After 8 p.m., headhunter Jimmy's work came to an end. Jimmy's agency focuses on recruiting talent in the high-tech field, and the chip industry is his main responsibility.
Jimmy tends to be more active after work hours, "when you call during the day, the other party is often busy, and the chip developer usually does not have a time when he is not busy." ”
Since ZTE Huawei was sanctioned, domestic attention to chips has increased significantly. The "chip shortage" in the past one or two years has also made the demand for chip talents more and more tight.
According to the "China Integrated Circuit Industry Talent Development Report (2020-2021 Edition)", it is estimated that by 2023, the demand for talents in the whole industry will reach about 766,500 people, of which the talent gap will reach 200,000.
This also means that in the chip industry, the dark war for talents has already begun.
Infographic According to IC photo
Headhunting and startups "hunt" talents
"Other majors are 'people grabbing jobs', and the chip industry is 'jobs grabbing people'." As a practitioner, Chi An (pseudonym) feels particularly pronounced.
Before 2020, Chi An was engaged in semiconductor technology abroad, and after returning to China, he switched to chip-related work. In the more than a year since he turned to the field of chip design, there have been more than 60 relevant headhunters on Chi Anjia's WeChat, and almost every day there will be different headhunters asking for his intentions. "At peak times, for a week in a row, the chip headhunter's phone has not been interrupted."
One of his classmates, because he had no intention of job hopping, had not updated his resume for a long time, and even so, he would receive an average of 1-2 headhunters per week.
"This is a common situation in the chip industry." Jimmy said, "The demand from customers has been very large, and we are very nervous to deliver and recommend people to them. On his team, each headhunter makes an average of about thirty or forty calls a day.
Once a candidate for a large platform told Jimmy that he had not updated his resume for 5 years, but in recent times he had received an average of 7 recruitment calls per day, and headhunters and HR had called.
This is very different from what was happening a few years ago. "5 years ago, there were relatively few opportunities to choose, basically gave offers (employment notices) will be hired; now candidates have 5-8 offers in hand, to compare salaries, platforms, teams, work content, etc., is the supply market, the day before the start of the day to go abounds." A headhunter said so.
"Because of the shortage of domestic chip talents, it is more chip talent interview companies than chip companies to interview talents." The CEO of a microelectronics startup in Jinjiang shared his experience in seeking talents on social platforms:
"In order to meet chip R & D talents, 8 p.m. is the best time for me to go out, drive around in Zhangjiang, and occasionally send a message to R&D talents, 'Just pass by your company, if you have time, have a cup of coffee.'" R & D talents are tired of overtime, do not like to run around, go downstairs, chat for a day. Or, I'll drive him home and talk along the way. ”
The CEO lamented that it is more difficult to find really suitable chip research and development talents than to find investment. "Just like Lei Jun said, looking for talents is not three Gu Maolu, but thirty Gu Maolu."
In 2021, "Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering" was officially upgraded to a first-level discipline, and headhunters also set their sights on fresh graduates. Some industry headhunters joke: other industry headhunters will not dig up fresh graduates, but we will.
"The threshold is really being relaxed," Jimmy said, adding that the candidates who were looking for the previous search generally required more than three years of work experience, but in the past two years, many fresh graduates have been recruited by headhunters in less than a year.
The market is hot but chaotic, and a 50% increase in wages is not uncommon
Digging up people means that salaries are rising.
According to the "2022 Talent Trend Report" released by talent solutions company Hudson at the beginning of this year, the salary increase in the chip industry will be the first in 2022, exceeding 50%, followed by medical and big health.
"The training cycle of chip talents is long, and the technology iteration is fast, resulting in a shortage of market talents." As long as the talent is willing to move, every company can give a very high salary. Song Qian, managing director of Hudson Recruitment Business China, said.
Last year, there was news on the Internet that OPPO recruited chip design, chip verification and other positions in Shanghai, and the annual salary offered to fresh graduates could reach 400,000.
"OPPO has set a new salary record for IC school recruitment." Zi yu (pseudonym), a practitioner of digital IC design, revealed that the chip design job market in 2021 is "hot + chaotic". "Fresh graduates generally have an annual salary of 300,000, 400,000 for 2 years of work experience, and 500,000 for 3 years."
This has led to "salary inversion" in the chip industry has also become the norm, and the average salary of the chip design industry after nearly three years of continuous increase, the basic and Internet average salary is not divided.
"In 2016 and 2017, we found that the salary increase of related positions was generally 10%-20%, and the highest would not exceed 30%. But in the past two years, the general increase has been around 30%-50%. Startups will ask for higher prices in order to recruit good people, with an increase of about 50%. Jimmy said.
This also makes the relevant talent is frequently flowing. According to media statistics, the number of core technicians of 10 companies, including Zhongwei Company, Dongxin Shares, Juchen Shares, Huafeng Measurement and Control, JinkoSolar, Cambrian-U, China Resources Micro, VeriSilicon Shares-U, Fuxin Technology and SMIC, decreased compared with the same period last year. Some departing employees have even given up generous equity incentives.
"In the past few years, I went to big factories to seek stability, but now there are more opportunities, and many senior people are more willing to go to the start-up team." Jimmy said.
"In recent years, many chip companies have been established, and it is difficult not to be impressed by high-paying diggers." Chi An shared an experience of his brother's company, in the past few years, it was not very difficult to grab chip talents, and the new people recruited by their company were mostly undergraduates who failed to turn to work. In the past two years, the loss of personnel has been more serious, with some undergraduates coming in every year, and also losing a group of experienced undergraduates.
Head companies are also retaining talent through salary increases. At the end of April this year, TSMC responded that most of the company's employees had salary increases of 5%-10% this year, and in the previous year, it had been reported that TSMC had raised wages by 20%. According to the statistics of the agency, since July last year, the salary increase of asML has reached 15%-19% in half a year.
Demand for personnel soared, but more than 80% of graduates changed careers
Although talent has remained mobile for a long time, people in the industry still feel that "the gap is huge". "In the case of test application engineers, the industry needs 30,000 test application engineers, but there are currently less than 3,000 people." Wu Gang, founder and chairman of Hangzhou Acceleration Technology, once said at a sharing meeting that although the number of semiconductor employees in 2020 has increased by more than 30,000 compared with 2019, the talent gap in semiconductors is still 300,000, and the supply of talents is unbalanced.
On the one hand, the reason is the rapid development of the industry and the soaring demand for personnel.
According to the statistics of China Semiconductor Industry Association, since 2016, the number of Chinese mainland IC design companies has increased significantly, from 736 in 2015 to 1362 in 2016, and increased to 1698 in 2018, an increase of more than 20% year-on-year. In 2020, that number grew to 2,218. In 2021 (as of December 1), the number of chip design companies in China alone has increased from 2218 in 2020 to 592 to 2810, an increase of 26.7% year-on-year.
Capital has also spawned more startups in the chip space. According to the statistics of American semiconductor media Semiconductor Engineering, in the last month of 2021 alone, a total of 54 start-up companies in the semiconductor field have obtained a new round of financing, and the detailed and verifiable financing amount has exceeded 15 billion yuan, and 40 of the 55 companies that have obtained financing are Chinese companies.
Enterprises are mushrooming and will inevitably need a large number of people to fill. However, the loss of graduates in the field of integrated circuits in colleges and universities is quite serious.
According to the "China Integrated Circuit Industry Talent Development Report (2020-2021 Edition)", in 2020, the scale of mainland integrated circuit-related graduates is about 210,000, of which only 13.77% of integrated circuit-related graduates choose to enter the industry, and more than 80% are changing careers. The main reason is that the semiconductor industry product cycle is long, the return rate is not high in the short term, and because of the low salary environment over the years, most of the graduates of integrated circuit colleges and universities are more willing to go to the Internet, computer software, IT services and real estate industries.
"The chip major of domestic colleges and universities has long been an unpopular major, and the narrow way out for graduates is low, resulting in fewer students." The so-called high salary is only a phenomenon in the past two years, because the demand for chips has expanded rapidly and the expansion of production capacity has led to the expansion of talent demand. Zhang Xiaorong, president of the DeepInn Science and Technology Research Institute, told Red Star Capital Bureau.
"The threshold for chip talents is very high, basically master's degree graduates, many are still 985, 211 high-quality students, the background of such groups is very good, and there is a lot of selectivity." Jimmy said that before the "ZTE incident", the outside world paid little attention to this industry, and these professional talents also turned to the Internet, finance and other fields.
Jimmy believes that a large amount of money has flowed into the chip industry, which has led to the revival of the industry to a certain extent. "In the past few years, the chip industry has been at a low ebb, and now it does see some hope, which is a good thing in general, but whether it is overheating is still difficult to say."
What kind of talents are missing in the chip industry?
While capital promotes the accelerated development of the industry, practitioners are also worried about whether this is only a "short-term outlet".
"Plates can hold so much capital, but not so many companies. The high salaries of hit workers are bound to be unsustainable. Ziyu believes that the semiconductor outlet is completely spawned by the environment at that time, if the general environment changes, policy changes, or a new asset-light outlet appears, the IC will inevitably be abandoned by capital.
Ziyu is also worried about the chaotic situation of high-paying robbery, which is a kind of "harm" to newcomers. "Although fresh graduates go to start-ups with high salaries, it is difficult to learn things in a systematic way, which is not conducive to technology accumulation and long-term development."
"High-paying recruitment has become a disguised hype, which is not durable, which is not conducive to the healthy development of the semiconductor industry." Industrial economic observer Major General Ding told the Red Star Capital Bureau.
Talents in the chip field are a long-term training. Due to the late start of China's integrated circuits, the current talent training of the domestic integrated circuit industry is in its infancy, and it is necessary to wait patiently for several years to obtain a large number of talents.
"The decoupling of university education from industry is too large, and many university electronic information, microelectronics and even integrated circuit majors are mainly materials, and few do real chip design." It is difficult for schools to cultivate chip design talents who can be directly started. Chi An said that this also means that it takes years to train a mature chip engineer.
"Chip talents want not quantity, but quality." Some industry experts told Red Star Capital Bureau that there is no doubt about the lack of people in the semiconductor industry, but what is missing is professional and technical personnel with practical work experience, rather than graduates who have just left the school, "Professionals need time to cultivate, and they can not fill the vacancies immediately." ”
"Enterprises have high requirements for engineering experience, and enterprises hope to be able to work when they come, but such people are exactly the most lacking in this industry." Wu Gang said that the increase in talent can only be cultivated from the current stage, and the goal of training should be to meet the needs of enterprises with engineering experience, rather than theoretical talents without engineering experience.
"From design and manufacturing to packaging and testing, there is a talent gap in all aspects of the chip industry. Among them, the most lacking is high-end talents who have been in contact with advanced equipment and engaged in advanced chip design and production. Zhang Xiaorong said.
"The chip industry chain is very long, involving design, packaging, manufacturing and other links, requiring many interdisciplinary talents such as materials, mathematics, computers, chemistry, etc. At present, there are still relatively few special integrated circuit majors in colleges and universities." Major General Ding said that China has a certain foundation in the design and packaging of semiconductor chips, but high-end chip manufacturing is still the field of card neck, and talents in the field of manufacturing-related equipment and materials are relatively scarce.
Red Star News reporter Wang Tian
Edited by Yu Dongmei
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