How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
techinasia.com
How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#2Good update on the Singaporean scene.
One measure I wish that was included was salaries; are the averages getting better vis-a-vis NYC or the Bay Area? Money talks, as they say.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#3One of the most interesting things I noticed when living is Singapore last year was that a lot of engineers, especially computer programmers, fall under the IT category.
There was no sense "software engineer" or "systems administrator" or "solutions engineer", etc. not in the way how it is in the US.
They all just looked at me and said, "Oh, so you work in IT?"
Then we talked about banking.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#4My impression after doing a bunch of research (trying to get relocated there!): Singaporeans get into banking/lawyering instead. For some peculiar reason software development seems to be seen as a sort of janitorial task there. This doesn't seem super sustainable...
Google just announced that they are locating their SEA engineering hub in Singapore though - perhaps that will cause more of the young smart Singaporean people to aim for software careers.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#5Good update on the Singaporean scene. One measure I wish that was included was salaries; are the averages getting better vis-a-vis NYC or the Bay Area? Money talks, as they say.
This is important. I had several interviews with some Singaporean companies and salary was always the limiting factor. It was absolutely nowhere close to what similar positions would pay in major US cities, let alone New York or SF. Yet cost of living in Singapore is fairly high. While there are some tax advantages, you also have to weigh the risks of such a long-distance relocation and visa issues, as well as the significant cultural differences that you have to embrace to live functionally in Singapore. If anything, it ought to require a significant salary premium to attract talented engineers to bear some of these risks to relocate to Singapore.
One of my specific experiences was with Standard Chartered, since they are one of the largest commercial users of Haskell and have a large Haskell engineering presence in Singapore. Boy, that was disappointing. Basically they think they can use the fact that you get to work with Haskell (even though it is line of business bank software and involves a poorly built custom Haskell compiler) and that it's located in Singapore as means to reduce salary when they import a worker.
If it's that bad with a wealthy investment bank, it's hard to believe it's reached a healthy salary situation there across the engineering spectrum. But I am sure there are the occasional gems there which do offer fair wage for the risks being taken by employees.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#6I want to know about management, which is one of the singular reasons I will never work for an Asian company. I worked for a Japanese company and the amount of negative reinforcement and risk averse behavior was maddening. It destroys the environment that gives birth to new ideas.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#7It has always been quite easy to get software engineers from neighbouring low-wage countries for relatively low salaries. I guess that has affected the market, and that's why salaries of software engineers in Singapore are relatively low.
When I was living in Singapore, I moved to another job for this reason, as I found it hard to make a decent living as a software engineer.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#8Good update on the Singaporean scene. One measure I wish that was included was salaries; are the averages getting better vis-a-vis NYC or the Bay Area? Money talks, as they say.
This is important. I had several interviews with some Singaporean companies and salary was always the limiting factor. It was absolutely nowhere close to what similar positions would pay in major US cities, let alone New York or SF. Yet cost of living in Singapore is fairly high. While there are some tax advantages, you also have to weigh the risks of such a long-distance relocation and visa issues, as well as the si…
They don't use ghc?
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#9I have entertained the thought of working in Singapore. It appeals living somewhere with bette climate, cheap to go out eating, big city etc. I live in Oslo, Norway and have a certain fascination for Singapore, it coincidentally having almost the same GDP and population as Norway, but a completely different society.
I am not sure if anyone here could comment on some of concerns with working in Singapore.
1) What is work-life balance like? From Norway I am used to employees respecting that people have a life outside of work, needs of children and family, 5 week vacation etc.
2) What is management and company organizations like, are they very hierarchical or flat in a software company? Do they micromanage or give you a lot of trust to solve problems the best way you see fit?
3) How does health care work for expats. You get that yourself or does the company pay?
How easy is it to live there without a car? Like how well does public transport work, or how cheap/hard/easy is it to get transport services for moving, installing furniture etc.
In Norway it always cost a lot to pay somebody to help you with anything, so you are always forced to do a lot of stuff yourself. It is not without reason that IKEA originates from Scandinavia. I had the impression that in Singapore it might be much cheaper and easier to pay people for various services.
Re: How dire is Singapore’s engineering ecosystem?
#10Good update on the Singaporean scene. One measure I wish that was included was salaries; are the averages getting better vis-a-vis NYC or the Bay Area? Money talks, as they say.
Absolutely. Singapore is great, and I've always been interested in living there, but the pay for software developers is too low. The cost of living is about the same for (non-PR, non-Malaysian) foreigners as it is in NYC.
From my casual/infrequent research, salaries seem to be about half of what a developer in NYC would make. The income tax rate is lower, but that doesn't help much when you're still paying NYC prices for an apartment.