Hearted Youtube comments on Asianometry (@Asianometry) channel.
-
As an expat in Taipei and an employer too. I have come across this discussion a lot. Except for real estate everything else is cheap compared to neighbouring cities like Hong Kong, Shanghai or Seoul. Education, Health care, Electricity, Fuel prices, Public transportation, etc are not expensive in this region. I have lived in Singapore and Hong Kong enough years to understand the difference. And being an employer I understand the difficulty of paying salaries. Almost 80% of the small business owners pay more salary than the income they draw for themselves. This is the truth, If minimum wage is increased again, we will just see more 'shop space for rent' boards as we already see way too many. Also, I wish English teaching expats and youtubers grasp a better idea about this than just say things like the money is not going to the workers. In a fight with big corporations regarding them paying less salary to their employees, small businesses come to their streets along with their families. Taiwanese companies need to pay more salary and Taiwanese businesses have to at least survive.
27
-
26
-
26
-
26
-
26
-
26
-
26
-
26
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
25
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
24
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
As a Malaysian, I thank you for giving a fair and objective discussion on this topic. Too often us Malaysians are hard on ourselves and we're too quick to criticise policy failures rather than examining the problem. From your videos, it's enlightening how challenging this industry can be and other nations have also tried and end up in the same boat. Frankly, it's uncanny how much your videos on Taiwan resonate to many of the problems we're facing but at much earlier phases of development.
I think one of the problems could also be attributed to a mixed message about local labour or talent. On one hand, development agencies will market how competitive labour costs are. Making labour cost a USP sends a wrong message when you're trying to compete for skilled workers. It's funny to see some employers expect an Ivy League quality hire with $14-16k annual pay package. While many employers are bumping wages to remedy this, it's still nowhere near as competitive and talent retention continues to be a problem.
Also, what's less spoken of is the setting of "convoluted priorities" especially when problems have snowballed. You've already noted some evidence of this with the choice for local appointments for Silterra than finding qualified, experienced executives for leadership positions. Coupled with the talent bidding/retention issue as mentioned, it may be the case that red tape and socioeconomic KPIs could have led to interventions on business decisions at the (unintended?) expense of building a viable enterprise. It happens too often problems snowball and Khazanah ends up in a position of trying to fix a leaky ship while juggling pressures to retain jobs, industry capacity etc. It's really unfortunate because Khazanah, as a strategic investor, spends a lot of their capital and brain trust fixing problems which could have otherwise be spent seeding or supporting new growth opportunities.
23
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
23
-
23