Singapore, where have all your talent gone?

That said, the place is freakishly expensive. I recently looked at Singapore as an option to move there and start up a.. startup. The entrepass will require $50,000 of paid up capital plus yadda yadda. That is, post company registration: http://www.mom.gov.sg/foreign-manpower/passes-visas/entrepas...

Following that, there are quite a few hoops to jump through but the worst part is that they require you to spend $100,000+ per year plus there are milestones regarding hiring singapore nationals within the first two years.

Couple that with rents that are in the range of Manhattan housing.

It's a bit of a complicated situation for a startup to be in considering that startups are already pretty complicated high risk businesses.

Then there's the question of pretty strong programming competition from India. If a startup were to choose between India and Singapore based on costs, market size, etc. then India would be the obvious choice. (ease of business and quality of life in Singapore however is orders of magnitude higher!)

I'm absolutely certain that Singapore has great talent available but starting up there needs to be made easier considering the high cost of living. As for home-grown entrepreneurs, maybe the Singapore government should look at a program like Startup Chile that may help foster some innovation locally.

I know British English is a little different when referring to entities comprised of many people, but in this case, the the "have" refers to "your talent" and not "Signapore" and, as such, should be "has" instead?

1. Singapore is business friendly. But only for big businesses; investment banks and such. Small and medium ones will have a tough time considering the cost of living and expenses here.

2. Local IT job market is tuned more towards jobs in banks and insurance companies rather than in true programming/RnD. And as obvious, most of it is for maintenance or support of legacy CRUD apps.

3. Most of the smart local fellows move to UK/US and find the environment there quite enriching, and stay. Singapore gets boring after a couple of years.

4. Govt has raised minimum salary limit for an employment pass, keeping in mind the locals' emotions against increasing number of immigrants. Not many are vocal about their unhappiness about inflow of immigrants, but few are very much.

5. Startups here seem to be hesitant to get smart folks from nearby places like Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines or India. Just couldn't understand why. My guess would be that an employment pass and dependent pass is quite costly for them, or that getting immigrant workers would be too much of paperwork and legal hassle for them.

6. Most of the shops here follow the true Asian work culture where number of years in a place trumps capability and competence. Singapore's culture is of very high Power distance index. The mandatory national service for all boys at their prime tunes and trains them that authority and orders must be followed unquestionably.

7. http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2011/12/15/wozniak-apple-co...

and

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson_pr.html

Here we have a glut of talent, costs are hell of a lot cheaper than Singapore, and best of all, the Googles and Facebooks of the world don't have much of a presence here, so that's less competition for you!

1. As with any other country which isn't your own, familiarize yourself with local law first. Littering is a punishable offense; watching pornography is not an offense but possession, creation and distribution is; there are limits to free speech but considering you are a tourist or evaluating the place for business feasibility, I don't think that comes into play.

2. It's expensive. And the currency conversion isn't going to help you(1 sgd is 0.817 usd and 0.63 euro). If you are going to stay for long, the best option is to crash on an acquaintance's couch. I don't have any clue about budget hotels since I was staying at a friend's place.

3. Rents are crazy expensive. The rents for a normal 3 bedroom apartment will cost about 3000 sgd and a decent condo will cost you 5000 sgd. Considering that average salary of a techie is about 5000 sgd, I will consider it very high. Most of the working people share houses - it is normal to have 3(or sometimes more) people sharing a 3 bedroom apartment.

4. It's hot and humid, and this is coming from someone who lives in India(though in Bangalore, which is on the cooler side).

5. Taxes are low to non-existent for people on EP(Employment Pass). I don't know the details but my friend hasn't been paying any taxes. As suggested elsewhere, Entrepass will be unreasonable for small companies, and you are better off registering a company with a PR(permanent resident) and getting EP yourself.

6. From what I heard from my friend(she was working on Singapore Exchange's migration from mainframe to unix), the work culture is kinda high ceremony viz. be on time(I was a bit surprised); leaving early will raise eyebrows; seniority is based on how much time you have spent at a place and the work relations are generally formal. I have never been to China and Japan, but the description sounds pretty close to how people describe it. Anyway, this is an anecdote and I haven't seen the whole picture.

7. People are generally friendly and understand and speak English.

8. Public transport is good and affordable. Get the transport smart card(they call it MRT card I believe; you can buy it at any tube station).

9. Cabs are on the expensive side. There is some sort of surcharge for morning and evening peak hours.

10. The city has decent nightlife and I found it safe and secure.

11. There won't be any touts bothering you.

That's it as far as general Singapore information is concerned. If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to mail me.

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: Singapore IT jobs have little coding skills needed and most of the time it is just project management (with most of the coding jobs outsourced) or support work (calling up vendors, standby when server down etc). There is no way for us to grow our talent once out of school. College is the last place where we can do technically challenging stuff, so those competent CS guys prefer to stay in school.

2. Our govt is infact the biggest employer of our IT graduates, doing the stuff of Point 1 above.

3. Despite all the woohoo that the startup scene in Singapore is trying to make itself into, it is really quite pathetic here. Cost is high, funding is little, market is not in this region too. Naivety is still the main driving force of startups in Singapore. Meaning those that want to startup in Singapore are probably really first-timers that do not know what they are getting into (especially fresh grads out of sch), and probably understood startup as anything that has the mixture of "tech+biz"

4. Companies do not value startup founders that failed, meaning if founders want to find re-employment in other companies, it is doubly hard for them cause employers do not understand what do startups do and how their experience in startups can contribute in anything. Startup founders that failed in Singapore is treated like a bankrupt equivalent.

So with job market that is generally not technically challenge, and startups that are technically challenge but not making it at all, it is simple to see why "talent" is not found in Singapore

Really good local talent will probably drift towards the latter and startup's just can't compete with those sort of salaries. I imagine it's the same issue with New York.

As with all good jobs, startup positions are never really advertised openly. And if they are, they're not there for long.