Good 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.
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.
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.
Having lived and worked there (and having a Singaporean father) this mentality does not surprise me at all. The national propaganda machine indoctrinates their citizens to believe it is the greatest most successful place in the world, and a curious kind of arrogance arises from it. This is not to say that other nations are not guilty of these practices, but I certainly notice it when I deal with Singaporeans
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.