"After reading all your comments, I really do feel compelled to chip in my 2 cents worth.
My stand is that Singapore doesn't really pay that well for its engineers and scientists (techies). While I agree that while techies cannot expect hefty bonuses like the bankers (as they are usually not directly involved with sales), too low pay will cause your tech people to worry and be distracted and not focus on the job. Thus the quality of work is likely to deteriorate.
I have a close friend who just completed a PhD in the defence engineering industry. He's starting salary in Singapore is only 5k after slogging so hard, and that is one of the highest around. I have heard horror stories of other companies paying even lower than that. With this kind of mindset from employers, how can Singapore ever encourage its people (who are super practical and kiasu) to ever go into science and engineering?
Compare this to overseas engineering companies in Israel, where the starting pay for an undergrad (yes u-grad) is $6k SGD. Not absolutely fantastic, but good enough. I have also seen adverts for engineering teachers in Dubai with a 200k+ salary tax FREE.
So my advise would be the same as with many others:
Do engineering and get out of Sg. Stay in Sg, get out of engineering."
"I have been in Software Engineering for 10+ years and I can tell you that it is a lot of hard work , late nights and below average pay when compared to the people in the financial section. But we had our good days (remember the dotcom bubble), when everybody wants to be in Software (even actresses) and salary was rocketing.
Last few years, globalization has made Software Engineering not so attractive because you have to compete with Engineers from cheaper Asian countries and thus limit your salary. If Singapore engineer pay go up, it has to be justified with higher productivity (which may mean longer working hours) and better innovation (which is easier said than done).
The statements about demand supply is correct, as it more or less sums up the situation I described above. The only silver lining I see is that Singapore has highly motivated and skilled engineers compared to the cheaper Asian countries and many MNCs are aware of that, so they still depend a lot on us to provide their IT solutions.
One question, will the finance and banking industry one day face globalization like IT ? I remember reading that it was already happening with Accounting jobs going to India , but anybody can comment on this?"
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