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Why I love electronics industry (2): Which industry has the most content knowledge?

Colley Hwang, DIGITIMES Asia, Taipei 0

Credit: DIGITIMES

People say that the electronics, medical and financial sectors have the highest amounts of content knowledge, but are the practitioners in these sectors satisfied with their working environment? I'm afraid the answer is negative!

After all, it's much easier to make fun of a social phenomenon than to propose a solution. There are so many nonsense comments, and anyone could be a commentator on TV. Friends of mine would often tell me they all admire the electronics industry, so the dissatisfaction of the people in the electronics industry may not be an innate problem of the industry itself. It may rather derive from Taiwanese people's failure to better organize their lives or from common practices in the world of business that block us from a quality of life.

Taiwanese people are often picky when deling with local businesses, and the top priority in any business deal is given to cutting down prices. Any employee who fails to bargain down prices for his or her company would be deemed incapable. They seldom give priority to product/service specs and quality. Taiwanese would say the companies that they would least want to deal with are Taiwanese ones. So the source of the problem may not necessarily be the boss, but rather your client or supplier.

People's dissatisfaction with their working environment stems from the overall environment, attitude, rather not the industry sector they are in. It may not improve by switching to another industry sector. An electrical engineer with a PhD may not be happier by quitting the electronics industry and starting a restaurant business of his own. The issue is not just about the feeding the customers at the restaurant; the big problems may be further upstream in the supply chain.

Who do you buy chickens from? Every time when my neighbors bring me vegetables they grow themselves, they would say the vegetables are safe to eat because they are meant for their own consumption. They sound as if it's ok to use excessive chemicals if the vegetables are meant to be sold to others. Actually there are so many different issues in the agricultural and fishery sectors that bemuse us. But in the electronics industry, different sectors basically have similar kinds of problems, so it would be easier to make predictions.

In Taiwan, there are 800 listed electronic companies, and the total revenue in 2022 is expected to challenge US$1 trillion. If you lok at it in a negative way, underlying these companies' success are toils and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of workers. On a more positive note, the electronics industry is the foundation of Taiwan. We are in an industry that contributes highly to society, and everyone of us should be proud to be a part of it.

If you really feel that this industry is not good, maybe you can take a step back and tell yourself that other industries may not necessarily be better: The key problem may not be the industry itself, but yourself.

Colley Hwang, president of DIGITIMES Asia, is a tech industry analyst with more than three decades of experience under his belt. He has written several books about the trends and developments of the tech industry, including Asian Edge: On the Frontline of the ICT World published in 2019, and Disconnected ICT Supply Chain: New Power Plays Unfolding published in 2020.