I sometimes think that a lot of professions are missed by youngsters here since they might not exist or be very small here. For example, the report doesn't cover the academic side in finance at all, just the industry. This is probably because there is no major research based business school in Malaysia at all so that the "real" academic side (research, not teaching) does not exist at all here though INCEIF might just about get an honorable mention but is nowhere near the big Indian or Chinese schools in research, leave alone the Sin/HK ones.

However, the compensation in the academic side of finance far outstrips the industry salaries mentioned in the guide here (even accounting for cost of living) though one has to take the salaries in India, China, Sin/HK, the US etc as the base. For eg., the starting salary offered this year at one of the major Indian business schools, the Indian School of Business, is reported to be about Rs. 8.5 million or about RM 500k (annual). While India is more expensive than Malaysia, ISB offers excellent subsidized accommodation (used to be 3000 sq. ft but the new units are supposed to be larger) to compensate for the relatively low pay. Starting salaries in HK are the next lowest in the major league and still seem to be only about HK$1.2 million (RM 600k) (I know - I was here and could only look in envy at those in mainland China or even India looking at that accommodation ) but increments are higher there. Singapore is about S$250-300k (RM 750-900k) and some Chinese business school starting salaries have been reported to be the highest at RMB 2 million/yr but this is reserved for the superstars.

Of course, the preparation for these jobs is far longer and more intense than the industry jobs - officially could be done in only 5 years after graduation for the PhD but the realistic time frame except for the super genius who is also super lucky is about 7-8 years (masters + 6 years PhD). One also obviously has to be in the top 1-2% of their class.

This post has been edited by physdude: Aug 27 2018, 03:27 AM

It is actually much harder to get a job here as a well-qualified Indian as compared to Singapore. Singapore has the personalized employment pass which allows you to go there and look for a job while ensuring that your visa has nothing to do with your employer and that you can switch jobs without restriction and be unemployed for a while as well. The only requirement is that your last drawn salary was S$18k or more when applying. I actually took up this pass myself when I was still deciding whether it is better to live here without working or working in Singapore.

I didn't even really consider working in Malaysia as the employment pass is tied to your employer and there are a lot of restrictions about changing jobs, cannot be unemployed on it etc etc. There was also the point of there not being really any place for me to work here and the low wages but I didn't even need to consider those. They do have this TalentCorp thing but you actually must have worked in Malaysia for 3 years under those highly restrictive employment visas before you can get that. If Malaysia really wants well qualified Indians to work here, they need to make an attractive employment visa - Canada and Australia even offer direct permanent residency, even the EU has the blue employment visa which is more flexible etc. I definitely don't think Malaysia is so much higher on attractiveness for employment than Singapore, Canada, Australia and the EU that they can afford to provide such a bad choice by comparison.

The TalentCorp visa looks really absurd to me as the salary requirement is very weak (just RM 15k a month!) so it seems to be catering for lower rung professionals and has this strong restriction of having worked in Malaysia for 3 years so a person who is on this must have been attracted to the really unattractive standard employment visa in the first place which must mean either that they couldn't get the more attractive options to work or that they must have some other reason to work in Malaysia. Overall, it seems like a visa policy to attract a very unusual set of people. I would have really liked to be a fly on the wall for the meeting that decided that! (just to know how they think if nothing else)

OTOH, MM2H is pretty easy and has few restrictions except that you can't work. So Malaysia is essentially much more welcoming if you don't want to work than if you do. OTOH, Singapore doesn't seem to even have an option for Indians to stay long term without working or looking for work. So for an Indian who wants to be here, the logical choice is Singapore if you want to work and Malaysia if you don't.

My guess is that there is zero interest in the Malaysian government to attract well qualified professionals and those that do come here to actually work are mostly by chance or necessity (posted here).

But the low wages here do mean really cheap house cleaning services, grocery shopping+delivery (happyfresh), food (of course!) etc. I am actually paying less in RM for my house cleaning than I was paying in US$ when I was in Chicago despite that being 10 years ago and my apartment here being twice the size! Geo-arbitrage handily beats inflation any day.

This post has been edited by physdude: Aug 27 2018, 05:13 AM

That only means there is a shortage at those low salaries - this is just Econ 101! For example, when US farmers complain that there are not enough laborers to pick the fruits, that only means there are not enough laborers to pick the fruit at the wage they are offering. As Australian miners discovered about a decade ago, shortages disappear even for tough jobs like truck drivers in the desert when the wages get high enough (A$250k or something like that at that point). If they paid US$250k for fruit pickers, I don't think they will any longer have shortages even if they only allowed true blue American born people to do the job.