Offered in the spirit of "don't believe everything you hear": I went into university and graduated during the post-bust winter. The few adults I knew, plus the Wall Street Journal, were unanimous in their opinion that engineering as a field was done in the United States and that all future hiring of software developers would happen in Asia.
I got on a plane to Japan immediately after graduation. It's been a fun and fulfilling 15 years, but I am reliably informed that there have, in fact, been engineers hired in the United States since then.
I remember a Partner from the large global consulting firm that I worked for telling me a similar story: “There is no point getting in to engineering as it will all be offshored to Asia; much better to become a project mgr that ‘glues’ delivery together”. Since that point I always regretted not doubling down on engineering and have spent the rest of my career trying to become more technical.
Yep I remember them scare mongering with that line. Which really gutted the already short supply of developers available. I also remember when the outsourcing wave came crashing down on their dreams of cheap development labor and they had to come back hat in hand to US developers who understand US business processes to bail them out. BOA being a big one that's project busted spectacularly. Most of us that witnessed this period held their feet to the fire and jacked up our rates, due to the limited supply of developers.
People are still telling me this just last year. Met a couple of software developers that I believe worked at one of the more traditional large corps. Over the next half an hour or so they kept telling me about how software is a dead end career and all the jobs are going to go off shore soon. They seemed super depressed about their future prospects. No amount of me talking about career (and compensation) prospects of software developers would sway them. And this was in the Bay Area.
Maybe if they’re not doing their jobs properly, but even if their company is sending pretty much all jobs off-shore they still need someone to verify the quality of the contributions from those people, and that’s where your job will be.
Besides, my big company is starting to bring more and more jobs on-shore again after finding out that doing it all off-shore doesn’t actually work.
I work for a consulting company and any time we work alongside offshore developers (hired by the client to do parts of the work) its a nightmare. Maybe its just the clients being too price-sensitive and not knowing how to oversee offshore devs, but every time I've been in this situation, the offshore developers are slow to deliver, their quality of work is far below the standards of the team, and we end up spending time to fix their work.
I think the problem is they have zero stake in developing a great system. If anything, a barely working kludge that they can maintain for the next few years is best.
Perhaps, but you're still lopping your SV salary in half, and if you want a central 1 BR that's not government housing, you're paying close to SF housing prices.
Well, those visas that allow you to work in SV don't grow on trees. (And you'd have to put up with California and the US.)
If you do have an American passport, you get a double-whammy in opportunity costs: you can already work in SV, and you still have to pay American taxes even when you are not working there.
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The government housing in Singapore can be quite nice. But yes, you are going to live in a high rise tower, most likely. Not a country house.
Some people prefer urban living and short commutes.
One effect that I only appreciate after living in Singapore for a while and then visiting elsewhere: the peace of mind not having to look after all you stuff when you are out and about. In Berlin or London or New York, I need to constantly worry that someone would nick my laptop, if I leave it on the table in a cafe when going to the loo.
About the taxes thing -- you can subtract foreign taxes that you pay from your American tax bill, and you also get an exemption on your first $100,000 of earnings, so it really only affects you if you're living in a low-tax-rate country AND making a six-figure salary in USD.
(I'm an American living abroad so I deal with this every year.)
Rents are cheap in Singapore. Way cheaper than they are in London. When I worked in Singapore few years back I paid at the time an equivalent of 1 thousand pounds for a brand new condo in a nice gated community with swimming pools and stuff. It was only 3 MRT stops from downtown.
In London to get something of comparable quality I would have to pay at least 3000 pounds if not more.
Around 2012, I found London relatively comparable to Singapore in terms of rents. Since then, rents seem to have come down by about a quarter. (I live in an HDB close to the CBD.)
Singapore has those 'gated communities', but it's actually the last place on earth to need them. ;)
Interesting. How has your experience been in Japan? I hear that the work culture in Japan is bad that you have to grind for long hours at work. And then the culture is so different and the accommodations so small and you can't drive around in a big fat suv. For the culture part, it is okay as long as you like to experience new things, I guess.
Didn't mean any offence by this! I was merely indicating my appreciation for the humor of the original poster with his great command of the language: "have been reliably informed since..".
I got on a plane to Japan immediately after graduation. It's been a fun and fulfilling 15 years, but I am reliably informed that there have, in fact, been engineers hired in the United States since then.