Frustration of IT industry in Hong Kong

[iancng]

Hello guys! 

 

  I have been watch linustechtips for a while and just joined this forum! I would like to share some of my thoughts about the place I live, Hong Kong.

 

  For some basic information, Hong Kong is a city of China that is a special administrative region, which means that Hong Kong is like a different country with sperates laws and society.

 

In Hong Kong, IT is very important since every bit of data runs through computers and mobile phone. But somehow, people don’t seems to treasure us that much. Since IT is like a supporting industry that works behind the stage. If we did our job well, they won’t notice anything. But if something goes wrong, it’s our fault. And IT is not a “money-making” department, so most of thr companies like even large banks fire IT guys first for lowering the budget.

  I can understand why people do this, since rather keeping a 30 something years old employee with high salary, they fire him and hire 2 fresh graduate with the same amount of money. That’s why people would like to start IT company in Hong Kong than working for companies, but the rent and electriciy costs are way too high.

  So, I would like to ask for some opinions in Linus Community. Do you think you can relocate and leave the homeland that you love, just for starting up a company that may not work at last? 

 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

50 minutes ago, iancng said:

-snip-

@AluminiumTech thoughts?

 

I'm not surprised, anything that has a supporting role is almost always under-appreciated. Take Transit here in Vancouver. It's basically the life line of business here. The moment something goes wrong, there's always a call for the CEO's head. When things are operating normally (as it is most of the time), no one bats an eye.

 

But what did you mean that they fire IT guy first for lowering the budget? 

[Arika]

6 hours ago, iancng said:

Since IT is like a supporting industry that works behind the stage. If we did our job well, they won’t notice anything. But if something goes wrong, it’s our fault. And IT is not a “money-making” department, so most of thr companies like even large banks fire IT guys first for lowering the budget.

It's like that everywhere

[iancng]

5 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

@AluminiumTech thoughts?

 

I'm not surprised, anything that has a supporting role is almost always under-appreciated. Take Transit here in Vancouver. It's basically the life line of business here. The moment something goes wrong, there's always a call for the CEO's head. When things are operating normally (as it is most of the time), no one bats an eye.

 

But what did you mean that they fire IT guy first for lowering the budget? 

Apologize for the bad english. I meant if the companies wanted to lower their budget, they will dismiss the IT Department first.

  Few large companies had devastating incident like supermarket POS  malfunction after they dismiss the IT department LOL.

   

[iancng]

Small companies in Hong Kong can’t even invest a little bit of money to backup their data to a cloud or to a NAS. This makes me hope there would be cyber attacks to give them a lesson. 

[iancng]

35 minutes ago, Sierra Fox said:

It's like that everywhere

Really sad to hear that  

It feels like IT degree worth less than business degree

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

14 minutes ago, iancng said:

Apologize for the bad english. I meant if the companies wanted to lower their budget, they will dismiss the IT Department first.

  Few large companies had devastating incident like supermarket POS  malfunction after they dismiss the IT department LOL.

   

9 minutes ago, iancng said:

Really sad to hear that  

It feels like IT degree worth less than business degree

Honestly, almost every degree is worth less than a Business degree. People in upper management (most of the holding business degrees) are the ones pulling the triggers and are almost untouchable... until the entire company falls apart.

 

Everyone else is just in the supporting role. If it weren't for us, they wouldn't be in that high position. But if they get rid of us to save a buck for themselves, well they run the risk of the entire thing falling apart.  

[iancng]

18 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Honestly, almost every degree is worth less than a Business degree. People in upper management (most of the holding business degrees) are the ones pulling the triggers and are almost untouchable... until the entire company falls apart.

 

Everyone else is just in the supporting role. If it weren't for us, they wouldn't be in that high position. But if they get rid of us to save a buck for themselves, well they run the risk of the entire thing falling apart.  

But the society is filled with tons of business degree holder lol

Hire 100 business and 1 IT

 

[iancng]

We call ourselves IT Dog in Hong Kong, its self-deprecating that we do what people asked. Everyting in the office that is broken, the colleague will come for us. Seriously, I am IT guy not an electrician. We have to develop mobile app, maintain websites with super low budget and short period of time.

[AlTech]

In Hong Kong, electricity isn't that expensive.

 

The real problem though is how disposable and undervalued IT people are.

 

They're not treated with as much respect as they should be. And yes, rent in Hong Kong is expensive unless you rent an office in like New Territories or something like that.

[Bouzoo]

Is Honk Kong in this regard the same as the rest of China? A mate of mine from my uni got a job at Microsoft in Seattle but is thinking of moving to China instead of Seattle since his girlfriend is from there, and the IT market is so huge and quite often well paid.

[Teddy07]

10 hours ago, iancng said:

Really sad to hear that  

It feels like IT degree worth less than business degree

?

I like IT and that´s why I study it. It also has better job perspectives. I even switched from economics.

 

It is everywhere the same. Nobody cares as long as you do your job right. People will complain to your boss when you did it just one time out of a hundred wrong.

 

That´s life.

[The_Grim_Reaper]

@iancng

Let me tell you something that my teacher told you.In IT Companies,the backbone is IT workers (insert No shit Sherlock meme here) and without them company cannot function.But you don't see much companies shutting down because of abundance of IT professionals.That is why when there is a Lay off in the company,IT people are sent out first.Because it is easy to hire an IT pro. 

But like @BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said,people with MBA's are the ones who pull the trigger.

But in any engineering company, persons with a Diploma are the backbone.Hence there are less jobs for people with Engineering degree and more jobs and demand for people with diploma although the pay is low.

[iancng]

On 2017/11/22 at 5:16 PM, Bouzoo said:

Is Honk Kong in this regard the same as the rest of China? A mate of mine from my uni got a job at Microsoft in Seattle but is thinking of moving to China instead of Seattle since his girlfriend is from there, and the IT market is so huge and quite often well paid.

Not really, because Hong Kong is using One Country Two System, it is separated but China is still our country. The IT market is huge since there are too many people, but I guess they are not really well paid compare to Hong Kong.

[Monkey Dust]

All support departments get the shitty end of the stick, it's no better in accounts. Or HR from what I understand. I think the problem is that people from outside the support departments don't really know what we do, we don't bring in business, we don't output a product. Their contact with us is normally when something has gone wrong or they've fucked up, and we're moaning at them. 

[Donut417]

On 11/21/2017 at 6:51 PM, iancng said:

Really sad to hear that  

It feels like IT degree worth less than business degree

Well a job of a business is to make profit, as much as possible. So non revenue producing entities like IT and HR tend to get the cold shoulder. Many of these issues are HR issues, as most companies look at employees as liabilities on the balance sheet instead of a company resource. Plus, now you got us Millennials entering the work force and many of us are not looking for the same things our parents were looking for. Which is an even larger issue for businesses.