uhh the title of your topic is a bit different from your viewpoint. Let me explain, I've been in the IT field for 8+ years, 4 of them were in states. IT sucks in Malaysia, not because I cannot find a job, in fact with my experience it is very easy to find and keep a job. The problem is IT professionals are really treated as low level personnels here in Malaysia. The Malaysian industry has got the concept of manager all wrong. This is especially true in the IT field, I cannot comment about other fields. So please note, all my comments hereforth relate to the IT field, to be precise as a software developer, even if I dont explicitly say so.

In Malaysia, a Manager is considered a senior position, one where you get promoted to through your experience and contributions. It is the next step necessary for a bigger pay check. The problem is IT is a technical field. If a technical person has a lot of years of technical experience and a lots of contributions, by promoting them to a Manager, you are causing problems for the company. First off, they are not trained management professionals, the years they accumulate in their experience are primarily in their technical field of expertise, sure they are managed so they can relate how they were manage and use that, but that is totally different from a trained management professional with real management experience. Second, even if you provide training, they will not be able to get accustomed to their new role, in fact some people might not even have the people/soft skills necessary no matter how much training you give them. This not only jeopardizes the person's contribution but also all those being managed by him/her. In fact there's a known principle to avoid in any organization, its called the Peter Principle

Next is the vicious cycle of the IT field in Malaysia. Dont ask me which came first, I dont even know, but I am caught up in it like most IT professionals. Because we have bad management in the IT field, turnover rate is quite high, people dont tend to stay long as such, companies find it hard to promote within the ranks. So some will promote loyalists, even though over the years their technical contributions on averate may be well below par than someone who has not worked all that long in the company. Again this is just carrying on the vicious cycle, as the person promoted is only contributing to bad management and high turnover.

As a strong counter case outside of Malaysia, let me say my first job was at a big MNC company in the states. The corporate structure is such a way that the technical ladder and the non-technical ladder has its own structure each with a common executive rank. For example, my software team lead actually has a higher executive rank than our manager. They follow a different corporate ladder, with my team lead in the technical ladder and my manager in the non-technical ladder. My team lead has a lot of years as a software developer hence his position, our manager has less years as a manager hence her position. However this does not change things. We still report to both with the team lead responsible for resolving technical issues and the manager for non-technical issues. Although our manager still oversee the whole project and report to upper management, she must accept any technical decisions made by the team lead. Our manager is a trained management professional, bachelors and masters in management with minor in IT. Started as a management trainee, worked up to assistant manager and through the ranks till she became a manager. Her role is to resolve non-technical problems and the overall project issues. The system just works.

Now compare this to IT in Malaysia. Manager use to be an senior technical professional. No management experience other than being managed once (which is very different from managing). Has technical professional experience but mostly deprecated as technology changes so fast. Most of the time will not accept suggested technical solutions different from what they have in mind even though they are no longer in a position to make technical decisions, but because they used to be a technical professional and is now the Manager with the final say their ego and pride will get the better of themselves. When problems arises in the future, the technical person is always to blame. Another factor, which is just my speculation, that contribute to this problem is culture. We as Malaysian has the mentality of 'The boss is always correct, regardless'. This is a very bad mentality and behavior to cultivate.

Note, this is not all companies in Malaysia, no doubt some people has good experiences. But my personal experience over the few companies I've been with has the same consistent problems. Bad management with high technical staff turnovers because the technical staff are always to blame.

Currently, I'm fortunate enough to be in a company where although my manager was promoted from a technical position, he does not behave as above. You know why? Cause he isnt Malaysian, he does not have the mentality of 'I'm the boss, my word is final'. He will accept that sometimes a technical problem can never be solved within a given time frame, forcing it will not do any good. One of the most common phrase I've heard from my past managers in Malaysian IT companies is 'I want this by XX date' regardless if it is not feasible with the given resource. That is just plain stupid and arrogant. That is why IT sucks in Malaysia, not because the fresh grads dont have enough skill, technical skills can be trained, in the IT world technology changes so fast, we often have to retrain experienced staff, but IT sucks in Malaysia because we have a vicious cycle of bad management practice causing high turn-overs which causes bad management promotion decision which cause bad management practice which cause high turn-overs, etc.

If you're a fortunate one working in a company different from this, lucky you. If you dont believe me try joining a local company, especially the local financial/banking vendors. See your life drift away as you work 12 hours a day 7 days a week because your boss says he/she wants this by 1 week when the actual requirements will take 6 months and he/she wont be reasonable because he/she is the boss.

Lol, ok now i get it, your beef was specific to "I.T. degree", which makes sense. Initially I though your comment was targetted at all the I.T. related field of studies which includes computer science because your earlier comments doesnt really make any sense especially in computer science studies which is very technical and scientific. I dont know what the curriculum is here in local Unis, but where I got both my bachelors and master in C.S. some of the work/studies we were doing is no where near your typical I.T. work that any tom, d*ck or harry is doing as you mentioned. Your comment is correct though about the typical I.T. degree, but it suffices for practical reasons, because to be honest, having a C.S. degree for your typical I.T. job is overkill.

Yup thats really true, its really hard to find competent, experienced, IT staff. This has been the case for every company that I've been with so far.

For fresh grads its a different story, its hard to get a job because not many companies are recruiting freshies compared to experienced staff. Take a look at jobstreet and jobsdb, look at all the ads, most of them will have a minimum years of experience. But that said, a fresh grad should really not complain about the minimum wage they are getting, personally I also feel that the average wage we offer here for IT fresh grads are a bit low (around RM1.5k on average isnt it?), but just do your time, after 1-2 years of experience you will get increases pretty easily, even if your current company doesn't offer you, a lot of others will.

Yeah, a lot of I.T. or C.S. graduates now have no idea which type of job they want to go into. They just head blindly in for the first reasonable offer they get, whether its a position as sysadmin, network admin, software developer, QA, etc. and find out later its not their cup of tea. It helps to at least narrow down which field and technology you want to build your career around. As an example, you might want to be a software developer using Microsoft/Sun related languages, etc. Switching specialization latter would mean you're almost starting from fresh, which means you just wasted a lot of your time and is not contributing anything to your career.

In fact, as you suggested, the university is a good place to find out. During the course of your studies, a student will no doubt be expose to the difference aspects through the subjects they take, i.e. networking, programming, etc. which is a good way to find out which one sparks the most interest.

That why I said, the mentality in Malaysia is all wrong in regards to the IT industry. As I said, its a vicious cycle, most of the management had it the same way, thru luck and perserverance and some thru hardwork they were promoted to management, so after years of getting whiped now its their time to give it, not because they are bad people, because they are technical people and the only management knowledge they have is the one they participated in when they were managed, so to them management means whipping at programming slaves as they were once whipped before. That is why management is really bad here in the I.T. industry.

Forget about hiring experienced managers, because all the managers i've met so far came thru from the same path. I've never met any I.T. managers here in Malaysia that were actually trained management professional (i.e. got a degree or some diploma in management) and started out in a managerial position (either as a management trainee or assistant manager) rather that started out in a technical position and then got promoted. The scenario is almost impossible in Malaysia, because the mentality is that any form of managerial role means 'Boss' and no one becomes 'Boss' without jumping thru hoops and doing the full circus act. This mentality is really stupid and archaic, in reality managers and technical staffs all play a very important role, each complementing another not one whipping the other.

Well personally I think you are mixing the 2 problems together. Companies having problem seeking experienced staff is a different problem than fresh grads not able to get a break or chance.

Companies having problem seeking experienced professionals has nothing to do with freshies. Note the term experienced. Not all companies will hire juniors/freshies all the time. It depends on the position being filled, if they want to hire an experienced person, they look for experienced person, if they want to hire a junior with no experience they hire fresh grads. The problem is hiring competent experience professional to fit the appropriate role, this is a different problem than hiring fresh grads. If the position you need filled requires a number skills that you can only get through work experience, it makes no sense to hire fresh grads. This is not unique to IT, this is a very common business practice in any field. The problem here is getting competent IT professionals.

Some companies will hire freshies for a number of reasons, to fill roles requiring minimal experience. The problem of freshies not getting jobs is just a simple supply demand problem, there's just too many IT graduates vs. available openings. If a fresh grad is complaining about company A not giving them a chance to fill the senior developer role (or whatever experienced position) than thats just be dumb. Most Businesses have limited resources, they cannot afford to hire a fresh grad and slowly train them up to the required experience level while the position critical to their business is left unfilled. Its simple as that. There will always be a need for seniors and juniors. Seniors are to fill roles that require support for critical business functionality that cannot be held off while they train someone to fit the role.

No. Have you? Even if they work crazy hours, how is their overtime and benefits? Just because they work crazy hours like we do doesnt mean we should. Perhaps they are getting the proper compensation. We cannot really compare their early days to our current situation without more details.

As for their current practices, do you know about all the development methodologies coming out, like Agile based methodologies such as scrum, etc? You know why all these was developed? Because their industry also realize there is abig problem in their whole process when projects keep failing. But unlike us, they recognize the problem and find ways to fix it. When a methodology fails, they look at it and try to improve it and come out with better methodologies. Sure its not perfect, but its a long way from what we practice here. Look at Malaysia, how many companies acknowledge their failure and learn from it. When projects fails, mass resignation occurs, and the company just does a mass recruitment, the cycle keeps repeating. How many development houses even bother to look at some of the existing methodologies and try to fit it in their process? So many local companies dont even bother about putting in the right process, they think its a waterfall process, but more like rojak, take requirement and hack at it with as much resource as many hours as you have and deliver. When there are customer change request, hack at it some more, not enuff resource? hire sumore and keep hacking at it. They are working hard but not working smart.

Umm MNCs located overseas or MNCs located in Malaysia? To me a lot MNCs in Malaysia face the same problem as local Malaysian companies if it is being run by locals, it doesnt really matter if its MNC or foreign company, as long as the management is being run by locals then its a Malaysian-style company and suffer the same problems.

As I said, foreign companies run into same problems, but in general they do try to look at failures and learn from it. That is why we see so many processes and methodologies cropping up, it is a result of people who identified the problems and trying to fix it. Sure the processes or methodologies may not be perfect, but it sure as hell beat the chaotic way of doing things blindly. Unlike here, when things go wrong, there will be casualties. There is no effort to stop and take a look at the whole process and fix it. Its either a technical problem, in which case as I pointed out mass exodus of technical employees and a big rehiring or in very rare cases a management mistake and a company restructure. Our mentality is always look for the blame and fix it by removing the blame. Not look at all the factors and change to adapt to it.

This post has been edited by darun: Nov 2 2006, 02:30 PM

lol, true the pointy haired boss stereotype did come from there. No doubt they still have sweat-shop style companies, just our ratio is a hell lot more compared to them and it doesnt seem to be getting better at all.

Yup, for software development, it could be either mean the amount of work is more than the available resource can handle or the resource is trying to earn undeserved karma points. Neither is good for the company.

Perhaps its a culture problem and not really a nationality problem?

Thats the thing, often times the people with the business sense are the ones making the technical decisions. From a business point of view, you'd think that copying from the last project and making tweaks would save you a lot in reinventing the wheel. Often times it doesnt work that way.

Thats the waterfall process, it may used to work in the old days, nowadays it doesnt anymore in a lot of cases. In fact even if customer signs it means nothing. Customer can force you to change without paying a single cent, and often do here. This is because of the damned backwards mentality of Customer is King.

I'd say that is one major problem and I'd dare say its more than half the companies. If our industry can even get this straighten out, it will help a lot in reducing the brain drain.