an engineer gets the startup stock at a low enough price and it becomes popular, the engineer can make capital gains in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

The story is also the same at IC design firms. A former employee of VIA Technologies said that the starting salary for an EE is about $1,000, with middle management getting less than $2,000 per month. Even the now-booming fab industry is equally frugal when it comes to paying its engineers.

"I recently hired several new engineers," said the vice president of R & D at one of Taiwan's fabs. "Starting salary was about $1,100 per month."

The fabs are very close-mouthed about their pay scales. At Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a representative said, "TSMC's salary base is locally competitive. However, for the past years, the majority part of one employee's salary consists of many variables [performance and profit sharing, for example]. It could be very misleading if TSMC releases the standard salary base alone."

The real money for engineers isn't in wages, though. "Recompense here is much more than just salary," the fab vice president said. "Salaries are low here, but the financial impact of the Chinese New Year bonus, yearly earnings stock bonuses and employee stock-option plans can make the total package much higher than in the United States."

Figuring out which compensation mix is the best bet for both employee and employer is a big part of the hiring process.

"Some fabs pay higher salaries than us," said the fab executive. "Their employees may not have a better chance at a big bonus, however. Other fabs offer lower bonuses but also have special stock-option plans. During an interview, you can almost see the candidates calculating the different mixes in their heads, trying to work out the total potential package."

A typical Chinese New Year bonus for a fab engineer is at least two months' salary, although motherboard makers usually give a one-month bonus. Although it's not a huge amount of money, the year-end bonus is an important element of Taiwan's culture.

Potentially more important financially is the annual payment of company stock to employees. Nearly all IT companies give a percentage of their earnings to employees in the form of free stock, with the percentage of profits to be given to employees determined by each board of directors. The company gives the stock to its employees at par value (usually about 30 cents per share), but the market value is usually much more.

"Some companies give a higher percentage of earnings to their employees than others," said one securities analyst. "Potential employees have to work the numbers, though. I'd rather share five percent of $250 million among 1,000 employees than share 10 percent of $50 million among 500 employees."

As in the United States, the real money is in stock options, but "the stock option [benefit] varies from company to company," said the motherboard engineer. "For some companies it may be up to $80,000 per person per year and for some as low as $4,000 per year."

Startups, though, can lead to big money. For example, AsusTek Computer Co. specializes in making high-quality mainboards that it sells at some of the highest profit margins in all of Taiwan's IT industry. Two weeks after the company went public several years ago, engineers who had received stock at par had multimillion-dollar paydays as their stock rose to 28 times the par price.

Taiwan's IC industry has remained more profitable than its beleaguered PC business, where profits of 5 percent are now considered good. This has caused many EE students to plan for careers in the IC industry or the budding dot-com market for Chinese Internet services.

Currently, though, the Taiwanese stock market is in a slump and has fallen almost 25 percent this year. Even the gold standard, TSMC, is suffering a significant loss in market value.

Taiwan's stock market is much more volatile than that of the United States and doesn't reflect any fundamental economics. TSMC has increased profits and revenues this year by over 100 percent from 1999. Nevertheless, its stock price has fallen. But even here in Taiwan, the basic rules of economics will eventually win out. So TSMC's engineers may have to hold onto their stock for now, waiting for a rebound.

Then there's Taiwan's cost of living, which makes it hard to live comfortably on a low wage. A small one-room studio apartment rents for $300 to $400 per month and the cheapest meal is about $3.

For many Taiwanese, money is the incentive to become engineers. "Electronics engineers don't really have the prestige of, say, doctors here," said Carol Yu, program engineer for United Microelectronics Corp. "The general public, though, knows all the stories of how Taiwanese EEs have worked for or started their own successful electronics companies and have become quite wealthy. For that reason, having your son or daughter become an EE is seen as a very positive thing."