Thoughts on (The Two Tiers of Singapore's Tech Companies)
Here is an article by Eli James on Singapore's Tech Companies and it has inspired me to think deep about the company I would want to work at.
Read the full article here if you haven't done so!
There are two tiers of companies in Singapore - good and bad. People in the bad tier have to fear outsourcing. People in the good tier don’t. Each tier finds it hard to believe the other tier exists. And so the complaints and recommendations for one tier are usually completely different from the other tier, almost as if people are living in two different worlds. This essay describes what these two tiers look like.
Bad Tier
This is where you hear stories about stagnating salaries, where people say that you are at risk of being outsourced, where engineers try to jump to management as quickly as possible, because being an engineer in the bad tier is about as great as being a garment worker in an Industrial Age shirt shop.
I’ll define bad tier as "could plausibly be outsourced to a cheaper country"
For instance, if software engineers at your company are treated like shit (that is, you can imagine that some day, plausibly, they lay off the team and recruit in India) then it’s likely that the company doesn’t view its programmers as particularly valuable. The business term for this situation is that the company sees the programmers as a "cost centre". It could be that the work isn’t very important to the business of the company. It could also be that management – rightly or wrongly – doesn’t see much value in maintaining in-house technology.
Good Tier
The reason these friends moved out from those companies and found better jobs was because we met up occasionally, and word got out through the computing grapevine that good companies existed out there.
This is something that I definitely agree where we should be open with our friends on job opportunities so that we can all grow together, instead of avoiding discussion on salary for fear of feeling embarrassed or even boastful. The goal is to better understand our value and figure out a way to get paid what we're worth if that is not already happening. See this
I’ll talk more about getting into the good tier later. But to me, that isn’t as important as convincing you that it exists.
There’s a real difference in optimism when you know good jobs await you around the corner, so long as you figure out how to get into them. It’s much better than thinking all the jobs out there are as bad as the one you’re currently in.
The article places heavy emphasis on the existence of good companies in Singapore, which is good in a sense whereby potential software engineers have knowledge and optimism to work towards better companies.
being in the good tier doesn’t guarantee high salaries or a good experience...they’re still in a completely different world from the bad tier programmers. They don’t ever have to worry about outsourcing, they know they’re considered high value.
Personal Opinions
With this good tier/bad tier divide, this is easy to answer: the good tier companies experience the lack of talent, while employees in the bad tier companies complain.
When you’re in the bad tier, companies care about what you can do for them. It’s a purely transactional relationship...(some) see these companies and conclude that what you need to do to get hired is "have skill in X", and CS schools don’t teach you "skill in X", so therefore CS curriculums are "outdated" and "bad". When you get to the good tier...it’s frankly ridiculous to hire people who can “just do X”. You want engineers who can adapt to new technologies, evaluate competing approaches
These are some of the words that struck deep within me - that I must remind myself not to fall into the 'bad tier' of Tech companies where tech is not valued and I will inevitably end up on Reddit complaining. This article serves as a good reference and reminder that I should always be searching and working towards companies that value my skills and contributions I can bring to the team and that I should never settle for less. Of course this is easier said than done and I definitely must put in my utmost effort in preparations for the interviews ahead.
As of writing this, I have about one and a half years before graduating from NUS and I will make full use of this time to scale and conquer Mount Everest (Good Companies).