This article is from WeChat public account: InfoQ (ID: infoqchina) , author: Tina
Would you consider working in Singapore in your life plan?
Good pay, no overtime, cheap house. There is no limit to the number of skilled immigrants to Singapore.
When the hunting hair makes such a tempting call, how can you tell the truth? Even if these are true, Chinese programmers, will you go?
This article is from a first-hand survey by InfoQ’s Singapore reporter. For Chinese programmers considering Singapore work in 2020, I hope this article can provide you with a reference.
Limited local talents, it makes sense to introduce Chinese programmers
In the past five years, Singapore ’s Internet industry has grown by leaps and bounds, and many companies will introduce Chinese programmers “without a cap” when facing a talent gap. This talent “digging” began so inadvertently and quietly. If you pay attention to it, you will find that the remarks of the “big cow” in some of the technical groups around you secretly become “Singapore”.
A friend of programmers in Beijing recently consulted the author: “I have three or four colleagues who went to Singapore and said there are several advantages: first, the environment is good; second, the work is relatively easy, less overtime, and treatment It ’s also good; the third is that the house is cheaper and the education of children is better than the key school districts in Beijing. Ask me if you think about it. How about doing IT in Singapore in your opinion? Not a black worker? ”
The author’s answer is: There are really many job opportunities in Singapore, but whether the “advantage” of changing jobs is really so good, opinions differ. And there is one more thing that programmers should consider: the development of Singapore’s overall IT industry, and the development of individuals in the general environment.
A public service website in Singapore published an article for civil servants in August 2019: “How to Build Good Software.” The title is not very attractive, but it is actually a very good software engineering masterpiece. And the saying goes, “10X engineers don’t write code fast, but because they make decisions that can save 10 times the workload” … People with years of IT work experience will resonate quite well.
The author of this article is a graduate of the MIT Computer Department and has previously done PM at Google. The author’s brother is also a graduate of the MIT Computer Department and is well known in the Scala circle. And their father’s C ++ code was well written, claiming to have read Haskell textbooks after retirement. The author of this article is called Li Hongyi. Their father is today’s Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In recent years, Li Xianlong was amazed by the rapid development of China’s Internet. After visiting companies such as Didi in 2018, he lamented on Twitter: “China leads the world in science and technology innovation and smart cities.” He said that cashless transactions and smart cities are particularly worth learning and learning from Singapore. From the concept of “smart city” in Singapore, the “smart class (Smart Nation) ” plan was introduced, and then Singapore launched an open data, cashless transaction ” Hawker centres, and more.
These measures have made IT and e-commerce the two fastest-growing industries in Singapore. At the same time, the demand for IT professionals in Singapore has also exploded. In the past year alone, Singapore’s demand for technology-related jobs has increased by 20%. In the statistics given by Michael Page, a recruitment agency in 2019, the e-commerce director has the highest salary, and the “head of corporate IT architecture” pays $ 235,000 per year (approximately 1.63 million yuan) For the first time on the top ten paid jobs list. You know, the top ten high-paying jobs in Singapore used to be finance. So, that’s how it happened.
The introduction of Chinese programmers makes sense when local talent is particularly limited.
Singapore internet unicorns are backed by Chinese capital
Singapore’s IT companies can be divided into three categories. One is American giants, such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc .; the other is financial companies, such as DBS Bank, OCBC Bank, etc. The traditional financial industry; the third category is unicorn companies developed in recent years, such as Grab, Lazada, Sea, etc. Because companies with more than a certain number of employees are eligible to introduce foreign employees, and the procedures for introducing foreign employees are particularly cumbersome, Singapore’s start-ups are rarely able to introduce foreign talent, including China.
Singapore executive search agency dad consulting (DadaConsultants) told InfoQ: “Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook still have small development teams .But they are not core positions, and IT support is more. “
Chen Gong who works at Sea (pseudonym) told InfoQ: “It is said that the financial company’s IT position is also very good. More companies are still Grab, Lazada, Sea, etc. “
These unicorn companies have deep roots in China.
The EU, Southeast Asia, Japan, and North America have different data compliance requirements than China. For data compliance, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies have built cloud services in Singapore many years ago in a multi-centric manner.
In 2016, Ali also brought cloud services to Singapore for the same reason. In April of the same year, Ali won a 51% stake in Lazada with a controlling stake of US $ 1 billion, which is by far the largest international acquisition by Ali. After a lapse of one year, Ali hit another $ 1 billion, directly increasing Lazada’s shares from 51% to 81%, and spending a lot of money in exchange for decision-making power. In September 2017, Alibaba management allowed “Taobao” technologyThe technicians reused Taobao’s technology engine and rebuilt Lazada’s system in 6 months.
Sea (Garena) was founded in 2009 and is the first Southeast Asian Internet company listed on the NYSE (Sea in October 2017 Listed on the NYSE). Tencent is the largest shareholder of Sea, holding 39.8% of the shares. Sea’s main business was gaming and payment. In 2015, Shopee was established. The Chinese name is “Shrimp Skin”, which specializes in e-commerce. Shopee’s Singapore R & D center plans to recruit 300 people, while there are already around 600 R & D centers in Shenzhen.
(2017, listed on the Sea NYSE)
At the end of 2017, Google and Temasek released a “2017 Southeast Asian Digital Economy Report.” The report predicts that Southeast Asia will become the third largest Internet region in the world. . What I didn’t expect is that this area is still the site where China’s Ali and Tencent are at war.
Grab is a takeaway travel software for Southeast Asia. In 2017, Grab received 2.5 billion US dollars in investment from Softbank Group and Didi Chuxing, which laid the capital for future development. In order to deal with the lack of talent, unlike Sea and Lazada, Grab opened the R & D center directly to Beijing.
What is the appeal of coming to Singapore?
Whether in the past dominated by American companies or now dominated by Internet companies, no one will persuade you to come to Singapore on the grounds of “pursuit of personal technological development.”
Why do you say that? Because Singapore does not have the strong technical atmosphere of Beijing. It’s hard work in Singapore. We interviewed several Chinese programmers.
A former Sea employee told InfoQ about his work like this: “My job is the back-end development of a low-level game platform framework. I mainly use Golang, and the work is not difficult. A group of 10 people, in For domestic tasks, 4 to 5 people are enough. It is good to work on time, and it is good to take care of the elderly. “Regarding whether the official language is English, which brings difficulties to the job, he said:” I usually use little English, including interviews, but Chinese The English is really bad. Many Chinese people I know are still working as low-level Coder. Indians climb up faster than Chinese. “
Shopee has said for a long time that there is “no upper limit” on the number of Chinese programmers. The company has a business unit and an infrastructure team in Singapore. And according to InfoQ, Shopee has recruited a lot of excellent operation and maintenance personnel from domestic companies such as Didi, Toutiao and Meituan to Singapore. An employee told InfoQ: “We use Cerf, which is quite heavy, but it uses a lot of water, a lot of pits. The treatment is good, but the total package is not comparable to the headlines.”
Comparing domestic and Singapore work, one of the benefits is that there is no “996” culture here. An engineer who switched from a local company to Singapore’s Ali complained: “Ali has overtime, and his salary is not much higher, but overtime, which seriously affects the quality of life!”
Another attraction is for domestic programmers who want to immigrate. DaDa Consulting told InfoQ: “The batch of technical talents on the Internet is the talent most wanted by the Singapore government. So compared to other occupations, it will be much easier to obtain status. Many programmers in Shopee come directly from China to work for about two years I got my green card. “
“However, immigration policies have been tightened in recent years. It is basically impossible without a local Singapore diploma, and Singapore’s immigration standards are not transparent. There are no points settlement policies that can be announced like Beijing and Shanghai.” We can still sum up experience in the market. “
According to the 2019 salary survey report by the recruitment agency Michael Page:
Before obtaining status, an average Chinese programmer who came to work in Singapore can earn between S $ 6,000 and S $ 8,000 per month. After paying the rent and the education costs of the children whose grade standard is “foreign status” In fact, there is not much left. And this kind of life takes at least two years.
The “Eastern Ocean” in the New Era
“Southern Ocean” is the name given to Southeast Asia during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. In the 19th century, due to the economic development of plantations in Southeast Asia, Western colonists recruited about 2 million workers in the form of “contract labor” on the southeast coast of China. In the 20th century, due to the development of railway, shipping, finance, manufacturing and other industries, China once again sent no less than 5 million skilled labor.
Decades ago, the protagonist of “Nanyang” has been updated batch by batch. Until now, it can be regarded as “Nanyang” in the Internet era.
Singapore, located in Southeast Asia, relies on a large number of imported foreign labor to continuously create a miracle of a small country that has taken off. Historically, the colonists required the Chinese to participate in regional construction, but on the other hand, they were worried about the economic pressure and social impact caused by the continuous expansion of the Chinese and had to adopt a policy of restricting China.
In the new era, locals are still complaining that “foreign workers” have robbed them of their jobs, so Singapore has to tighten its work standards. In 2019, Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower stated that the labor market will continue to tighten. Despite the needs of the times, there is no policy to show that these Internet people are treated better. At this point, Chen ’s (pseudonym) can also feel: “Seriously, the number of Chinese in the next year may be reduced. , Singapore will still limit the number of people in a certain group. 2019 may be the year that Chinese are most likely to enter Singapore. “
Singapore government website quotes data from Glassdoor’s 2019 report: As of November 2018, there were 5,806 technology-related jobs in Singapore. Compared with the data magnitude of one million Chinese IT talents per year, this amount is more worth thinking about: even if you join the job in Singapore, where can you jump next in your life plan?in?
This article is from WeChat public account: InfoQ (ID: infoqchina) , author: Tina