Interesting....and someone just told me yesterday that EE's were near the top in salary for new grads....around 55K starting. Man...if that was my starting way back in the day :-) Xiaofan Chen wrote: On 10/12/07, Vitaliy wrote: > I noticed that most technical people work on a salary basis. Can > someone explain to me why that is? > > Most of our employees (including the technical types) get paid > hourly (overtime is x1.5). > > A question to the engineers out there: which one would you > prefer, and why? Here in Singapore, most engineers on a permanent basis get paid on a salary basis. Only temp works get paid on hourly basis. Overtime is typically 1.5 times and weekend/holiday pay is double. However engineers (or executives) do not get overtime pay in many cases. Many needs to do overtime without pay since it is a norm. Last time I saw a survey saying that typically people need to work more than 20% higher than the paid hours (typically 40/42/44 hours here). Same thing happens in China. It is said that engineers in Japan/korea need to work even longer time but they get better benefits than in Singapore. Therefore many talented studnets in Singapore now do not want to study engineering. So the government has to promote engineering study as it is vital to Singapore economy. The following might be interesting to see how engineering is perceived in Singapore. http://www.moe.gov.sg/speeches/2004/sp20041101.htm "First is the perception that engineering is losing its relevance as a career. " "A second perception is that engineering jobs involve a lot of hard work and is more demanding physically." "A third perception that has little basis is that engineering is a narrow area of study that limits one's career prospects." Xiaofan -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --------------------------------- Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist