Quan Tran, a full-time blockchain engineer at a Vietnam-based technology development service provider, is accepting three other well-paying job offers at the same time from foreign teams in France, America, and India to remotely work for them during his time off.
“I work four more hours a day for two to three outside projects with foreign companies,” Tran said. “Many offered me to quit my current job and work remotely for them as a full-timer.”
Tran took a Zoom call at midnight with an American startup’s founder to discuss the new fintech project.
Tran’s experiences in blockchain technology applications in fintech, social impact, digital identity, and digital assets come from his previous remote work for clients in Singapore, Japan, and Korea. Not only is he paid higher salaries, but his skills and knowledge could be harnessed through working with those global firms.
“Vietnamese regulation has yet opened for many types of blockchain applications, most of which are just pilot projects or experimental products,” he stated. “Meanwhile, I see that many foreign companies’ blockchain-based products or services are related to the real-life asset security, which gives me more exposure to up-to-date technological issues, as well as efficient problem solving and risk management skills.”
This is in line with the result of a recent survey of 400,000 IT employees using JobHopin, a Vietnam-based automated job-recruitment platform for Southeast Asian workers. The study revealed that 43.2% of the respondents would be attracted to a new job if it allows them to develop novel specialized technology skills, such as in AI, IoT, blockchain, or computer vision.
Previously, technology staff in India, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam have long been the top IT outsourcing solution providers for global companies, according to A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI).
“Even before the pandemic, companies based in high labor-cost locations, like Australia and the U.S., have already utilized remote workers for non-core tasks, or even set up hub offices in lower-cost locations,” said Christopher Lee, senior manager of People & Organization Management Consulting at PwC Consulting Vietnam. “COVID-19 has only accelerated this trend.”
Due to the acceleration caused by the pandemic, technology jobs like data engineer, senior software engineer, solution architect have entered the fastest growing remote jobs by application volume globally from March to June on Linkedin, the world's largest professional networking platform.
“However, it’s not just non-core development tasks that are assigned to offshore software outsourcing teams, it has gradually become frontier-tech integrated software orders,” said Kevin Tung Nguyen, CEO of JobHopin. “AI and Blockchain are now two most sought-after technology that a large number of young IT employees in SEA region are qualified to implement with much lower costs than hiring engineers in the host countries.”
To retain talents against this increasing acquisition of remote tech talent from overseas, embracing a strong workplace culture is the key strategic plan for local companies.
By observing activities of prominent corporate clients of PwC, Lee underlined several characteristics of such cultures, including the lean structure and low in the hierarchy, open to experimentation, highly geared to learning, low regulations and roadblocks, healthy and positive collegial environment, and especially the meaningful purpose of the technology solution itself.
“Often [these] companies' purposes focus on solving a key problem in society where people can take pride in,” noted Lee.
In the long run, he added that the opportunities of having a remote working culture across the globe could outweigh the challenges as it strengthens the “osmosis” effect, or accelerates the exchange of knowledge between developed and developing countries.
“[It helps] creating larger talents pools that will accelerate growth within the low labour cost nations,” Lee stated.
Tran also said the same idea as he wanted to apply the new skills and knowledge received from other countries’ firms into the local company where he is working.
“I haven’t planned for permanent full-time remote work for foreign companies,” he said. “As a Vietnamese, I feel more engaged in developing world-class technology products or services made by and for Vietnamese people.”