Stagflation, that is, stagnant inflation, an economic term, is used to describe the phenomenon in which prices rise but the economy stagnates. Chip talent stagflation refers to rising labor costs, but the quality of talent has not improved.
Whether it is chip products or chip talents, they are a major factor in the market economy. According to Marx's determinism of supply and demand, prices are determined by the relationship between supply and demand. At present, the chip industry is booming, the talent market is in short supply, and labor costs are rising. But right now, labor costs are in a serious stagflation trend. High-paying poaching and frequent job-hopping have added a bucket of oil to the shortage of people.
With the constant job-hopping, the salary may go from 200,000 to 400,000 to 800,000 to 1 million in three years, and the position ranges from engineer to manager to director. Salaries go up, and titles go up. But is ability really as fast as salaries and titles increase? The stagnant growth of industrial talents needs to cause us to think.
Let's look at a set of data: the current annual salary of chip design engineers is between 600,000 and 1.2 million yuan, and the salary may increase by 20 percent to 50 percent when changing jobs; the current annual salary of verification engineers is between 600,000 and 1.5 million yuan, and the salary may be increased by 20 percent when changing jobs. percent -35 percent ; the current annual salary of the CPU/GPU leader is 1.5-6 million yuan, and the salary increase can reach 40 percent -50 percent after job-hopping.
Personally, such an increase is really exciting, but before and after frequent job-hopping, it is actually just a change of company or a higher position, and the personal technical strength has not changed much. As far as the industry is concerned, the stagflation of labor costs aggravates the internal friction of the industry. On the surface, capital is wasted. In fact, the lost time cost, opportunity cost, and loss are immeasurable.
Who is driving all this? What are the hidden worries behind the inflation of labor costs?
The reasons behind talent stagflation
Behind the stagflation of chip labor costs, there is such a logic line: the rapid development of the chip industry - the rapid entry of a large amount of capital - the expansion of the industry scale, the explosion of new companies - the increase in the demand for chip talents - the imbalance between supply and demand - leading to salary Increase - high-paying poaching - frequent job-hopping - stagflation of labor costs.
The serious imbalance between talent supply and demand is the most fundamental and fundamental reason. Let's first look at the demand side. According to the forecast of the China Semiconductor Association, the gap of Chinese chip professionals will exceed 250,000 in 2022, and by 2025, this gap will expand to 300,000. Domestic chip companies are growing rapidly. Taking the chip design field as an example, the number of domestic chip design companies will increase by 592 in 2021, with a growth rate of 26.7 percent . The number of enterprises with 100-500 employees increased by 91 over the previous year. The official caliber is like this, and there are rumors in the market that there are thousands of new chip design companies this year, and the demand side can be described as explosive growth.
On the supply side, talents mainly come to colleges and universities for talent training. Data from the China Semi-Association shows that in 2020, the scale of graduates related to integrated circuits in my country will be around 210,000, accounting for about 2.30 percent of the total number of graduates. Among these 210,000 students, only 13.77 percent are engaged in integrated circuit-related work after graduation, and the number is less than 30,000. The chip talents cultivated by domestic colleges and universities are in short supply.
The lack of supply side makes the existing 541,000 employees precious, but this basic market is not stable. Under the guidance of national policies, the semiconductor industry is at the center of the stage of the times and has attracted much attention from capital. High valuations and financing, and the birth of the Science and Technology Innovation Board have increased the bargaining power of chip companies.
Under the requirements of rapid capital development and high returns, the phenomenon of labor cost stagflation has directly intensified. On the other hand, the high attention of capital has exacerbated the loss of chip talents. Many chip talents put down silicon wafers, put down EDA tools, and rush to invest. As a result, the most important thing in the semiconductor industry is investors. Therefore, there is a joke in the industry that "there are more semiconductor students in Lujiazui than Zhangjiang".
Due to the influence of policies in some regions, it will be difficult for us to see the grand occasion of international bigwigs bringing their teams to mainland China to start businesses. It turned out that there were still many domestic companies that went to Taiwan, China to set up RD sites overseas. Now the uncertainty of the international situation and the continuous interference of the epidemic have not only made overseas team building in vain, but also the possibility of overseas poaching is getting lower and lower.
Due to the difficulty of poaching people, some companies have established larger HR teams and hired a number of headhunters to help them out. Some other industry giants have transformed and started the national core-making fever, including Internet companies, manufacturing companies, and mobile phone manufacturers. With strong funds, they began to "conquer" chip companies with high salaries and became the first person to boost involution. Headhunters swarmed, and "unscrupulous" poaching aggravated the rise in labor costs. There is such a joke in the industry: in Zhangjiang, Pudong, at the gate of a large chip design company, Zhangjiang men often hear strangers whispering in their ears, "Little brother, do you want to change jobs? Big brother, do you want to start a business?".
Under the indiscriminate bombardment of headhunters, it seems that the company has indeed recruited a few more people than before, but the talent pool has not grown significantly. It's just that there were only 3 people fishing, but now 100 people are fishing, and there are still a group of people behind you who are staring at your fish basket. The practice of headhunting and poaching made the engineers who were poached have a mentality: look, they are poaching people, the industry is so hot, there must be higher prices. Leveraging prices have therefore been raised again and again.
As the so-called "people die for wealth, birds die for food", the temptation of high salaries is really huge, and it is understandable that engineers can't stand it. However, another phenomenon is worth pondering: chip engineers who frequently change jobs are mostly from mainland China. The frequency of job-hopping of engineers and overseas engineers in Taiwan, China is relatively low, so they concentrate on research and development, make products, and develop better products with craftsmanship and accumulation over time, which enhances the competitiveness of overseas companies. Behind the stagflation of domestic chip talent, there may be the absence of an engineer culture. Frequent job-hopping makes it difficult to do things down-to-earth. Not only is it difficult to accumulate your own skills, but it will also make you restless, making it difficult to sit on the bench for ten years!
The hidden worries behind talent stagflation
The success of no industry depends on disorder and involution. A high degree of involution will only reduce industrial productivity. The stagflation of labor costs has a potential destructive effect on the semiconductor industry, which affects the development of individuals and enterprises in a small way, and affects the future of the industry in a large way, which should not be underestimated.
For individual chip engineers, frequent job-hopping is not conducive to personal career planning. Each job-hopping position is similar to the job, the only difference is the salary. Frequent job-hopping, personal ability and project practice ability have not been accumulated. It seems that the salary increased by tens of thousands in the initial stage, but in the long run, one's own ability, the item with the highest bargaining weight, is constantly being diluted. Without the accumulation and precipitation of technical ability, can the salary jump higher and higher after five or ten years?
Chip engineers have been poached, and most of the companies that entered before and after are doing similar projects, which also points out the stubborn disease of repetitive competition in the current industry. In the name of domestic substitution, many companies actually only "substitute domestic production" and repeatedly involute low-end products. This allows the chip talent to repeatedly grind on the same whetstone, and the good steel will not be used on the blade.
In the technology industry, talent is an important intellectual asset of an enterprise. Looking at the growth routes of overseas semiconductor giants, which one is not achieved by engineers sitting on the bench for ten years. From the perspective of enterprises, the high turnover rate of talents makes it difficult for outstanding enterprises to grow. In the future, the technical difficulty of the semiconductor industry will become higher and higher. Coupled with the impact of trade frictions, the development of domestic semiconductors must be full of thorns. High turnover rate and turnover rate can only be a negative catalyst, it is difficult for domestic excellent enterprises to grow rapidly, and international competitiveness will be impossible to talk about.
The industry will also fall into the vicious circle of "more and more expensive labor costs and slow growth in talent quality". It is only in practice that a person's technical ability improves. Frequent job-hopping not only makes chip engineers keep an eye on external recruitment trends, but also gets harassed by headhunters every day, distracting their energy, and job-hopping often makes the project at hand unsustainable. Even if a replacement is launched, it will cost a lot of time.
A few days ago, a start-up company visited. The founder had overseas work experience. He frankly admitted that Chinese engineers are not only expensive, but also highly mobile, and the gap between their abilities and overseas engineers of the same period/age is getting bigger and bigger, and the cost-effectiveness of overseas engineers higher. There are also many chip start-ups overseas. Although the number of engineers may not be as large as that of the mainland, the scale of personnel is not as large as that of the mainland, but the competitiveness is very strong.
Conclusion
Semiconductor technology is the most primitive and the most tiring work. It is gratifying that the whole society attaches great importance to chip talents. As a powerful country in science and technology, chips are the foundation of the digital economy. We are almost devoted to the development of the chip industry. "The iron has to be hard on its own." There will always be foggy moments along the way. Only with more mutual understanding and less introversion in the industry can we maximize time and cost savings, accumulate industrial experience, accumulate talent soft power, and jointly write a bright future.