Comments on: Malaysian IT jobs – my interview with a recruitment agent

By: boon

boon — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:00:53 +0000

geekchic, mun, d_luaz, charles – thanks for your comments.

I’d like to first say that if an IT company is earning RM1 mil a year shouldn’t be hiring 10 programmers.

Companies like 37signals started out with 3+1 (their developer was initially outsourced, but ended up becoming a partner. That developer was the creator of the popular Ruby on Rails platform).

At the same time, the company strives on creating less features, not more. Hence, they don’t need to chase the numbers. They work 4 hours a week, and they sell good products, and their revenue more than doubles every year.

IT companies in Malaysia are hardly tackling the global market. Not that they’re not, but we tend to start from home, do it the cowboy way, then grope our way forwards.

It’s sad that software engineers have to bear the grunt of the work. It doesn’t encourage repeated successes, and it doesn’t reward the hand that feeds.

My question is whether we’re learning from our lessons. Because if we’re not, there’s no point in repeating the cycle.

-Boon

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:24:23 +0000

We have to accept the fact that business rewards according to company earnings and contributions. How can an IT company that is not able to generate more than RM 1 million revenue a year, feed 10 programmers with 8-10K a month ? Don’t forget that if the basic is 8K , it needs to be multiplied by 13 months + 13 % for EPF and SOCSO. A person making 8K is already costing company RM 120K per year. This is not inclusive of premise rental, electricity(electricity for commercial just hike by another 30%), phone bills, equipment depreciation, software depreciation, amortization etc. Some of the public listed IT companies can’t even generate revenue of RM 5 million a year.
I would therefore say, to increase everyone’s pay, we need to be extremely competitive and innovative in coming out with solutions and products. Innovation pays. Gone were the days of “chinaman company” where the boss sits on the director chair collecting hefty earnings. Most of the IT companies that makes more than RM 5 million today are publicly listed or multi-national companies. These companies are run by professional managers who rarely squeezes employee’s pay.(unless you are extremely unlucky to get a “chinaman manager”,:P) If the company runs well with good solutions, everybody will enjoy pay hike and rewarding pay.
Therefore, I would encourage every techie to be marketing-minded as well, always think about how marketable your solution is. A good solution is always a good one, which is hard to be superseded. If one just do programming for a living, and never think about excelling in their job, it is really hard to make it to anywhere.

By: d_luaz

d_luaz — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:07:20 +0000

I think the salary range show here is quite realistic (skip the exception, anything can happen).

Engineer or Programmer is indeed at the bottom of the food chain for most companies, with a few few exception. Company like HP, IBM, Accenture is pretty much business & marketing centric, so you are just a slave there as a techie.

Usually people move up in their career to become System Analyst, Consultant, Project Manager, Manager, etc. Unless you really like being a techie, then you really have to plan carefully. I can see 2 way out, you either work in a company which appreciate techie (like Google, maybe Microft id Redmond, some other rare gems in Malaysia) or you start your own venture. Of course starting a business is not really easy for techie also.

IT is kinda a safe job, decent starting pay up to 5-6 years, but can’t really go far (especially in Malaysia). So you should move on by then or improvise :) But tech support is really a low-end/dead-end job.

By: Mun

Mun — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:56:33 +0000

I have seen 2-year experience IT guy getting RM5K a month. So, it is possible make a decent living in software development, provided you join the right company with the right skill set.

By: geekchic

geekchic — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:51:34 +0000

I LOATHE the work culture in M’sia. IT or Engineering. There’s hardly any planning, any risk assessment. It’s just jump headon and do. If something goes wrong, then you find a fix. Otherwise, sweep it under the carpet.

And, salary wise? IT’S PATHETIC! I would think I’m a very different thinker, I’m a very creative engineer but I didn’t even come close to 5k in salary. granted i didn’t have enough of working experience but the amount of money my company made from our work is worth far more than the miserly 5k.

If the industry refuses to reward or at least match the salary and benefits fitting for the amount of work done, sooner or later, you’ll realize all your IT experts would soon go across the causeway and beyond.