Asia courts Japanese engineers
IHT
HSINCHU, Taiwan: One of the hottest exports from Japan these days is not video games or eco-friendly cars. It is engineers.
As the once-vaunted Japanese electronics industry has downsized to survive global competition, it has inadvertently set off a brain drain. Thousands of Japanese engineers and other industry professionals have gone to Taiwan, South Korea and China to seek work at aggressive, fast-growing companies on the prowl for access to Japanese technological skills.
One such explorer is Heiji Kobayashi, a 41-year-old semiconductor engineer, who said his career had hit a dead end a few years ago when his employer, Mitsubishi Electric, spun off its memory chip business. With job prospects appearing bleak in Japan, he turned to Taiwan's booming chip industry, where he became a popular commodity....more...
