Is 50K Baht monthly a competitive salary for Thai software devs?

[hansomman]

Is 50K Baht monthly a competitive salary offer to a Thai national software developer? I'm trying to attract the very best talent possible and am not really sure what the market here is just yet. My business is located in Bangkok province. I'm not looking for robots/code slaves. I want actual software engieers who can compete skill wise with western developers.

I've read in other threads most thai's (80% or more) are lucky to make 20K a month. Not sure how true that is.

Sorry if my question is very vauge, I don't really have much to go on at the moment. I've been a consultant in the west for over 10 years and am used to making 80-150 USD /hr... so paying somebody $9/hr for the same work is a weird concept to me.

Edit: Forgot to mention, besides having modern top notch development skills.. they would also have excellent oral and written English. I figure knowing English well commands a higher salary. If I'm wrong let me know.

Edited October 29, 2014 by hansomman

[kmj]

To get a higher skilled cutting edge true app coder (not unity, phonegap ) or web coder ( angular, polymer ) especially if you want good spoken and written english, I would increase your offer by approx 50%, thats just from my recruitment experience.

[rwdrwdrwd]

For a Dev with skill levels to western levels and excellent English there are a couple of questions:

1 - If they are young and without ties, why would they not move elsewhere where they can earn 10x that amount. Plenty of options for skilled Visa sponsorship in terms of Software Engineers

2 - If they wish to stay in Thailand, why would they not just work remotely for western clients? Even using the 'lowest bid wins' sites they'd earn more, and that would increase as their profile grows.

Personally, I don't think it is likely to get experienced and skilled international level devs at that rate. Possibly junior / mid level, but for senior I just don't see the attraction given the other opportunities to earn 5 - 10x the sum direct from the west.

Edited October 29, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[wow64]

We have very good Software Dev's here at my work who are paid less then 50K between 25-45 actually. They know english and are very very good at what they do. Everything is in English.

Why would they move overseas if they have a good place to work and earn enough money.

Not everyone wants to move out of Thailand for more money. Look at the number of Farang moving here and only earning a teachers wage.

[rwdrwdrwd]

If they are very good, speak perfect English and fully familiar with modern process (Agile, TDD, Continuous Deployment for example) and senior level to the same degree as a senior level in Silicon Valley, being honest it's (comparatively) a pittance and it's beyond me why they would opt to work for that onsite in Thailand. I'm sure it's a nice place to work and everything, but it must be really, really, really great to drop from at least 150k that they could get freelancing from home in Thailand to <50k in exchange for going in to an office every day.

Perhaps 'what they do' isn't what is currently in demand, internationally, in the market. .NET for example. Or, 'very very good at what they do' does not translate to 'the very best talent possible' + 'software engineers who can compete skill wise with western developers' What tech do they work with? Are they working on Greenfield projects or in enhancements / support / maintenance roles?

I believe that the 'very best talent possible' in terms of the specialisms that are currently in market demand, are working for very close to full Western rates, most likely on a freelance basis from home if they are still in country.

Whilst yes there are plenty of foreigners moving here and earning low money as TEFL teachers, there are also plently of foreign freelance software engineers here earning far more than 50k working remotely. If we're talking apples-to-apples in terms of skill level, it's an odd situation that the Thai nationals opt to work onsite for a lower rate, since they would be fully aware of the opportunities by virtue of their peers and English comms skills.

Were I to set up a new tech business and hire fluent English speaking Thai staff with a caveat that they should be the 'best talent available', and be senior to a Western level - 125-150k minimum + equity + benefits/bonus. That's the point I would consider the risk of poaching / greener-grass syndrome to be mitigated and to be attractive to individuals in the top 10 percentile skills wise in terms of the current market, and still a considerable saving on Western rates.

OP what is the technology stack you're planning to use?

Edited October 29, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[mortenaa]

For 50K a month you will get a mediocre programmer at the best. Remember, a lot of Thais are not used to individual thinking, and might not be as creative as we are used to in the west. They can be OK for repetitive tasks, but can sit day in and out without solving problems with a technology they are not familiar with etc. Their salary exceptions is high. They prefer working for a reputable company, having a title eg. Senior yada yada... I have been working through several programmers myself, eventually gave it up. I know there success stories out there, and some acquaintances of mine have found a few they are happy with. Depends on the technology and the level of work you are doing.

I can help you with recruitment / outsource if you are interested.

[CNXTim]

In Chiang Mai 15k THB for capable trainees in their first year of work, up to 40 k THB for the highly experienced. But that is "lower end" tools and does not include languages such as C++ or C#.

[MobileContent]

OP:

Is 50K Baht monthly a competitive salary offer to a Thai national software developer? I'm trying to attract the very best talent possible and am not really sure what the market here is just yet. My business is located in Bangkok province. I'm not looking for robots/code slaves. I want actual software engieers who can compete skill wise with western developers.

Perfectly possible - I have been developing software application for now over 15 years with some developers in Thailand. We pay the Thais around 45-50k per month and not more. All our software apps are web based and mainly on JAVA and some different PHP frameworks.

I've read in other threads most thai's (80% or more) are lucky to make 20K a month. Not sure how true that is.

I know of one programmer that gets 20K a month and I offered him 50k and he said no as in the current company are all his friends and he feels bad if he resigns.

Sorry if my question is very vauge, I don't really have much to go on at the moment. I've been a consultant in the west for over 10 years and am used to making 80-150 USD /hr... so paying somebody $9/hr for the same work is a weird concept to me.

You have to get used to it . I am still picking up even within Thailand some time 500-600k a month in consulting fees, specially when it comes to integrating payment gateways (PCI Compliance) and I have two local banks that keep pushing business to me as they just don't want to deal with the farangs.

Edit: Forgot to mention, besides having modern top notch development skills.. they would also have excellent oral and written English. I figure knowing English well commands a higher salary. If I'm wrong let me know.

Thai's are very good in writing reports etc in English. If you want some Thais to speak, read and code perfectly in English OMG your budget should be at least 80-100k but this doesn't mean they are better coders as the Thai's with limited English. I prefer to deal with the Thai's in the Thai language and let me look after the consulting accounts.

My clients never get access to my software developers.

PM me if you are around Minburi as I have a developer who hates to drive every day into Bangkok.

[GuyL]

The average monthly income per person in Thailand was 13,237.8 THB for the second quarter of 2014 (source: National Statistical Office of Thailand http://www.bot.or.th/English/Statistics/Standard/SDDS/Pages/sdds.aspx). This is NOT the median income, thus, many Thais earn much less than this amount monthly, so, that's true that "most Thais are lucky if they make 20K a month".

As for the IT sector, especially for skilled English speaking staff, it's a different story. I suggest that you consult page 13 of this report: http://www.kellyservices.co.th/uploadedFiles/Thailand_-_Kelly_Services/4-Resource_Center/White_Papers_and_Reports/Thailand%20Salary%20ebook%202013-14.pdf

[fletchsmile]

The average monthly income per person in Thailand was 13,237.8 THB for the second quarter of 2014 (source: National Statistical Office of Thailand http://www.bot.or.th/English/Statistics/Standard/SDDS/Pages/sdds.aspx). This is NOT the median income, thus, many Thais earn much less than this amount monthly, so, that's true that "most Thais are lucky if they make 20K a month".

As for the IT sector, especially for skilled English speaking staff, it's a different story. I suggest that you consult page 13 of this report: http://www.kellyservices.co.th/uploadedFiles/Thailand_-_Kelly_Services/4-Resource_Center/White_Papers_and_Reports/Thailand%20Salary%20ebook%202013-14.pdf

Looks a useful report - particularly for junior staff up to 8 years experience. Numbers broadly look reasonable for professional people.

Shame it doesn't go much into the experience categories above 8 years, where the salary bands can widen significantly. Useful though

Cheers

Fletch

[innerspace]

You certainly can find talented staff at that rate or you can pay a lot more for higher talent and more western work ethics.

[HerbalEd]

You want the very best engineers ... and fluent in English .... and yet you want to pay as little as possible. You may be a good IT tech but not a good business man. Given how much you say you pay the same quality engineers in your home country, why not offer your Thai engineers pay that's significantly better than the base-line Thai wage? You can pay them substantially more and yet still pay way much less than you would in your home country.

You get what you pay for. Why be the cheap Charlie when you can be the smart businessman?

In my 35 years of building a home-kitchen business into a $20M company, I always treated my employees very well and paid and gave bonuses 15% to 25% above the local scale. Plus great benefits. Some of the neighbor businesses complained that I was upsetting the local pay scale ... and they were pissed that many of their well-qualified workers came to work for me (without being solicited). Unfortunately they failed to realize that paying well and caring for employees can actually make the company more money. Happy employees take less sick days, work harder and smarter, have company pride and loyalty and tend to be long-term employees. Sure, a few employees don't appreciate what they get and cause trouble, but their fellow employees don't put up with it and soon the bad employees quit and move on.

Edited October 29, 2014 by HerbalEd

[hansomman]

You want the very best engineers ... and fluent in English .... and yet you want to pay as little as possible. You may be a good IT tech but not a good business man. Given how much you say you pay the same quality engineers in your home country, why not offer your Thai engineers pay that's significantly better than the base-line Thai wage? You can pay them substantially more and yet still pay way much less than you would in your home country.

You get what you pay for. Why be the cheap Charlie when you can be the smart businessman?

In my 35 years of building a home-kitchen business into a $20M company, I always treated my employees very well and paid and gave bonuses 15% to 25% above the local scale. Plus great benefits. Some of the neighbor businesses complained that I was upsetting the local pay scale ... and they were pissed that many of their well-qualified workers came to work for me (without being solicited). Unfortunately they failed to realize that paying well and caring for employees can actually make the company more money. Happy employees take less sick days, work harder and smarter, have company pride and loyalty and tend to be long-term employees. Sure, a few employees don't appreciate what they get and cause trouble, but their fellow employees don't put up with it and soon the bad employees quit and move on.

I posted this question because I have no idea what the current market rate for a skilled Thai engineer is. I'm not looking to pay as little as possible. I'm looking to find out what the average is, and then offer more to attract high quality people. Your absolutely right that happy employees are an important part of almost any business.

[Expat1]

If you want your operation to run well and sleep at night I suggest you do what larger successful companies do in the rest of Asia. I have business associates that do precisely this. Go to China and recruit what you need and obtain work permits for them here. The chinese standard of English is higher and the coding skills are superior, due to the superior written English if for no other reason. This scenario is carried out in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and here as well. The Chinese engineers are very happy to have the job, especially overseas.

[HidyHo]

You want the very best engineers ... and fluent in English .... and yet you want to pay as little as possible.

It seems like there are assumptions in your post. And you know what they say about ASS-U-ME.

And while it seems like you built a successful business for yourself, it was in different industry and I *assume* not in Thailand. There was post already in this thread where a software engineer in Thailand who's making 20K turning down 50K offer. I guess there maybe other influencing factors in choosing/changing a job than just money.

[nkg]

Yes, 50K is a good wage for a Thai software developer. A lot of places will only pay 20K-30K.

If most of your team are on 40K-50K, with a few "star" devs earning more, you will be able to attract some excellent employees.

[wow64]

Yeah for Thai staff don't go anywhere near over 50K.

After you get the staff and they turn out to be good then maybe offer some more incentives but that is a good wage already.

I work for a Big Multinational here and there is no way we will pay more then that. As it is we already have over qualified staff trying to get the positions for a lot less. 80-100K unless its an expat no way in the world.

Currently I have 60 Thai staff on my project of which 15 are software devs. No turn over in the past 12 months from the Software devs.

[rwdrwdrwd]

It's worth noting the complete lack of globally successful startups and software companies founded or based in Thailand... I'm sure there are decent Thai educated software engineers, but strongly suspect that the usual route for them is to expat to the west (or HK/Singapore), and understandably so if they are maxing out at 50k a month. Much like happens with decent devs from South Asia.

Not saying there aren't people that are 'good' or 'experienced', but referring to the 'very best talent possible' and 'software engineers who can compete skill wise with western developers' which I am read as >5 years post grad level commercial experience, autodictats and polyglots with end to end skills. Devs that would get hired into senior roles as direct hires at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple etc for their US onsite roles, strong CS fundamentals, likely very skilled with either Java or C++, very skilled with more than one of of Python, Ruby and Node, decent experience both on the UI and in DevOps and extremely familiar with modern dev process, eg Agile, TDD, CI, branching strategies.

Edited October 30, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[thonglover]

Look at any Thai website. Try to use any. Then ask yourself if you really want to hire Thai developers. At any price.

[rwdrwdrwd]

The only site I can think of that is decent is Agoda, I notice they are often hiring and often open to visa sponsorship including relocation packages for foreigners - wonder how much they pay, would put money on them going up to and above 100k for the right Thai candidate that really fits the bill.

https://careers-agoda.icims.com/jobs/1425/development-manager/job

https://careers-agoda.icims.com/jobs/1440/frontend-development-manager/job

Being frank, I don't see why a Thai candidate with the correct skillset and experience, if they can find one (which I strongly suspect is tricky, and might explain why they are open to expat packages), should not be paid the same as a foreign sourced candidate, and these are easily 250k - 300k / month roles imo - even without the management aspect. I wouldn't do them for less anyway, have all the skills and experience for them so am not making a blind guess here.

Not sure why someone Thai with the same experience wouldn't be able to justify the same rate, especially in this industry where they can work remotely direct for western co's if they want. But regardless, even if life is that unfair to them it's definitely, definitely a >100k role.

Edited October 30, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[fire69water]

You want the very best engineers ... and fluent in English .... and yet you want to pay as little as possible. You may be a good IT tech but not a good business man. Given how much you say you pay the same quality engineers in your home country, why not offer your Thai engineers pay that's significantly better than the base-line Thai wage? You can pay them substantially more and yet still pay way much less than you would in your home country.

You get what you pay for. Why be the cheap Charlie when you can be the smart businessman?

In my 35 years of building a home-kitchen business into a $20M company, I always treated my employees very well and paid and gave bonuses 15% to 25% above the local scale. Plus great benefits. Some of the neighbor businesses complained that I was upsetting the local pay scale ... and they were pissed that many of their well-qualified workers came to work for me (without being solicited). Unfortunately they failed to realize that paying well and caring for employees can actually make the company more money. Happy employees take less sick days, work harder and smarter, have company pride and loyalty and tend to be long-term employees. Sure, a few employees don't appreciate what they get and cause trouble, but their fellow employees don't put up with it and soon the bad employees quit and move on.

50K bahts per month isn't exactly 'peanuts' cheap, especially in Thailand. But most employers here will know, money is not the prime factor here. It's much more complicated.

[nkg]

Being frank, I don't see why a Thai candidate with the correct skillset and experience, if they can find one (which I strongly suspect is tricky, and might explain why they are open to expat packages), should not be paid the same as a foreign sourced candidate, and these are easily 250k - 300k / month roles imo - even without the management aspect. I wouldn't do them for less anyway, have all the skills and experience for them so am not making a blind guess here.

Not sure why someone Thai with the same experience wouldn't be able to justify the same rate, especially in this industry where they can work remotely direct for western co's if they want. But regardless, even if life is that unfair to them it's definitely, definitely a >100k role.

I'm sure many of the "superthai" candidates have already been directly hired by foreign companies like Oracle, Google and Microsoft, and are earning the 300K salaries that you mention.

It doesn't necessarily follow that the Thais that are left behind should be earning 100K-200K in their own country. Try living in London or San Jose without spending $50,000/year on the basics - Thailand is incredibly cheap by comparison.

[rwdrwdrwd]

Being frank, I don't see why a Thai candidate with the correct skillset and experience, if they can find one (which I strongly suspect is tricky, and might explain why they are open to expat packages), should not be paid the same as a foreign sourced candidate, and these are easily 250k - 300k / month roles imo - even without the management aspect. I wouldn't do them for less anyway, have all the skills and experience for them so am not making a blind guess here.

Not sure why someone Thai with the same experience wouldn't be able to justify the same rate, especially in this industry where they can work remotely direct for western co's if they want. But regardless, even if life is that unfair to them it's definitely, definitely a >100k role.

I'm sure many of the "superthai" candidates have already been directly hired by foreign companies like Oracle, Google and Microsoft, and are earning the 300K salaries that you mention.

It doesn't necessarily follow that the Thais that are left behind should be earning 100K-200K in their own country. Try living in London or San Jose without spending $50,000/year on the basics - Thailand is incredibly cheap by comparison.

I spent 5 years living in London working as an IT consultant, and whilst I have never lived in San Jose, I have visited San Francisco and LA regularly with work and am aware of the cost of living - much higher of course, but in London, for example, living in Zone 2 I would still have 50% of post tax earnings available after all expenses paid for the month. I don't see people having anything like a comparable lifestyle on 50k THB a month, by comparable I mean perhaps eating out a couple of times a week in a decent restaurant, 2 bed nice apartment in a good area, furnishings, a car, gym membership, cinema visits, foreign travel, consoles, TVs, Apple hardware etc with a decent chunk left to put away as savings every month.

Yes it's cheaper here but not by a factor of 6, especially in BKK, and these people can make or break a business, particularly a new one. I think they deserve rewarding properly for their skills.

The other point is that if there are 'superthai' candidates as you put it in Thailand, someone suitable, for example, for the role I linked to - they could easily be getting 100kTHB+ a month (and moving up and beyond 200kTHB+ pretty quick if they are good and fill a week) just working from home for western co's, and if they are active in the communities for the languages they are experienced in (which they would be), they'd be aware of this. Given this, I suspect the candidates on 50k simply aren't of the calibre the OP references - 'the very best possible'.

125k still seems like the right figure to me for a top 10% (internationally) software engineer, bearing in mind local cost of living (roughly 40% - 50% for a comparable lifestyle), however I think it still runs a risk of them getting poached by one of the growing numbers of distributed teams that pay purely on skill and productivity, not location - http://jobs.bufferapp.com/backend-hacker for example would hire a 'superthai' working from home on 88k USD - 140k USD.

Edited October 31, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[hansomman]

It's worth noting the complete lack of globally successful startups and software companies founded or based in Thailand... I'm sure there are decent Thai educated software engineers, but strongly suspect that the usual route for them is to expat to the west (or HK/Singapore), and understandably so if they are maxing out at 50k a month. Much like happens with decent devs from South Asia.

Not saying there aren't people that are 'good' or 'experienced', but referring to the 'very best talent possible' and 'software engineers who can compete skill wise with western developers' which I am read as >5 years post grad level commercial experience, autodictats and polyglots with end to end skills. Devs that would get hired into senior roles as direct hires at Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple etc for their US onsite roles, strong CS fundamentals, likely very skilled with either Java or C++, very skilled with more than one of of Python, Ruby and Node, decent experience both on the UI and in DevOps and extremely familiar with modern dev process, eg Agile, TDD, CI, branching strategies.

http://www.oozou.com/

They look pretty successful to me. All their clients are western. A dev house started by a UK citizen but all the developers are Thai. They are supposedly the best of the best in Thailand when it comes to RoR webapps and IOS mobile apps. The average they pay is 50-80K. I read in an interview they are one of the highest paying employers in BKK.

Also, when you mention a Thai citizen that is skilled in modern technologies and development practices could just work remotely for a western client... that is much easier said than done. It's not like they just go to a magical website that lists western employers who will hire people from 10K miles away. Then you also have to factor in laws when it comes to hiring non-citizens. Correct me if I'm wrong.. I'm just assuming here.

Edited October 31, 2014 by hansomman

[rwdrwdrwd]

http://www.oozou.com/

They look pretty successful to me. All their clients are western. A dev house started by a UK citizen but all the developers are Thai. They are supposedly the best of the best in Thailand when it comes to RoR webapps and IOS mobile apps. The average they pay is 50-80K. I read in an interview they are one of the highest paying employers in BKK.

I agree, they look very good in terms of tech and process - they are certainly an outlier in Thailand though. It's also worth mentioning that looking at their about us page, the Dev team is c25% foreigners with more foreigners on the technical PM side - they aren't all Thai.

It is good to see though that we're moving beyond this max-50k limit and heading in a fairer direction for Thai national devs. Could easily see their very senior engineers on 100 and their juniors on 30 to get that average.

Also, when you mention a Thai citizen that is skilled in modern technologies and development practices could just work remotely for a western client... that is much easier said than done. It's not like they just go to a magical website that lists western employers who will hire people from 10K miles away. Then you also have to factor in laws when it comes to hiring non-citizens. Correct me if I'm wrong.. I'm just assuming here.

Actually there is a magic website or two. These are the best I have found though there are more (and Twitter is pretty good for finding them as well)

http://weworkremotely.com - created by 37signals has loads of Dev roles (especially Rails) that tend to be western rate paying.

http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true&sort=p - again loads of activity for Dev roles and often western rates

There are also career pages for distributed companies like the one I linked to earlier - http://jobs.bufferapp.com and http://automattic.com/work-with-us/, though of course these are harder to find - not so hard if someone is an experienced dev and active online though - Github / StackOverflow / Hacker News etc - word spreads fast.

In terms of laws, often long term remote contracts are consulting agreements and operate on an invoice basis. No beaurocracy at all there, it's dead easy, no need for the Dev to even operate via a company.

Edited November 1, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[Chao Lao Beach]

I Think the MEDIAN would be much less, do you know that by any chance ?

The average monthly income per person in Thailand was 13,237.8 THB for the second quarter of 2014 (source: National Statistical Office of Thailand http://www.bot.or.th/English/Statistics/Standard/SDDS/Pages/sdds.aspx). This is NOT the median income, thus, many Thais earn much less than this amount monthly, so, that's true that "most Thais are lucky if they make 20K a month".

As for the IT sector, especially for skilled English speaking staff, it's a different story. I suggest that you consult page 13 of this report: http://www.kellyservices.co.th/uploadedFiles/Thailand_-_Kelly_Services/4-Resource_Center/White_Papers_and_Reports/Thailand%20Salary%20ebook%202013-14.pdf

PS, just to make it easier for non English speakers, here is the definition of Median form wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median

[Chao Lao Beach]

The only site I can think of that is decent is Agoda, I notice they are often hiring and often open to visa sponsorship including relocation packages for foreigners - wonder how much they pay, would put money on them going up to and above 100k for the right Thai candidate that really fits the bill.

FYI Agoda is owned and managed by Priceline, an American company listed on the NASDAQ.

Edited November 1, 2014 by Chao Lao Beach

[rwdrwdrwd]

The only site I can think of that is decent is Agoda, I notice they are often hiring and often open to visa sponsorship including relocation packages for foreigners - wonder how much they pay, would put money on them going up to and above 100k for the right Thai candidate that really fits the bill.

FYI Agoda is owned and managed by Priceline, an American company listed on the NASDAQ.

Yep, I knew - still think it's relavant to be held up as one of very, very few examples of strong Thai based internet co's though since it was founded in Thailand and the dev team remains in BKK - Priceline acquired it in 2007, and it was head and shoulders above most Thai based web services before they acquired it.

Edited November 1, 2014 by rwdrwdrwd

[DjChris28]

On 01/11/2014 at 7:09 PM, rwdrwdrwd said:

Yep, I knew - still think it's relavant to be held up as one of very, very few examples of strong Thai based internet co's though since it was founded in Thailand and the dev team remains in BKK - Priceline acquired it in 2007, and it was head and shoulders above most Thai based web services before they acquired it.

I Work for Agoda and yes they do pay very well compared to other places in Bangkok. I can't share with you my salary  at agoda though. But even for me, even though Agoda are the best payers, i'm still far better off and save more money working back in my home country. Before I went to work for Agoda, I was a highly paid contractor (Saving approx 595USD per week after rent, food, bills and anything I wanted to do on the weekend). I worked out that an employer would have to pay around 170k Baht per month after tax to equal what I could save back home! The only way I can work in Thailand without salary loss is to run my own business.

[rwdrwdrwd]

Indeed, 3 years later it is still far more lucrative to work remotely for US/EU orgs - plenty of roles out there that would pay double the 170k you mention for senior remote devs.

120k US is low in SFO and plenty of orgs there will hire remote workers wherever they are in the world at a senior level at normal SFO rates - the primary issue is timezone, which requires a serious commitment to async communication on the part of the org, or a very flexible attitude on the part of the dev to adjust their hours.

NYC / AUS / UK / EU are more aligned timezones, but lower rates - still far better than here though.

That all said, there has been a noticeable increase in really decent Thai based websites in the last 3 years - definite movement there, hopefully the salaries grow too.

Edited July 26, 2017 by rwdrwdrwd