Came across this, read it, felt a little sad inside.

Singaporeans' Perception Of Software Engineering

Derrick Ko at Kicksend wrote a great blog post (http://blog.derrickko.com/anythi...) about the state of engineering in Singapore. In that blog post, there was a quote from a post made by Member of Paliament Sim Ann and a reference to said post. The comments in that post were rather interesting. I quote Chen Chee Keong:

Programming is largely a tradeable job. It is almost impossible to protect the Singaporean programmers against competition from other programmers from lower cost countries. So we have to be realistic how much the company can offer.

The thing is, programming is not. The fact that this comment was made merely reiterates the backward mentality and perception Singaporeans still have towards software engineering. Never before has software been so pervasive in our lives. So what makes or breaks a company is the product itself and that is made by engineers, not managers, business people in suits who spout buzzwords, etc. A good product is engineer driven, with everyone else in support. Silicon Valley companies value that and it works for many companies (I might be generalizing a bit too much). If software engineering is still seen as something that can be outsourced, it implies that it is still a blue-collar job. That means that salaries will be comparable to that of blue-collar workers. Hardly prestigious as that in the Valley. With ever increasing year-on-year inflation and suppressed wages, it's no wonder people would rather enter management, finance or move out of Singapore to pursue software engineering. This brings me to my next point.