Bankers have long been the ones that took home Asia’s biggest bonuses. Now, an unlikely group is catching up: chip engineers. But unlike bankers, whose rewards tend to rise and fall with market cycles, the surge in chip sector pay reflects a structural shift in how the world is valuing technical talent.

A pay revolution has unfolded in the chip sector this year. South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix scrapped the cap on its profit-sharing plan, and has also paid bonuses worth a reported 1,500 per cent of monthly base salary, or about three-quarters of a year’s pay in a single payment. Bonuses that are close to the base salaries are common in the finance industry, but at South Korean conglomerates they are rare as rigid pay structures and seniority-based rewards have long prevailed. Even so, some local employees were reported to view the payout as insufficient, suggesting that record bonuses have yet to satisfy staff expectations fully.

The dissatisfaction underscores how fierce competition for engineers has become and how pay alone may not solve the shortage. That tension is growing amid record investment by global chipmakers to expand production capacity. They are planning expansive new facilities, with total investment expected to reach nearly $1tn between 2023 and 2030, according to McKinsey. Even before this wave of expansion, job postings for chip-related technical roles had been surging with the talent gap for engineers in the Asia-Pacific region, excluding China, expected to exceed 200,000.