Siu Lun

I have been living in Hong Kong for 6 months now. The transition from my life back when I was in England is needless to say, quite large. However at the same time, most things seems very familiar.

One thing that I’ll probably won’t be able to get used to if I was employed here is that there are so so many people here. There is also so so many web developers here. Or at least, they claim they are web developers. I was actually trying to find a job during the past month. Went to 3 interviews out of around 8+ applications. There I was also thinking that I would defintely be hired or at least get an interview in every application I’ve applied for because of my skills, experience and most of all passion and of course also because I was the one choosing whether I would be suitable for them and they would be suitable for me. So everyone of those applications I had 80% confidence to at least get an interview.

How wrong can I be.

Apparently in Hong Kong, most don’t care if you’re passionate, most don’t care if you have skills or experience. The most important thing to them is first of all you’re cheap, then you must be able to memorise syntax and theories you’ve learnt in Computer Science classes. This is the sucess formula to getting a job. That is not entirely true either. They also value you more if you’re old.

They’ll pay you more just because you’re older, more experienced. So there I was, thinking, most of those who didn’t even get back to me is probably because I’m asking for 2/3 of what I was paid in England, and they still think I’m expensive. The typical salary here for a web developer apparently in the range of HKD 10k-15k per month. Equivalent to 1/2 of my graduation salary back in England. Furthermore, they don’t give annual leave in your first year.

Cost of living wise, with the exception of food. It is more expensive than England. However the weird thing is the amount they charge their customers is comparable to England. So I guess the boss in Hong Kong gets the biggest piece of the pie and doesn’t like to share.

Maybe I was unlucky.

Still, I was thinking, with so many ‘quality’ developers in Hong Kong, why is all the websites that I’ve seen in Hong Kong so rubbish… I’m not talking about really old ones, but even more recent ones. I have a few theories, but I think it is most likely a combinational factor.

My hypothesis goes like this.

My observation has lead me to believe that:

• Most Hong Kong people don’t like spending on advertising/design and websites.
• Most Hong Kong web developers are noobs.

It has also revealed that the Hong Kong government has free courses to teach young people web design and development and Photoshop and Illustrator.

Do you see a problem here? I believe one of the reason why Hong Kong people do not like spending on websites is because people have done it before, and none of them looks any good and works and actually benefit their company. The reason is because of my 2nd observation.

This leads to a limited market for web developers. With less incentives, the more talented people do not bother entering. Moreover, with the free courses avaliable to those usually with bad grades and cannot enter university to learn finance. The government has cheapened the entire web development industry in Hong Kong.

Now I would call this a positive feedback loop. Where the quality is getting less and less, the market is getting smaller and smaller. Soon, web development becomes a very small and unrewarding market for the “unskilled”, “unpassionate”.

Actually, I’ve also noticed there seems to be alot of web developers that are like myself, and finished unversity overseas before coming back to Hong Kong to live. I wonder how they feel about the situation. I guess those that has a wealthy family background is ok.

I must admit, I don’t like those free courses. They learn how to use dreamweaver, great, so apparently if they know the basics, then they will never need to find someone like myself to help them build a proper site. If I have to find an analogy. It is like giving free courses to young people on how to fix and service cars in the UK. How many garages would still exist if that was to happen?

I’ve been quiet lately. Life is revolving, I even had a job offer from a Hong Kong based web 2.0 startup, but as usual for the past 6 months, I’ve had a lot of opportunities which I’ve missed. Well, what can you do. When you’re a 1-man-band trying to create something big.

At the moment I’m creating a CMS/framework/development platform for my company. Once that is done, I will be more ready to move to the next stage. This platform is currently in its 7th official day of development. I do wonder what I have been doing during the past 6 months.

If I calculate it. 3 months was used to get myself and the company on the ground. 1 month was taken up as a tour guide/slacking/holiday month. That leaves me an actual running time of 2 months. I ashamedly have to say, I haven’t been doing much though in terms of progress. All I’ve been doing is some server migration, development environment setup, and R&D on Python and Django.

Well, I’m happy to say I’m back on the ball. It was a tough few months the last few months. I started questioning what I am doing. I started doubting my abilities. I started doubting whether I would succeed in my vision. But I come to realise my passion for the web is still there. My abilities will only grow stronger. And most importantly, success will only come if I put my head down and charge.

I regret that I have somewhat wasted my own time the past few months, but this experience is a step towards maturing and a step towards becoming a good businessman / entreprenuer and developer.

More updates soon. Later.