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    Population woes

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    • L Offline
      limlim
      last edited by

      zarahsmom:

      Perhaps the manufacturing (precision instrument) industry is a bit of an exception rather than the norm. I am pretty sure that in the IT industry particularly IT in banking/finance...as I am part of the decision making panel in terms of salary benchmarking.. its more expensive to hire foreigners..(again due to levy... if you are going to compare apples to apples==let us say am comparing a local graduate with exactly the same qualification as a foreign graduate.. the foreign graduate will still cost us more)..
      why can't your company pay the local salary= (FT's pay + levy)?

      btw, EP got levy meh? since when?

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      • P Offline
        pirate
        last edited by

        lim72:
        That is exactly what I'm trying to point out. The employer who was interviewed by bbc didn't mention quality but emphasized on the 'cheapness'of these foreign graduates. He assumed these graduates were good based on the assumption that they were from one of the 'top' universities. So are you prepared to tell your kids that based on same qualification, if you are not cheap enough, you can't compete with these foreigners. I really hope that I don't have to tell my ds this cruel truth.

        Do I detect some hubris here? Are employers supposed to assume that someone is good merely because he is from a local university? I know that engineers from the top universities in China can build a nuclear power plant and send a manned rocket into space. I am not so sure that our engineers can.

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        • P Offline
          pirate
          last edited by

          limlim:
          btw, EP got levy meh? since when?

          EP is now $4,000 a month. Our local graduates still cannot compete? I think they need a wake-up call.

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          • W Offline
            WeiHan
            last edited by

            pirate:
            lim72:

            That is exactly what I'm trying to point out. The employer who was interviewed by bbc didn't mention quality but emphasized on the 'cheapness'of these foreign graduates. He assumed these graduates were good based on the assumption that they were from one of the 'top' universities. So are you prepared to tell your kids that based on same qualification, if you are not cheap enough, you can't compete with these foreigners. I really hope that I don't have to tell my ds this cruel truth.


            Do I detect some hubris here? Are employers supposed to assume that someone is good merely because he is from a local university? I know that engineers from the top universities in China can build a nuclear power plant and send a manned rocket into space. I am not so sure that our engineers can.

            These kind of projects that you gave as examples require many engineers to work on - a few hundreds to a few thousands working as a team. Singapore isn't ready to pour in this size of resource for these kind of projects.

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            • Coolkidsrock2C Offline
              Coolkidsrock2
              last edited by

              Perhaps it is more prevalent in certain industries. I know of 2 then-fresh graduates who received multiple offers last year.

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              • P Offline
                pirate
                last edited by

                WeiHan:
                pirate:

                [quote=\"lim72\"]That is exactly what I'm trying to point out. The employer who was interviewed by bbc didn't mention quality but emphasized on the 'cheapness'of these foreign graduates. He assumed these graduates were good based on the assumption that they were from one of the 'top' universities. So are you prepared to tell your kids that based on same qualification, if you are not cheap enough, you can't compete with these foreigners. I really hope that I don't have to tell my ds this cruel truth.


                Do I detect some hubris here? Are employers supposed to assume that someone is good merely because he is from a local university? I know that engineers from the top universities in China can build a nuclear power plant and send a manned rocket into space. I am not so sure that our engineers can.

                These kind of projects that you gave as examples require many engineers to work on - a few hundreds to a few thousands working as a team. Singapore isn't ready to pour in this size of resource for these kind of projects.[/quote]Perhaps. But that does not detract from the point that they have knowhow that our local universities may not have. I will therefore be slow to make the assumption that they cannot be good merely because they are from universities in China, which is implicit in the bolded part. There is no reason to assume that the top universities in a country with the capability to send up manned rockets is not at least comparable to our local ones. That is the hubris I was referring to. Universities like Beijing and Qinghua are considered world class. Even graduates from universities there that are not as well-known here such as Xiamen and Jiaotong are able to stand their own against our local graduates at any time.

                I may sound harsh, but I am particularly unhappy with this kind of hubris circulating amongst our local graduates. A variant of which I have encountered is that an upper second from our local U is comparable to a first from universities in the UK. Go and ask any employer anywhere in the world whether an upper second from our local universities is comparable to a first from the likes of Oxford, Cambridge, London or Bristol and they will laugh.

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                • L Offline
                  limlim
                  last edited by

                  pirate:
                  limlim:

                  btw, EP got levy meh? since when?


                  EP is now $4,000 a month. Our local graduates still cannot compete? I think they need a wake-up call.

                  They might employ an S Pass \"graduate\".. S Pass levy not that much.

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                  • L Offline
                    limlim
                    last edited by

                    pirate:


                    Perhaps. But that does not detract from the point that they have knowhow that our local universities may not have.
                    There is no doubt that there are real talents out there.

                    But either these pple are probably working in top agencies in other countries or their own country.. and not come to SG to work in some MNCs or SMEs.

                    The talents likely end up at NASA or Google or some top notch companies and not come here. and they do not appear in big numbers.

                    Those who came, are probably not the best in their own country.

                    So, having top talents in a country doesn't that most of those FT that came from that country are talents too.

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                    • P Offline
                      pirate
                      last edited by

                      limlim:
                      pirate:

                      [quote=\"limlim\"]btw, EP got levy meh? since when?


                      EP is now $4,000 a month. Our local graduates still cannot compete? I think they need a wake-up call.

                      They might employ an S Pass \"graduate\".. S Pass levy not that much.[/quote]The number of S Pass holders a company can employ is capped at a sub-total of 20% of its total workforce.

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                      • W Offline
                        WeiHan
                        last edited by

                        If slow population growth results in low economic growth and low economic growth, in turn results in low tax income and thus budget deficit, like some of you suggested. then isn’t it true that sooner or later, we will be facing the problem similar as Greece? This is even worse, we are saying that we rely on a scarce resource that we have, and that is land, to power growth. is not logical. And when we have finally walk down this path of huge budget deficit, we will still be stucked with the problem of congested population that we created earlier on.


                        Moreover, lower tax income doesn’t necessarily equate budget deficit.On an individual level, we see very high income individuals who splurge themselves to blankruptcy. On the other hand, we have average income individuals who don’t make that much but still manage to save enough for rainy days.

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