There is no shortage of fresh/junior bank employees right now.

Only if you're a pretty senior hire, will they will take the trouble to recruit someone who is still overseas (they have to phone, get you into SG for interviews, juggle your leave/flights/accommodation with the interviewers' schedules etc), and with no work permit or residency status (ie. they have to get it for you).

Like what kind of "other than that"?

It's sometimes a shadowy line between meritocracy based on competence, and personal effectiveness due to good rapport.

But the fact is that every job has a minimum competence requirement, above which the diminishing returns are swift. The returns from high personal effectiveness are practically infinite.

This is a difference, not better or worse. It's the difference between living in a city state (SG, HK, Monaco...) vs everywhere else perhaps.

Whether wide open spaces and bigger accomodation are better... it's a matter of preference (although it has to be said that the vast majority will agree that bigger is better). Personally I value location more than space.

I don't know how true this is... I've been left standing over diner's shoulders waiting for tables lots of times. Or cannot find parking near the restaurant, SS2, Uptown, Taipan etc. Or dealing with the curry mee seller or chee cheong fun seller who says "cannot wait ah, don't eat lah".

Compared to Ipoh or Penang food... you've got a point. KL food... ummm, I don't think so. If you have a car in SG, you can find everyday hawker stall food that can match anything KL has to offer.

Ask them for what? It's your personal income tax. Just surf to Internal Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS)'s website and look at the tax rates.

Your salary is not determined by your experience nor your degree. It is determined by your job.

What field, level and which company is the job in SG? That will tell you the salary.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 12 2013, 01:48 PM

I HIGHLY DOUBT any company - that doesn't even have an email domain and uses yahoo freemail to receive job applications - can offer anything worth looking at.

Relates... ya lah... but only as a "ticket to play". At the end of the day, it's the job itself. I sometimes meet my uni-mates in SG. We all have the same years of experience and the exact same degree, but our incomes range from a $70K per annum for a SME accountant to $750K per year for a SGX listed company CFO.

3 years generic experience and a bachelor's degree is like having good eyesight and a minimum height of 165cm to join the army. It gets you into the army but doesn't determine whether your job is a trench digger or officer's school candidate.

Your friends must be mistaken. No tax is payable by your employer as a deduction from an employee's salary.

Now,.. having said that, there might be a tax deduction on an employee's monthly salary if they have not become a tax resident yet by working in Singapore for at least 183 days... (iinm, it's 15%). But this is directly remitted to IRAS by the employer, and it is a personal taxation matter between you and IRAS. If you work past 183 days, you can get it back from IRAS... but as mentioned, it's between you and IRAS.

So as far as the employer is concerned, your salary is 100%. If IRAS orders them to remit 15% of it to them on your behalf, your salary is still 100%. If I'm the employer, your "take home" (ie. your "take out" of my payroll bank account) is 100%. The 15% is what you need to lodge temporarily with IRAS after you've taken the 100% home.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 12 2013, 10:42 PM

Something interesting... this is a new approach! CIMB is quite innovative in SG.

1. You need to agree with your landlord. You signed the tenancy and it's not transferable I presume.

Next time, if you feel so strongly about it, then rent a whole unit or get it stated in your tenancy agreement that the tenants must be such and such.

2. What is the agreement with your employer? That they provide such accommodation as per your specification or they just reimburse your rental cost?

If it's the latter, your PM is right. It's your personal issue. If you bring it to his superior, it'll be the same. You are supposed to take care of your own religious preferences, not them. Your work and your religion are 2 separate issues. Don't mix them up.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 16 2013, 01:31 AM

Who punched the hole? Singapore Traffic Police?

Wow... if they punch a hole in your licence at JPJ,.. how do they expect you to drive home from JPJ? No licence, man.

Drivers ie. who can drive, is under TP. Driving licences are issued by them.

Cars ie. what you can drive, is under LTA. Car registration and entry of foreign cars is under them.

LTA will enforce the laws or by-laws that they create.

TP will enforce all laws.

1. make sure you can drive in Singapore ie. have an appropriate driving licence.

2. make sure you have a car that can be driven in Singapore ie. properly registered or legally entried.

3. based on your residency status, make sure you drive the right type of properly registered or legally entried car.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 19 2013, 08:40 PM

You're right. I went out for lunch yesterday... cannot tahan, went back to office, book ticket, and took the afternoon flight back to Ipoh.

Clear blue skies here luckily.

The Berjaya Air flight to Redang at 3pm yesterday was cancelled at 2:55pm because of "weather conditions".

The Firefly flight to Subang at 3.30pm was initially scheduled to be delayed until they boarded early at 3pm. To beat the worsening haze I think.

My 3pm Firefly flight to Ipoh was delayed until we boarded at 3:30pm. Sat on the runway for another 30 minutes waiting for takeoff clearance. Luckily we were allowed to take off instead of being asked to return to the gate.

Today is worse than yesterday. And if tomorrow is as bad as today... I'd say you'd be in for a 50:50 touch and go experience.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 21 2013, 03:11 PM

Try http://www.efinancialcareers.sg/

A friend just recontracted Starhub's entry level plan and they gave him 6GB. No change with the handset subsidy.

You don't lose a "few thousand SGD" lah. Even if the spread between bank's TT rate and money changers rate is 3 points (buy ringgit at 2.53 vs 2.50 per SGD), you lose S$1K. Usually the difference is 0.02 or less than that.

For me, that's a small price to pay for convenience AND security of a bank vs an unmonitored money changer. And not to mention the fact that you don't have to walk around with so much cash on your pocket. People have gotten robbed by friends and extended family whom they thought they could trust, for much less. And if the guy standing behind you in the queue at the bank is a spotter, you're going to have an eventful trip from the bank to the money changer.

Are you comparing a buy rate to a sell rate? The difference seems impossibly high.

Today's average rate is 2.51. So a sell rate of 2.55 sounds okay. But a sell rate of 2.48, even from the most efficient money changer is unrealistic, a little above 2.51 would be where it would be, maybe 2.52 or 2.53.

This post has been edited by seantang: Jun 23 2013, 10:55 AM

Such a coincidence. Yeah, have not felt so relieved to get final clearance for takeoff in a very long time.

1 & 2... Depends on which company he's from, and what is his experience. Generally, the companies in Singapore don't think highly of their counterparts in other countries. Malaysia included, although not as bad as our Asean neighbours or India or China. But they certainly don't think our companies have equal standards, service quality and professional ethics as Singaporean, Hong Kong, Japanese or ANZ companies... especially the ethics.

However, within the industry and within companies at par (eg. coming from the KL office of a global MNC to the Sg office of the same or similar global MNC), the equivalency of your value is much more appreciated.

3. The biggest challenge, in my opinion and from an ethnic Chinese perspective, is the realisation that those attributes that made you stand out in Malaysia and handed you an auto-win over 70% of the Malaysian population (ie. the hunger or motivation to work hard because you know you will starve if you don't, being trilingual and for many, having a foreign degree) is effectively neutralised in Singapore. Everybody speaks English (in most cases better than you, 75% speak Mandarin (in most cases better than you) and the entire population of this generation has at least a poly diploma or better. On top of that, Singapore is home to hundreds of thousands of highly qualified first and second generation immigrants that are all too willing to take your job away from you.

The competition, therefore, is stiff!