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Comment by quanto | Hacker News Reader

Summary:

1. Singapore's manufacturing relies on automation.

The GDP share of manufacturing has gone up in recent years, reversing the earlier decline; on the other hand, employment in manufacturing actually dropped as a fraction of total employment in the nation.

2. Singapore offers favorable conditions for automated manufacturing:

A. tech talent pool

B. favorable government support (talent growth subsidy, political stability, IP protection)

C. network effect of other high quality firms in the vicinity.

    > It is the world’s fourth-largest exporter of high-tech goods, according to the World Bank. The top three are China, Germany and South Korea. The U.S. is fifth.

This surprised me: Singapore beats the US and Japan in this metric.

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Looking into this it looks like an oddity of trade statistics / bad reporting by the WSJ.

Singapore is both importing and exporting large amounts of high tech goods.

For example it imported 8.7bln USD of gas turbines and exported 9.2bln worth (https://oec.world/en/profile/country/sgp).

This makes sense when you think of Singapores position as a major trade hub.

It would be more interesting to see the domestic value add of the manufacturing industry.

For those wondering what kind of manufacturing, article specifically points to GlobalFoundries Fab 7, GE jet engine 3d printing, Siltronic and UMC semi manufacturing, and REC solar panels. BioNTech wants to produce "several hundred million" vaccines with a staff size of 80. Paper bag makers, HP print heads, Hyundai electric cars.

As a Singaporean I had no idea all this was going on. pretty cool. as a more cynical news reader this article is so glowy to the point of propaganda.

I imagine very few people have a problem with employment in manufacturing dropping as a side effect of this. Keep right on.

Is the tech talent pool really that good?

I was there a decade ago and many foreign run startups were adamant about not hiring Singaporeans for creative or software engineering positions. Something something lack of initiative and free/critical thinking skills. The admin and finance side were mostly Singaporeans though.

To be fair, I am an ex-Singaporean and no longer keep up with matters concerning the island. Left because of the stifling (physical/cultural/political) environment. I visit every few years and find little has changed in those regards.

Things have changed dramatically and continues to in the wake of China-US tensions (many Chinese companies setting up shop in SG to avoid a risk of getting frozen out from western market access), HK imploding, Shanghai lockdown troubles and political instability in Malaysia

On fin tech, there’s Silicon Valley style critical mass now.

When I visited in 2013, the NTU was churning out lots of highly skilled and highly motivated engineers every year. If they kept up the pace, they should have a bigger talent pool than Germany by now... In part, that's also because Germany had more stipends for gender studies than for mathematics in recent years, while STEM knowledge is still strongly supported and highly prestigious in South East Asian cultures.

I had the precisely the same experience as a developer there several years ago. Wasnt just the critical/free thinking skills though, developer jobs were disrespected and poorly paid and ambitious people would aim for better paid middle management, civil service, finance or even real estate jobs. Really good developers tended to emigrate to the US.

The government had a bad case of silicon valley envy though and would throw money at things local tech CEOs told them would be a good idea.

No longer. At least in my space (Data Science), I've been able to hire good Singaporean talent from NUS/NTU

And this is all in a (big) city sized country.

It doesn't mention it but Singapore also benefits from a lot of cheap labor from neighboring countries. Sure the fab is high tech, but the construction guys building the warehouse only cost a few dollars an hour.

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