No More "Easy Money"
After finishing university with a degree in Computer Science from a top school in Hanoi in 2018, Long easily found a job in his field. His starting salary was more than 15 million dong per month. In just over a year, Long changed jobs once to increase his pay. His salary went up from 15 million to 20 million, then to 30 million, and finally to 40 million dong in about 5 years.
"Since I left university, I got many job offers. Every week, I would get messages from recruiters asking me to try new jobs. Some weeks, I even got two or three calls or messages. But from last year until now, it's rare to get such calls. When I do, they're mostly for jobs that need very high skills, but the pay isn't as good as I hoped," Long explains.
Students attend IT training courses to seek future job opportunities (Photo: dantri.vn)
IT workers like Long used to think changing jobs was normal to get better pay after working at a company for a few years. This was because there were many job opportunities and salaries usually went up based on experience. But now, things are not so easy.
Long compares: "Before, when I changed jobs, I only had 2 interview rounds. Now it's 5 rounds. It's really tiring. The questions to check my skills are harder too, and they want even more from workers."
This big problem is that salaries are not going up. They're even lower than before. This makes Long worried and a bit scared. After a month of sending resumes and going to interviews, Long decided to stay at his current job. He now has more work, more stress, but the same pay.
"It's not easy money like before," Long signs. "We have to accept this because the job market is still tough. Even big tech companies around the world and in Vietnam are letting people go."
Ms. Nguyen Hong Nhung, a headhunter (Photo: dantri.vn)
After being "laid off" when his company had trouble getting orders, Nguyen Minh Tuan (27 years old, Hanoi) has been looking for a new job for 7 months without success. "Maybe because I worked for 4 years straight, I didn't get to try new technologies and more challenging projects," Tuan admits.
Even though some companies are ready to hire, Tuan had to say "no", because the pay was 30% less than what he got before leaving his old company.
Nguyen Hong Nhung, a headhunter (someone who finds workers for IT companies) in Da Nang, says that compared to last year, this year is a bit better. Fewer companies are letting people go, but overall, the job market is still not great.
According to Nhung, this year's main problems are lower salaries and higher job requirements. She says that working with foreign partners and being good at speaking foreign languages are now mus-have skills for a new hires. In the past, IT workers only needed to know basic English for their job. But now, they need to have at least a B2 level in English or N2 level in Japanese. They also need to speak fluently to have a chance at getting a job.
Salary Pressure and Job Requirements
A recent report about IT jobs by Navigos shows that compared to 2023, fewer IT workers are being let go by companies. However, the number of IT workers who lost their jobs in 2023 and still haven't found a new work this year is very high, over 60%.
Nguyen Thanh Long, who leads the tech department at a big company in Ho Chi Minh City, says that there are more orders from other countries coming to Vietnam this year. This is because workers here are cheaper. But there's a problem - there aren't enough works in Vietnam to do all the work:
"We're getting more work, but there aren't enough experienced employees. Many new employees only have 2-5 years of experiences. Also, for the same job and experience, salaries are now 10-30% lower than they were two years ago," Long explains.
Headhunter Hong Nhung also says that some IT workers have to lower their salary expectations by almost half to keep their jobs. There aren't many similar positions to choose from. She mentions a case where an experienced worker, even at the level of a tech director earning about 5,000 USD before, is now willing to apply for a job that pays only 70 million dong (about half of what he used to earn).
Also, Nguyen Thanh Long, the tech department head, says that more cheap workers are entering the job market. This makes competition in the IT field even tougher. Compared to 10 years ago, young workers now have very good technical skills and language abilities. But there are too many of them are not enough jobs, so everyone has to work harder to find a job.
When hiring new people, Thanh Long says that because of high competition, they ask for more from job applicants. Long uses many ways to find the best workers. He gets too many CVs, so he prefers to look at people who graduated from top universities. People who finished school in the last year or so don't have much chance to get hired.
Back to Real Value
Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Duc, a top expert at Trapets Vietnam, Scandinavian Software Park, has watched the IT job market for many years. He says that even through IT salaries have gone down a lot, it's still one of the best-paying jobs. He thinks the lower salaries are actually good, bringing IT pay back to its real value.
"Before, people thought IT workers were worth more than they really were. In past years, when companies needed workers badly, they would agree to hire anyone available. Then, stories about very high salaries spread, making people expect too much. This was especially true during Covid-19. When the tech industry was booming, even young programmers had big dreams about their value, which led to programmer salaries getting too high," Mr. Duc explains.
Mr. Duc remembers the IT boom time when hiring was very hard because workers wanted too much. He thinks this made many people miss good chances to join interesting projects because they only cared about money. Now that the job market has changed and companies don't need as many workers, he's sure salaries will become more normal.
IT hiring experts also say that high salary hopes during the boom time will make workers disappointed and maybe miss chances to learn. At the same time, AI is growing fast in ways we didn't expect, putting programmers in a situation where they "could be replaced anytime".
"Right now, using AI at work has helped solve about 80% of simple programming tasks. In a few more years, tha changes could even bigger," Mr. Duc shares.
Also, Mr. Duc says that the IT industry getting smaller in the last two years has made tech companies in the country need to change. During the fast growth time, startup companies often lived on orders from rich countries. This made businesses depend too much on what other countries wanted.
For this expert, the hard times recently are also a test. It helps companies make better long-term plans to survive, and lets workers with real skills shine.
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