Huawei reportedly offering triple salary to TSMC employees

Huawei has recently upped its poaching game, with sights set on TSMC employees and ridiculous offers like three times their current salary on the table. The company has long been one of China's biggest players in the semiconductor space alongside its booming hardware business. In pushing the technological envelope, Huawei has been seeking top talent in relevant spaces, and that includes employees of rival companies. TSMC, a tempting target thanks to its status in both the Taiwanese and worldwide markets, has recently seen Huawei direct a much more fervent push toward its employees. 

While Huawei's intentions appear to be pure business on the surface, poached employees can sometimes be a good source of trade secrets. TSMC's global position is no accident; thanks to proprietary inventions and processes, the Taiwanese company has become one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers. It's well-known for industry-leading transistor density, product quality, and yield efficiency. As such, it's not entirely out of the question to see Huawei's recent strongarming as an indication that TSMC has something it wants.

Huawei, currently reporting record-shattering revenue figures contrasted by falling profits, is clearly in a research boom, and is preparing to roll out something big. This leaves the company uniquely positioned to benefit not only from securing top talent from around the world, but also from enticing those same employees to disclose the secrets that made things go so smoothly at their previous job. TSMC, in particular, would be able to supply Huawei with the processes and technical information that it would need to claw its way into the worldwide top ten.