Experienced software engineers in demand somewhere?

[John_74]

I'm a 38-year old, caucasian, software engineer with 12 years experience looking to move abroad. If possible, I'd like to continue working as a software engineer. Is there a country with demand for software engineers that also has slim, marriage-minded women? Race doesn't matter to me.

[fschmidt]

Sometimes I post jobs for programmers here when I or someone I know is looking for a programmer. These jobs are virtual and can be done anywhere. I don't have any such jobs right now. Another good option is to work in America near the Mexican border and date in Mexico, San Diego being a good choice for this.

[John_74]

Another good option is to work in America near the Mexican border and date in Mexico, San Diego being a good choice for this.

Thanks for the tip, but I'm an EU-citizen... Difficult to get work permit in the US.

[xiongmao]

I'd also be interested in remote working things (C# and SQL Server are my things). I've got time on my hands in China

If you want to go live in Asia then you might be able to find an internship or something. It could be hard to get a job without a local language under your belt though.

Or try looking for jobs in HK or Singapore. HK is full of single women, or just pop over the border to meet millions more in Shenzhen. Singapore gains you access to some very hot women in Malaysia.

Also try to save up some cash then do an MBA in Asia or something - that way you get to upgrade your resume and get the opportunity to meet beautiful ladies!

[E_Irizarry]

I'd also be interested in remote working things (C# and SQL Server are my things). I've got time on my hands in China

If you want to go live in Asia then you might be able to find an internship or something. It could be hard to get a job without a local language under your belt though.

Or try looking for jobs in HK or Singapore. HK is full of single women, or just pop over the border to meet millions more in Shenzhen. Singapore gains you access to some very hot women in Malaysia.

Also try to save up some cash then do an MBA in Asia or something - that way you get to upgrade your resume and get the opportunity to meet beautiful ladies!

Do you just make desktop apps/WinForms using C# at the logic-business and presentation layers to SQL Server 2008 R2 RDBMS?

Or do you make WPF apps using C# and XAML with SQL Server 2008 R2 as the RDBMS server?

[John_74]

Or try looking for jobs in HK or Singapore. HK is full of single women, or just pop over the border to meet millions more in Shenzhen. Singapore gains you access to some very hot women in Malaysia.

Also try to save up some cash then do an MBA in Asia or something - that way you get to upgrade your resume and get the opportunity to meet beautiful ladies!

I've been thinking about HK as well, but can you live well there on a local (non-expat) salary? How come you recommend an MBA? Is it because it would give me an opportunity to go a university (and meet women there) or is it because engineers with MBAs are particularly in demand over there?

[Christianfilipinacom]

Freelancing is becoming a great way to live anywhere. Our entire staff is virtual. We have no physical office. We have staff in 6 countries in 3 continents.

[publicduende]

Singapore is, or at least used to be, a great job market for foreign senior developers. As far as I have seen there still isn't a well established software industry there, so they have to borrow talent from other parts of Asia and the West. I worked in Singapore for a sports betting software company in 2009, spending around 3 months in secondment from their (newborn) London office. Most local developers came from different backgrounds. My line manager used to work as an ASIC designer until 2 years before, and the "DB architect" was a graduate in civil engineering, the big boss had a background in telecoms etc. Not wanting to detract from their intelligence and hard working attitude, but none of those locals really impressed me with their actual expertise in designing and writing software. The best people out there were a chap from Burma and one from Bangladesh, and by a long shot!

Unfortunately, things have changed in Singapore in the past couple of years. The once thriving financial sector (a handful of investment banks with their SEA or Asian HQ there: Standard Chartered, Barclays Capital, Bank of America, Credit Agricole to name a few) has been cutting back substantially, so offices have been laying off or not hiring for the past 18/24 months, and things don't promise to get any better.

In addition to that, the Singaporean government is facing quite a lot of pressure to finally move the balance of power and privilege away from expats and towards native Singaporean citizens. Citizenships are being rejected or revoked, even people in the academia are being sent away. I guess there will still be a need for good IT people there, but the process of applying for a Visa without a job already secured will be a lot harder, and the bar in terms of minimum education requirements set higher (eg. a bachelor degree).

My humble opinion about the booming world of software freelancing. Yes, it's true, it's possible to be a software developer working on small and medium-scale projects from virtually anywhere in the world with a power plug and a half-decent Internet connection. Yet, the moment you step into that arena, your market worth immediately compresses towards the minimum common denominator of skills and cost of younger, less experienced professionals from the usual host of second and third world countries. You could be a .NET senior developer with 10 years of experience, used to work on complex projects in large multinationals and teams, perhaps worth $500 a day or more, and find yourself competing with 20-something kids from rural Thailand or India, who will do the same job for a fifth of the price, or less.

What then happens is that, from what I could see on sites like Elance, the projects usually advertised to pure (work solo, non-colocated) freelancers are relatively simple stuff - part or whole of a website, one-function tools, simple one or two-tier enterprise apps in the best case - which doesn't necessarily require the kind of top-notch skills that many Western developers have.

The only market I see for that kind of freelancing is for a young and adventurous professional who doesn't mind having to work almost as hard as if he were in his Chicago or London cubicle, for the privilege of doing it from an exotic location.

[xiongmao]

Yeah there is work on oDesk and eLance but it's difficult competing with Indians who will do stuff for $3.

Still, you can pick up work from people who are suspicious to outsource to India and other places.

Otherwise, go deep niche and do specialised stuff that Indians can't.

As far as MBA's go, they're good investments if you want to progress your career - not to mention Asian women will like to be associated with men who have the talent to get an MBA.

[america sucks]

..

[publicduende]

Yeah there is work on oDesk and eLance but it's difficult competing with Indians who will do stuff for $3.

Still, you can pick up work from people who are suspicious to outsource to India and other places.

Otherwise, go deep niche and do specialised stuff that Indians can't.

As far as MBA's go, they're good investments if you want to progress your career - not to mention Asian women will like to be associated with men who have the talent to get an MBA.

This is the thing XM, all the lucrative niche industries like finance will almost always require you to be on site - projects are often steered by the business, and you can imagine what kind of paranoid control freaks a team of traders can be. If they make money, it'll be nothing to do with your superior analytics or silk-smooth execution, only their talent. If they lose money, it'll be entirely IT's fault

Last October, out of sheer curiosity, I tried asking my manager if they would be interested in sending me to work in Singapore, on an equivalent salary. Much to my surprise they said yes, only to come back with the option of a permanent job (I was a contractor) and a salary that was way too low for my seniority and expectation. I said a polite "thanks anyway" and declined. I don't thing Hong Kong would be much of a difference...

Now, what I would indeed do given a chance is start a company in Singapore, taking advantage of the low tax regime and access to the SEA tech talent hub, and the surrounding financial centers, including Tokyo, Shanghai and Sidney.

[eurobrat]

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[momopi]

I'm a 38-year old, Caucasian, software engineer with 12 years experience looking to move abroad. If possible, I'd like to continue working as a software engineer. Is there a country with demand for software engineers that also has slim, marriage-minded women? Race doesn't matter to me.

As an experienced software engineer, your options are not limited to writing code. Off the top of my head, 2 suggestions:

1. Look into project management (PM) certifications. This opens the possibility of working as a PM, or as a PM trainer. As a software engineer, it wouldn't be difficult for you to pick up Agile Project Management, Scrum Project Management, etc.

2. Instead of competing against numerous other bids on freelance projects, you could instead work on producing training videos that people pay to watch. See lynda.com and www.udemy.com for examples:

https://www.udemy.com/teach

If you take a month to produce a training course for $50, and 2,000 people paid to watch it, that's $100,000 - 30% (udemy or other service fees) = $70,000 in your pocket.

Take note that training courses on application development or web dev tend to have fewer customers, versus general Microsoft Office training courses have many, many more customers (but it's also more competitive). Another possibility is to do foreign language versions of the training videos. Don't be afraid of bootleggers ripping off the videos for BT download -- they're doing free advertisement for you.

[eurobrat]

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[victorpaul1]

Freelancing is becoming a great way to live anywhere. Our entire staff is virtual. We have no physical office. We have staff in 6 countries in 3 continents.

yes you are right there so many job recruitment in freelancing. No need to having office, just make friend circle and do job at home.
It is better way to do job for software engineers and other working professional.