VietNamNet Bridge - An IT engineer with three years of experience can receive monthly pay of VND8-10 million, according to Lam Nguyen Hai Long, director of the Quang Trung Software Park (QTSC) in HCM City.

The HCM City Party Committee’s Secretary Dinh La Thang wss surprised when hearing the answer to his question about the average pay of an IT engineer at the high-tech park. 

Thang commented that the pay was not enough for them to live and stay creative. It is just a little bit higher than the monthly income of garment workers who have extra working hours.

If they live in rented houses, the pay will not be able to cover basic needs.

When Long said he received VND24 million a month in wage, Thang said the salary for the director of a large software park in the country and the region must not be low. 

“Your salary must be 10 times higher to motivate you to continue working,” Thang said. 

In fact, reports about pay for IT engineers in Vietnam show different figures.

An IT engineer with three years of experience can receive monthly pay of VND8-10 million

A JobStreet.com report released in mid-2015 showed that a worker in the IT sector could receive VND18.8 million a month on average.

The report pointed out that IT officers, mid-tier personnel and managers are all among the top 10 business fields with high average income.

Officers with 1-4 years of experience can earn VND18.8 million, ranking third in the top 10. Middle-class managers with 5-year experience can earn VND18.9 million, ranking seventh.  Meanwhile, managers with VND24.6 million a month rank sixth.

Prior to that, in mid-August 2014, the report about the job prospects in the IT sector by PIKOM, the Malaysian ICT association, showed that Vietnamese IT engineers’ income is the highest in ASEAN.

PIKOM cited statistics showing that in 2013, Da Nang City in Vietnam paid the highest salary, which was even higher than in Seattle, New York, Dallas, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

At the time when PIKOM released the report, Vietnamese IT engineers showed their surprise about the survey.

“As far as I know, technology firms pay VND7 million a month to officers with 2-3 year experience, which means officers who have good skills,” an IT engineer Tuan wrote in an email to the editorial board.

Tuan wrote that the VND7 million pay in Vietnam must not be higher than any other country in the world. “I don’t understand which statistics PIKOM analyzed and if they were reliable,” he said.

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