Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xiaoma | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem I see in Singapore is that regulations are directed at making startups hire locals. Aside from strict quotas, there are also rules about not being able to underpay or overpay foreign talent. This means paying 5k/month for a programmer can often be deemed "overpaying" and the application gets rejected. This is a problem because you can't make a top-tier tech hub on Singporeans alone.

Even Silicon Valley wouldn't be Silicon Valley if it only employed Americans as early employees either. Just look at all the Indians who were early Google employees, Jan Koum of Whatsapp, the Canadian team behind Flickr and Slack.

The US immigration system is deeply flawed and hurts the tech ecosystem. Singapore has a golden opportunity to compete on this axis, but it isn't.

https://www.techinasia.com/talk/dark-side-tech-development-s...

http://sbr.com.sg/hr-education/news/singapores-new-hiring-ru...

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-Singapore-based-startup-hir...

My startup was actually incubated by the writer of that first article you linked. I agree with his points.

I fear the truth is that it's simply hard to hire good talent from overseas when you have limited funds anyway. This goes back to the larger issues of limited investor risk appetite and difficult market conditions/access.

Personally I've seen fellow startups try to hire foreign developers, and successfully get approvals from the government (yup it's troublesome), and then the developers decide not to come to Singapore after all, or come but don't perform to par. You can't mitigates risks like these without significant cash in the bank (which only the top-funded startups have).

My chosen alternative was to hire remotely and not muck around with approval from government, which also meant benefiting from lower market salaries in cheaper countries. It's taken a lot of filtering of employees, but things are going fine so far. This approach won't work for everybody, of course.

All that said, I do think the core issue holding Singapore startups back is the market size/access thing. It leads to most of the other issues, including startups' inability to pay for skilled developers. Looser government regulations on employment by startups would help somewhat, but it might not change the outcome significantly.

> it's simply hard to hire good talent from overseas when you have limited funds anyway

Interesting you mention that. I applied for a JavaScript job in Singapore and expressly mentioned that I don't want a Google-esque salary, just something I can live by in Singapore. I would even pay for my own relocation expenses, I said.

They flat-out told me "Sorry, locals first."

Sorry to hear that. I guess that company thought it could get a local developer of sufficient calibre. It's more administratively troublesome to hire a foreigner, so some companies ask for citizens/permanent residents only. Did the job ad specify that?

You'll probably have better luck applying to larger, foreign tech firms based here, if you still want to come. They'll have a process in place for hiring foreigners.

There really wasn't an ad for the job. They mentioned on their website that they always welcome applications from motivated programmers. But as I said the subsequent email exchange with them went nowhere. In the end I went to work for a startup in a somewhat less glittery Southeast Asian city (KL).

This all happened a couple of years ago. In the meantime I'm back in Europe. These days I see a lot of job ads originated from SG so maybe I will try again, and this time with more luck :)

I didn't want to apply to a large multinational because I was looking for a vibrant and small startup environment.

One issue that seems to resonate with people in Singapore is that while in the rest of the tech world :

Developer == Essential (e.g. : CoFounder)

in Singapore :

Developer == programmer == glorified typist == someone whose job can be outsourced.

This gets in the way of attracting people to programming in the first place.

The environment is also disappointingly oriented towards local graduates aspiring to become Trainee Managers at Multi National Companies (MNCs). It's not a money thing IMHO - more of the status associated with working at a recognisable brand-name firm.

Clearly, there are exceptional people around, but there's an additional (surprising) hurdle for local tech talent here.

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