[Singapore][Frontend Engineer] 3 Reasons Why I Chose to Leave Taiwan

I'm a frontend engineer who recently relocated from Taiwan to Singapore. I got a Singapore job opportunity through LinkedIn, and after much consideration with my wife, we decided to leave Taiwan for a new life. Having lived here for over a month now, I want to share some thoughts and experiences from a Taiwanese engineer's perspective. Let me start by sharing my motivation:

Why did I want to leave Taiwan for Singapore?

There was actually a lot of internal conflict during the decision-making process. Ultimately, my decision was mainly based on gaining overseas experience, children's educational environment, and salary and career growth.

Gaining Overseas Experience

Since my student days, I've wondered if I'd have the chance to work in different countries, experiencing different cultures and broader workplace experiences. Now that the opportunity is here, I think it's a great experience for both my life and career development, hoping to broaden my horizons.

I think much of what we decide and work toward now is to avoid regrets when we're old. Many important life decisions have no right answers. I just believe that being brave enough to step out gives you a higher chance of having the life you want, and having more things to remember in old age is quite nice.

Children's Educational Environment

If we can settle in Singapore, my wife and I hope our children can receive some education here. Singapore not only has an excellent education system, but the bilingual society and school life would allow children to master English early. It's not hard to imagine that for our next generation, English will just be a basic requirement. We hope our children can establish a good foundation from young age and have enough freedom of choice in the future.

However, Singapore's education is notoriously stressful, and news of children having problems due to pressure is not uncommon. If our child really can't adapt and isn't happy, returning to Taiwan isn't bad either. These are really just nice-to-haves - the most important thing is that children grow up happily.

Salary and Career Growth

Although software engineers in Taiwan earn relatively high salaries, globally speaking, the compensation is still low. Facing the high housing prices in northern Taiwan, I really want to accelerate my savings rate.

Singapore offers higher salaries and more opportunities for software engineers than Taiwan. Interested people can check levels.fyi and indeed. If I want to return to Taiwan in the future, having this additional experience would be a plus for job hunting. It also provides better chances to find remote work opportunities in other countries. Being able to stay in Taiwan while earning global pay is a small dream of mine.

Although I mentioned many incentives above, I still had many concerns initially, such as being separated from family and friends, missing my child's growth, not adapting to new work or living environments, etc. My thinking was: just go first, and if things don't work out, come back anytime without putting too much pressure on myself.

Time flies - over a month has passed, and most of my worries haven't materialized. Video calls are so advanced now, and my child has developed a habit of video calling me at fixed times daily, which is actually quite heartwarming (I'd also recommend Facebook's video tool). I've also started meeting new friends and fellow Taiwanese. Apart from the pandemic situation still being unstable, I'm quite satisfied with life now. Once everything stabilizes, I plan to bring my family over!

Follow Your Heart

I think it's quite worthwhile for software engineers to step out of Taiwan and see the world. Often, the uncertainty in our hearts is just thoughts that hinder our actions. Many decisions involve risks, but as long as you evaluate properly and think through your exit strategy clearly, don't overthink it - just be brave and do it. Sometimes the biggest risk is not taking any risks at all.

Perhaps in the future, thanks to technology or the pandemic (kidding), with higher global talent mobility, it might motivate Taiwanese companies to retain talent with better compensation packages.