I'm baffled at some of the answers.
Paying somebody 600k$ does not make that person a good engineer.
You could pick an undergrad, offer them 600k$, and they could take the job, but that won't make them top talent.
No company out there paying their engineers 600k$ is going to give an engineer 600k$ if they are not worth each $ of those 600k$.
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It's not about finding engineers that are willing to have a 600k$ salary (who wouldn't if someone offers it to you?), but about attracting the best of the best engineers of a particular field, many of which already do have that salary. Why should they move to Germany?
But that's exactly what is happening. People are paid these insane salaries because they're either born American or got a green card. Do you think the 20 something hired at $200k+ in the Silicon Valley are worth 5 times the seniors devs at $40k in Thailand, Spain, Poland? The only difference between a 5 digits salary engineer and a 6 digits salary engineer is a green card.
Not really. Lots of people from everywhere in the World apply to Google for US (and German) positions. Most of them don't get the job. Google has offices everywhere in the world. If they want to hire you, they just hire you in your local country, and after 1 year you can transfer to the US without a green card.
> Do you think the 20 something hired at $200k+ in the Silicon Valley are worth 5 times the seniors devs at $40k in Thailand, Spain, Poland?
A 20 something hired by Google in Germany also makes 200k$. (160k EUR). For Google, these 20 something programming-competition winners and phds are worth more than most senior devs doing management with no programming, or cruft apps, etc.
Not all of these 20 something will end up making 600k at google though. But in Google they have the chance to develop into that.
Also: wherever they build their new fab, if it is outside of Taiwan, they probably have attract the engineers to move there, which place would be better suited at the moment?
Yes, to quickly ramp up, you would have to pay more than teh average market salary, but as you pointed out, engineering positions are not as highly paid in Germany as in the silicon valley. There is nothing preventing you from paying good salaries though.
Europe has a great supply of electronic engineers and physicists. The only challenge would be that currently a lot of semiconductor investments happen in Europe, but these investments don't happen because Europe is such a bad place to invest in. Including a great supply of engineers.