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Vietnam's Tech Boom: a Look Inside Southeast Asia's Silicon Valley
rjmarvin writes: Vietnam is in the midst of a tech boom. The country's education system is graduating thousands of well-educated software engineers and IT professionals each year, recruited by international tech companies like Cisco, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel, LG, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba and others setting up shop in the southern tech hub of Ho Chi Minh City and the central coastal city of Da Nang. Young Vietnamese coders and entrepreneurs are also launching more and more startups, encouraged by government economic policies encouraging small businesses and a growing culture around innovation in the country.
So China finally pushed itself out of the cheap electronics market?
Soon all the people working for pennies a day will be Vietnamese.
Every day there's another story about some city that's "The Silicon Valley of ________"
Let's just call a spade a spade: The entire world is desperate for an engine of economic growth, and they have all pinned their hopes on tech-fueled riches which in most cases are really just more stories stories of bubble economics,
Tech,mat least in the sense of current gen Internet tech / apps and eCommerce is thoroughly saturated and questionably profitable in a disturbingly large number of cases.
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment -- we'll likely hear many more silly stories of "technology capitals" sprouting up in every corner of the world.
Will still provide top-notch managers and scrum masters!
I wish the USA's government economic policies encouraged small business and a growing culture around innovation in the country.
Instead we get more licensing and regulation requirements.
First it was Hindi, then Malay, then Chinese, now Vietnamese.
Which is the exact opposite of what happens in the US.
And we wonder why high-tech jobs are migrating away from the US...
Will soon look like the erstwhile cool free swag of American pre-boom companies, with caveats:
- Free lunch: all-you-can-eat stir-fry cats and dogs
- Personal services: "Do yo' nay-uhl, sir?"
Yeah, it's almost as if this site is being run by someone who wants everyone to think there's a tech boom.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment
A key problem is the assumption that local conditions apply globally. Just because your little part of the world may be experiencing these things doesn't mean that everyone does.
But I think you're otherwise right. They're looking at the success of Silicon Valley, which has minted many trillions of dollars over about a human lifespan and thinking that they could get a piece of that.
"I love the smell of H1B's in the morning."
Table-ized A.I.
Honestly, I'm surprised that this hasn't been a story sooner. In the 90s & 00s, when I worked in the Valley, after Chinese, the 2nd largest ethnic group in my company was Vietnamese. And this was at 2 of my former employers - both in semiconductors.
I'd say that Vietnam is a much better country for US to deal w/ than China. They don't have those human rights abuses, are no longer about territorial hegemony (other than some islands in the South China Sea that even Philippines & China all claim), are not occupying Cambodia, Laos or Tibet, are not supplying missiles to Iran or North Korea and in general are pretty happily minding their own business. I would much rather see a good portion of the outsourced China labor move to Vietnam, and the rest come back to the US.
.... my road is littered with them.
all i can say is middle finger salute to those commie bastards! go rot in hell!!
They don't have those human rights abuses
Uhh .. no. Vietnam is a much more repressive country than China. You don't hear much about their abuses because the American press has puffed China up into a big bad boogey man, so stories about the evil Chinese more popular. When countries start to reform, as both China and Vietnam have, they actually seem to be getting worse, because abuses are more likely to be publicized, and people have more opportunities to express their grievances. But China is further along that path than Vietnam.
These tech companies are all Communist they support Communism at the drop of a hat.
As China Russia and the rest collude to takes us down we provide the cash.
Were dumber than a box of rocks.
Shanghaibill, you and I have spent time in China and you should know that China is in transition
It took China 45 years (From 1960 to 2015) to achieve what it takes the West almost 200 years, to transform itself from a backward agriculture based economy to a manufacturing based economy, complete with vertical and horizontal supply chain of industries to facilitate everything from raw material processing to completed fully assembled product ready to be shipped abroad
China is transition, and for China, this transition is vital
If the transition fails, China will slump and will never be able to catch up (and surpass) the West / Japan, but if this transition is successful, then we may see first human moonbase built by China, first lunar-based telescope operated by China, and so on ...
Uh... no it isn't. I'm an American liiving in Hanoi right now. Here is how this works:
Step 1: Do not criticize the communist party
Step 2: Have fun.
Break step 1 and you might have a bad time,especially if you do it as a vietnamese person in vietnamese publications. But other than that - go nuts.
That's pretty much it. It's capitalism central over here, growth is crazy high, infrastructure is surprisingly good across the whole country. Pollution isn't bad (at least in Hanoi,can't speak to Saigon).
If you want to know the difference, try using Google's play store in china - walled. Try accessing a lot of foreign sites in china - walled. Here I've got no issues at all. Almost nothing is blocked and my VPNs are never blocked at all. I can dial into the USA and watch netflix no problem.
Oh, and I have a person 45mb fiber line for $40 a month. It rocks.
The last boom in Vietnam was caused by those 10,000lb bombs dropped by the US.
But since most of the world is experiencing economic malaise, collapsing exports and high youth unemployment -- we'll likely hear many more silly stories of "technology capitals" sprouting up in every corner of the world.
Well, I think we all know somewhere in our hearts, that on a planet of finite size, there will by necessity be a limit to how much any population can grow. I don't know if it is just around the next corner or many decades/centuries away, but the limit is there, that much is simple, common sense. We have already reached the point in the West - and increasingly in China and India - where economic growth hangs on people consuming ever more, and far more than is good for our health; this, in my view, demonstrates just how vulnerable our economic setup really is.
At the moment, I don't think the most threatening limit to growth is resources - although it will be soon enough - but consumer saturation; I think we already see people beginning to reject overconsumption, searching for a healthier lifestyle, and many seem to be increasingly skeptical about so-called lifestyle product. Much as people hate to hear it, Marx was right in that respect: capitalism's blind insistence on unlimited growth will end, one way or another, and we will learn to live within the limitations of our natural environment. The question is only how we get there - we still have some choice in the matter and can opt for a soft landing of sorts.
And please note, before you start calling me a communist, that I am not against freedom, self-determination, democracy or all the other things, but I am very much against willful, blind idiocy. Show me where me thinking is wrong - convince me with sensible, logical arguments, and I will change my views, but go away, if all you have on offer is faith based optimism.