Job Title : Digital Design Verification Engineer (DV)
Job Desciption : R&D; Networking IC; RTL/Formal Verification.
Age : 27
Years spent in company : 1
Company : Taiwanese MNC
Industry : IC design / semicon front-end
Tenure : Permanent
Employment Level : Junior Engineer
Experience before joining (years) : 0
Highest paper qualification/ education background : Master
Location : Taiwan
Average Working Hours Per Week (incl lunch hours): around 50 hours

Monetary Payout
Basic Salary + Fixed Allowance : around RM12k (depends on exchange rate)
Contractual Bonus (months): 1 mths
Performance, Variable Bonus & Commissions (months) : ranging from 4-12 mths or more

Work Flexibility (where relevant) : flexi hours, occasional OT depends on project phase
Work From Home Availability: No
Annual Leaves: 10 days
Flexi Working Hours : Partial. Fixed working day with flexi starting time.

Benefits (where relevant) :
Health Benefits : medical insurance, annual health checkup, mental counseling
Transport Benefits : -
Mobile / Internet / Gadget Benefits : -
Other Benefits : around RM1.5k welfare fund per annum (for education/sports/insurance), legal consultation

Others:
- no epf since working overseas
- pay less tax compared to Malaysia for this salary range (but may pay more when salary grows)

Future Prospects (personal outlook) :
Current salary against peers in industry : Above Average
Growth prospects : From what I heard, pay raise above average but promotion is pretty difficult.
Where I will go from here : Either continue working overseas in Taiwan/other countries and jump to other MNC or relocate back to MY/SG.
How's the pay/benefits of similar role in Malaysia (Intel/Oppstar/Infinecs?) ? What about similar opportunity in Singapore?
My parents would prefer me to work closer to home but at this career stage, I would priorities career building. What's your thoughts?

Paid in Taiwan dollar.

Retirement Fund only available for permanent residents.
Employer contribute 6% and employee can choose to contribute another 6% max.
I'm still 3.5 years away from qualifying for PR application.

Cost of living overall maybe like > 10-15% EXCEPT housing prices
Rental is okayish about 2k for studio.
But a studio unit can cost > million ringgit in certain locations.

Correct. If I had known earlier I would try to ask for higher pay for compensation .

5 years of legal stay. (with > 183 days each)
If you got your Master/Doctoral degree in Taiwan then it can be reduced by 1/2 years.
I studied Master here so 4 years for me.

There are some other (not that easy) conditions that can reduce the requirement further.

I work at Hsinchu. All the big players in semicon are based in Hsinchu Science Park.

I heard the increment is about 3%-6% normally, so nothing crazy.

It's tax season again, figured I should do another update:

Years spent in company : <2
Increment: 4%
Total pay before tax y.2024: ~NT$1.5 mil (~RM200k at current rate)

As of the current state, I would stay unless things changes back home. Even moving to Singapore would not result in a substantive gain factoring in the living costs.
The downsides are the Mandarin dominated environment, no EPF for 2 more years, and infrequent family visits.

Average NT$30k/month living cost (incl NT$13k/month) rent.