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Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

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Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#41

Post by MugunthKumar »

wyclif wrote: post #30
andycroll wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen it. But it's the same as anywhere. Good people are hard to hire. Singapore also has a relatively favourable short-term working visa with the US (H1B1?), which makes moving to the US more feasible for SG nationals.

Good people are not hard to hire. If you don't believe me, take it from David "Pardo" Keppel: There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money. If you're having trouble hiring, it's because you're not paying enough. It turns out that talented people are worth paying a lot for.

True that.

You can't easily see technical co-founders starting companies. As such, most Singaporean startups are under the impression that building software can be outsourced to cheaper countries like India/Philippines.

They don't seem to understand the difference between, "IT" and "Software Engineering". The good engineers fight the system and eventually migrate to greener pastures like SV.

I know some iOS developers who were offered salaries in the range of $3500 to $4000 a month (matching a IT salary and not that of an Engineer's), almost three times as low as SV, despite being a expensive city to live in.

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#42

Post by dematio »

noto wrote: post #38

Personally, me and my friends have started a startup in Singapore from 2006 and shut it down after 5 years of trying to make it work. We graduated from Computer Science of NUS in 2006 and startup is unheard of during that time. Below is my opinion of "startups vs talent" in Singapore. 1. There are very good CS guys around in Singapore, but most of them stayed back at school to do PHD. The reason is very simple: Singa…

Agree to number 4. If you are "out of touch" from corporate world for a few years, it's difficult to get back to corporate world with a decent pay. You have to take a big pay cut and probably you have start it from the beginning.

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#44

Post by notthetup »

pault wrote: post #31
czcar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Ash, been meaning to write a blog post as someone who moved their startup from NZ to Singapore - it's not quite as dire as you supposed. Firstly, I would never recommend anyone to get the Entrepass - best thing to do is just to register a business and apply for an EP pass as an employee of said company. Admittedly in this scenario you would need a local director - but services for this shouldn't run over $1000/an…

Is it easy enough to get around and socialize in english?

Absolutely. That's what everyone speaks here. Well at least 99.9% of the people you're likely to encounter. :)

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#45

Post by jbm »

muhfuhkuh wrote: post #29
jbm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brain drain to Montreal? I am a bit skeptical that anyone would want to pay Quebec-level taxes, particularly with the recent political issues at play. Could you offer some evidence for this? I'd love to believe it is true (as I am originally from there), but it just rings hollow.

Here[1] is a good summary of why Montreal has one of the highest concentrations of tech jobs in N. America. And, while Quebec citizens might have to bear a larger tax burden than other provinces, there are heaps of tax incentives for businesses (especially technology) to startup or relocate there. There are massive SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development) tax credits and other incentives that can halv…

Thanks! I'll take a gander.

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#46

Post by raghava »

noto wrote: post #38

Personally, me and my friends have started a startup in Singapore from 2006 and shut it down after 5 years of trying to make it work. We graduated from Computer Science of NUS in 2006 and startup is unheard of during that time. Below is my opinion of "startups vs talent" in Singapore. 1. There are very good CS guys around in Singapore, but most of them stayed back at school to do PHD. The reason is very simple: Singa…

>> failing

A line that I usually quote; "In case of a failure in the West, it's your ideas that failed; in the East, it's you who failed."

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#47

Post by lostlogin »

cdf wrote: post #21
lostlogin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took it as a vaguely racist comment on how a non English speaker might say it. I must be overly sensative.

Singaporeans are supposed to be near native English speakers because English is supposed to be our first language... but obviously not near enough.

In my experience the English spoken in Singapore is as good as that spoken anywhere, although my time in Singapore wasn't that long. My earlier comment has obviously taken somewhat differently to how I meant it.

Re: Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

#48

Post by mmishra »

mmishra wrote: post #6

How does it effect me ? Currently, why even to bother about anything else other than work in hand !! - http://syncfin.com

I apologize if I have hurt anyone's sentiments here. I didn't intend to hurt anybody here. My comment was probably an impulsive, but unwanted, reaction. It being the startup group forum, I was under the impression that only things related to ideas and their execution will be discussed. But I was probably wrong. I am seeing that topics are varying a lot here. There are topics from generating power from urine to how to predict the trend of twitter.

In any case, I consider it as my mistake to put this comment which has been considered by some as offensive. I regret the same.

I wish there was some way to delete it. I would have deleted it if it was possible.

Thanks

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