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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.
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.
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.
Don't worry ..there is still Bengali, Khmer, Dzongkha, Nepali and Burmese to look forward to. And that's without even leaving the region!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Communism and slave labor rates are peas in a pod. Jobs migrate from high wage areas to low wage. That's a "feature" of capitalism. In this care, the two ideologies align nicely.
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'll speak Swahili before it becomes cool.
oblig:
"me outsource you long-time."
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I sense a story about off-shoring. As if a million 1st world defense mechanism cried out at once, and then . . . . . comments.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
One of the economic problems brought about with the rise of trans-global companies is that capital is is fluid while labor is not. I'd be more than happy to live in an area that pays a lower wage as long as the cost of living was commensurately lower, but am disallowed to emigrate to another country. Funny how economist don't regard this as a distortion of the market, but the moment you mention tariffs, they throw their hands up in the air and talk about the evils of government meddling. Makes me want to go back to a gold standard just so they would have to pay for gold barges to pay their new staff. This disproportionality is somewhat addressed through the EU and other trade agreements, but is still looming as a crisis on the horizon: you can only slash and burn so often before you end up with banker's heads on pikes and Marx laughing from his grave.
Nor has economics made any inroads at addressing the problems with abundance. As many products of the tech boom are essentially digital, there is an unlimited supply which can only be profitable with artificial scarcity. Again, most economic theories I've read about are mostly silent about this distortion of the market, even going so far as to create abstractions like IP with a straight face.
It will be the height of irony if current capitalist models pave the way for market communism.
Yeah, the middle class in countries like the USA is not disappearing, its migrating to newly industrialized nations. Between the wealthy "aristocratic" elite and the working poor, software developers site firmly in the middle class in these places. Sure, the working conditions may not be plush, but compare that to say a builder or other tradesman:
In my home country, Australia, a "tradie" is entitled respect and financial remuneration that competes well with a software developer's. Here in SE Asia builders and other tradesman tend to live hand-to-mouth (it must suck to build nice houses, while living oneself in a slum) while software developers can enjoy a "middle class" lifestyle, with a house, car, consumer goods, education, health-cover and so forth.
What is interesting is that Vietnam seems to be doing particularly well in Software Development over other SE Asian nations like Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia. Is it something to do with the education system?
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
"I love the smell of H1B's in the morning."
Table-ized A.I.
Is Vietnam really Communist any more? They are China w/ the one party rule but w/o the human rights abuses
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.
Soon all the people working for pennies a day will be Vietnamese.
They are making more than "pennies per day". In China, a typical factory worker will make about $30/day. In Vietnam, about $10 per day. That may not sound like much, but money goes a lot further in poor countries. Goods tend to be expensive, but services are dirt cheap. This is enough, in either country, to afford a basic apartment, a nice bicycle, and support a family. Those living in the dormitories, are usually doing so out of choice, because they are saving their money to send home to their family in the countryside.
China still has big advantages, in both supply chains, and skills. But their big problem is a contracting workforce. More people are retiring than reaching employment age. Vietnam has a much younger population, and plenty of people still growing rice, who would be happy for a nice factory job. They will do the same thing China did: start at the low end of the value chain, and starting working their way up.
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.
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.
That just sounds like a one-party state, w/ the ruling party being called 'Communist' just b'cos of legacy, and nothing to do w/ actual ideology. Its name could have been 'Vietnamese Capitalist Party' and it would have made no difference, except perhaps truth in advertizing