Salaries in vietnam

if you are an expat, same as anywhere else.

You might want to check this publication:  https://anhtuanle234.files.wordpress.co … e-2017.pdf

Thanks THIGV, thats very useful!

Actually, I have to credit krs2.

https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=594871

I only found a way to get directly to the publication without going through Adecco.

OK well, thanks to krs2, too!

Thanks for posting the Adeco report, but these must be salaries for local people not expats. $2700 max for a project manager with 20 years experience ???

Andrefk wrote:

Thanks for posting the Adeco report, but these must be salaries for local people not expats. $2700 max for a project manager with 20 years experience ???

Why do you think that expat wages should be higher?  In fact $2700 would provide a very comfortable lifestyle in Vietnam.  What special skills do you have that a college educated Vietnamese with 20 years experience does not have as well?  In fact your value may be discounted by an employer because you likely do not speak Vietnamese.   Several Vietnamese have overseas education as well.  I see that you are living in Qatar so maybe you are in the oil business and if so there should be work for you in Vietnam but you should not expect a large premium over local engineers on wages.   Vietnam is no longer a third world backwater that you can move to and immediately expect to be compensated above the rate of your peers.

To command a premium requires that you have special skills not present in the local population.  Maybe you could detect and blow up land mines like eodmatt.   

THIGV wrote:

Andrefk wrote:

Thanks for posting the Adeco report, but these must be salaries for local people not expats. $2700 max for a project manager with 20 years experience ???

Why do you think that expat wages should be higher?  In fact $2700 would provide a very comfortable lifestyle in Vietnam.  What special skills do you have that a college educated Vietnamese with 20 years experience does not have as well?  In fact your value may be discounted by an employer because you likely do not speak Vietnamese.   Several Vietnamese have overseas education as well.  I see that you are living in Qatar so maybe you are in the oil business and if so there should be work for you in Vietnam but you should not expect a large premium over local engineers on wages.   Vietnam is no longer a third world backwater that you can move to and immediately expect to be compensated above the rate of your peers.

To command a premium requires that you have special skills not present in the local population.  Maybe you could detect and blow up land mines like eodmatt.   

Except that there are few opportunities for that activity here, except with international NGO's. Also, the local clearance companies don't want qualified ex-pats managing their projects, which are mainly based on bluff, bullshit and extracting as much as possible from the contract, whilst providing shoddy outputs, inaccurate recording and reporting.... I expect my IP address will be blocked again now    - except that.....  I'm not in Vn at the moment 

Thanks to all who responded including the Vietnamese member who thought that western expect should work for the same salary as viatnemese. Yes you may be right that  the Vietnamese are qualified to do ALL THE WORK western expats can do. I love your country and your people my friend although I have never been there yet. But keep on dreaming that an  American or British Infrasytucture Project Manager who typically makes 20,000-30,000 USD a month will come to Vietnam for 3,000 dollars.

Anyways good luck to all

And there we have it.

Vietnams management is catching up, but there are still some serious concerns about the "professionalism" of some Vietnamese managers. Hence why there are currently many senior managers of banks, petro-chemical and gas companies and the like currently in prison or awaiting trial for fraud and corruption. In fact almost the entire board of directors of one oil related Vietnamese company are in the clink awaiting trial right now, as reported by the Vn press.

Andrefk wrote:

I love your country and your people my friend although I have never been there yet. But keep on dreaming that an  American or British Infrasytucture Project Manager who typically makes 20,000-30,000 USD a month will come to Vietnam for 3,000 dollars.

It's your choice.  Is anyone begging you to come?  If you already had an offer in the range that you consider acceptable for your considerable talents, would you have asked for salary information in the first place?  If you are making $20,000-30,000 US where you are, it might be best to stay right there working on Infrasytucture [sic] and if you wish take a vacation in Vietnam every year.  Or better yet, save a years worth of your current salary and come to Vietnam and never work again.

BTW I am not Vietnamese.  I am however an anti-imperialist.

eodmatt wrote:

THIGV wrote:

To command a premium requires that you have special skills not present in the local population.  Maybe you could detect and blow up land mines like eodmatt.   

Except that there are few opportunities for that activity here, except with international NGO's. Also, the local clearance companies don't want qualified ex-pats managing their projects, which are mainly based on bluff, bullshit and extracting as much as possible from the contract, whilst providing shoddy outputs, inaccurate recording and reporting....

In a way you validate my point that a foreigner can't just waltz in and expect to be hired automatically.  If even in a case that involves life and limb there is resistance, why should a Viet corporation give up a desk in Bitexco Tower with a river view.

eodmatt wrote:

Vietnams management is catching up, but there are still some serious concerns about the "professionalism" of some Vietnamese managers.  Hence why there are currently many senior managers of banks, petro-chemical and gas companies and the like currently in prison or awaiting trial for fraud and corruption. In fact almost the entire board of directors of one oil related Vietnamese company are in the clink awaiting trial right now, as reported by the Vn press.

All the more reason not to hire foreigners in top level positions where they might blow the whistle.  The Board has to keep those jobs open for their nephews.   

Note to Mods:  Still looking for that corruption emoji.

Andrefk wrote:

Thanks to all who responded including the Vietnamese member who thought that western expect should work for the same salary as viatnemese. Yes you may be right that  the Vietnamese are qualified to do ALL THE WORK western expats can do. I love your country and your people my friend although I have never been there yet. But keep on dreaming that an  American or British Infrasytucture Project Manager who typically makes 20,000-30,000 USD a month will come to Vietnam for 3,000 dollars.

1/  The "viatnemese [sic] are certainly qualified to do all the work that western expats can do" if they have the same training as western expats.  Most of them don't, but some of them do, and when they do, they do it a tad better than Western expats because they speak the same language with most of the company staff.  Communication is extremely important in business -- you do know that, do you?

2/ I wonder why anyone who makes $20K - $30K/m would think of leaving his job in the first place.  I'm not even talking about moving to VN, just leaving the company where he earns his excellent salary would be foolhardy enough.  Do you have an explanation for that kind of thinking?

3/ No one is dreaming or even flirting with the thought of bringing an American or British Project Manager to VN and pay them $3000/m.  Have you heard anyone saying that in this thread or in this entire site?  In fact, you started this thread to inquire about an expected salary for a job that you didn't have for a company with no name in a country that you've never seen -- and then, became incensed because the imaginary salary was an insult to your professional expertise.  Such farcical climax you finally achieved with your flying off the handle there.

Last, but not least, not in my book anyway, how do you profess to love a country and its people when you've never been there, never seen it, never experienced it?

Ciambella wrote:

I wonder why would anyone who makes $20K - $30K/m would even think of leaving his job in the first place?

I didn't come out and explicitly say it before, but I really doubt that the OP has honestly presented his own qualifications and level of experience.  This site lists a national (US) average salary of $113,346 for an infrastructure project manager.  That is roughly $10K per month or half to a third of what he contends he is worth.  If he is making $20K - $30K/m he must be in the top 1% of his profession.  That may be what someone makes on a Qatari oilfield but not in most of the US or Canada.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/infr … KO0,22.htm

I also wonder how a person who has never been to Vietnam can be so sure that he "love[s the] country."  Perhaps he is one of those who met a girl online and communicates by Skype. 

THIGV -- Stop posting your follow-up comments before I finished editing my posts!   

"Love" your last sentence ("I am however an anti-imperialist.")

THIGV wrote:

eodmatt wrote:

THIGV wrote:

To command a premium requires that you have special skills not present in the local population.  Maybe you could detect and blow up land mines like eodmatt.   

Except that there are few opportunities for that activity here, except with international NGO's. Also, the local clearance companies don't want qualified ex-pats managing their projects, which are mainly based on bluff, bullshit and extracting as much as possible from the contract, whilst providing shoddy outputs, inaccurate recording and reporting....

In a way you validate my point that a foreigner can't just waltz in and expect to be hired automatically.  If even in a case that involves life and limb there is resistance, why should a Viet corporation give up a desk in Bitexco Tower with a river view.

eodmatt wrote:

Vietnams management is catching up, but there are still some serious concerns about the "professionalism" of some Vietnamese managers.  Hence why there are currently many senior managers of banks, petro-chemical and gas companies and the like currently in prison or awaiting trial for fraud and corruption. In fact almost the entire board of directors of one oil related Vietnamese company are in the clink awaiting trial right now, as reported by the Vn press.

All the more reason not to hire foreigners in top level positions where they might blow the whistle.  The Board has to keep those jobs open for their nephews.   

Note to Mods:  Still looking for that corruption emoji.

Such cynicism, in one so young 

I think the OP is long gone, and may have just been trolling us in the first place.  One thing I think we are missing is input from some of the regular expat contributors who work in the oil industry in Vietnam.  Are they making $20-30K/m?  Maybe I am way off base and people are really making that kind of money.   Of course if they are they may not want to tell us.   

Another troll.   What’s a guy who reckons he’s worth ,or been getting @ $360,000 PA in a senior position doing asking questions on a travel blog?

He should know what salaries are paid here.   Most of these guys are “head hunted” or placed thru executive job placement agencies.   Once you start earning those figures you’ll know where the jobs are , and when they’ll be coming up.

A friend here is an Engineer. He doesn’t look for work, work finds him and he’s not getting $30k a month. He works out of VN mainly, but has done JV work here for multi nationals.

Maybe the OP could try football or rockstar .

There’s some guy called Eddie Hazard kicking a ball for Chelsea getting USD$265,000 A WEEK.
Yogi’s off to buy a pair of footy boots. 😆

THIGV asks "are oil company bods earning 30k a month". Well, yes and no, it depends on the job and whether you are working as a specialist consultant or as a sub contracted employee.

I was earning 13,500 USD a month as a sub contracted employee working for a consultancy firm, supporting oil and gas survey in the Mekong Delta in 2008. I was happy with that for a number of reasons. I knew that my employer was charging about 20,000 USD/month for me, but again I was OK with that. The other independent HSE/Safety/QC guys were all getting around 800 USD/day, but they had to work back to back - in this case a month on and a month off and they got half pay for the month off not the full whack.

And in Iran in 2009 I was on 1000 USD/day, same same in Thailand.

But there are other occasions when you get, say, 800 USD/day, but don't get paid for weekends. And of course as a consultant you can often go three our four months or longer with out any work at all. So its roundabouts and swings.

That's as I suspected.  Short term per diem jobs may pay in the 30K/m range but perhaps less for regular full time salaried jobs.  I have also read that in parts of the Arab world that large salaries are available to expats because the local sons of the upper classes are spoiled by oil money and don't want to do the dirty work.  Vietnam may still have some education deficit but with time, I expect any premium afforded in Vietnam to expats for engineering related services will become less and less.

At $1000/day, I'd happily work only four months a year and then party like there's no tomorrow for the remaining time!

Yeah well, I was working in Iran for 1000 a day, at the time of the elections when they were shooting people and hanging gays in the streets. Was having to do a visa run to Dubai every 9 days and we were under threat of kidnap and false imprisonment. The security situation was extremely grave.

We took a flight from Tehran to Afwaz (on the border with Iraq) in an ageing Tupolev airliner. The one flight that took off before ours crashed and killed everyone on board. The flight after ours discovered a bomb in the toilet and made an emergency landing.

We were followed everywhere by people in cars with green number plates (secret police).

Great country, niece people. Crazy politics. I stuck it for about 8 months before pulling out.

eodmatt:  Perhaps you could pass along the contact info for that $30K/month Iranian job to Andrefk as it seems he will accept nothing less.  Of course by now all the good jobs may have moved to Yemen.  So much more worth it than any of the Vietnamese oilfields.   

eodmatt wrote:

Yeah well, I was working in Iran for 1000 a day, at the time of the elections when they were shooting people and hanging gays in the streets. Was having to do a visa run to Dubai every 9 days and we were under threat of kidnap and false imprisonment. The security situation was extremely grave.

We took a flight from Tehran to Afwaz (on the border with Iraq) in an ageing Tupolev airliner. The one flight that took off before ours crashed and killed everyone on board. The flight after ours discovered a bomb in the toilet and made an emergency landing.

We were followed everywhere by people in cars with green number plates (secret police).

Great country, niece people. Crazy politics. I stuck it for about 8 months before pulling out.

Is it just me? But I would do it.. where can I sign up? 

Wald0 wrote:

Is it just me? But I would do it.. where can I sign up? 

It's just you.    I don't think many people are willing to do what Matt does, nor do they have his expertise.

Thanks Ciambella!

Anyone who wants a job at the Yadavaran oilfield in Iran can apply to: https://www.irantalent.com/home/Sinopec … -jobs.html

THIGV wrote:

You might want to check this publication:  https://anhtuanle234.files.wordpress.co … e-2017.pdf

THIGV, really helpful information and Thank you so much.

Wald0 wrote:

Is it just me? But I would do it.. where can I sign up? 

I don't think I'd do it in Iran but for half that amount I'd definitely do it in Vietnam :-D

WillyBaldy wrote:

At $1000/day, I'd happily work only four months a year and then party like there's no tomorrow for the remaining time!

It's not that hard to get that amount as consultant. I'm beginning of 30s and making about 1250$/day (Master of Science (in IT-security field), working in germany).
But it sounds better than it is: About 20 working days each month. Holiday not paid. Minus tax, insurance, long working hours, etc. And you rely on your customers, no contract -> no money.

Still waiting for that book EOD. And the movie.

WillyBaldy wrote:

Wald0 wrote:

Is it just me? But I would do it.. where can I sign up? 

I don't think I'd do it in Iran but for half that amount I'd definitely do it in Vietnam :-D

Well, I have done it in Vietnam and I can tell you that within a week I was pulling my hair out. Example #1:

Vn Manager: Mr. Matt, we want to cease doing daily safety meetings, it will save us twenty minutes a day, over 2 hours a week.

Me: Safety meetings are a contractual obligation as they are part of the Health and Safety policy of the Client (a large oil company).

Vn Manager: Look here, if we have a couple people killed or injured, I can replace them within a few days.

Example  #2: Vn Manager: We don't have to test our detectors every day because we know that they work.

For the kind of money they pay the expat, they also expect that you take responsibility and liability for the work being undertaken.

gobot wrote:

Still waiting for that book EOD. And the movie.

I'm working on it, slowly, but right now I'm a bit busy.

M

eodmatt wrote:

For the kind of money they pay the expat, they also expect that you take responsibility and liability for the work being undertaken.

And don't forget that on top of all the *** you have to deal with from the locals, you have to deal with an equal amount of *** from your parent company halfway around the world and it's cultural indifference.

Ex1:
" We only want the best so we were really picky and there weren't enough applicants so we only hired 25 of the 40 people we estimated you would need."
"It doesn't matter if employees are complaining about wages and hours, we can find plenty of people to replace them."
"Why are you behind schedule?"

Ex2:
"Hello?  Ah yes, the information you asked for last week. . .I'll get it to you tomorrow"
"While I have you on the phone, can I get you to do this and that and this other item.  All priority"
"Speaking of, that priority item I had you send me last month, I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, can you walk me through it now?"

Yep, been there dun that!

I see the words Tra Vinh. We used to call it mosquito city when we did seismic through there.

TeoLulz wrote:

LOL this thread makes me laugh with expats flexing their muscles bragging their unrealistic salaries.

$1000 a day? why not state how much you make a YEAR. making $1000/d in a war zone - why it pays that much in the first place - for a month then you are out of work for the next 10 months looking for the next contract???

$20K-30K as infrastructure project managers - in your dreams maybe - as they don't even make that much here in the states. try $10K/m in the uS and Britain.

outside of teaching English, it is expected that, given the same qualifications, foreigners will make the same as the locals, if not less, due to the language barrier.

lets face it, no westerner would want to work in VN, shortening their life span by 10-20 years, if they could find a decent job their home country. most of the expats working in VN right now either made less than $35K/y or could never find a job back home. they need to adjust their expectations.

Actually no one is bragging.  The question was asked and an honest answer given.

And for your your information, Vietnam is not a war zone, neither is Laos, Cambodia, nor Thailand, Peru, or the Solomon Islands nor Funafuti, nor Kuwait, Nor PRC China, nor Taiwan, Mozambique, Botswana - I have worked in all of those places during the last twenty years, in management positions.

I have lived in Vietnam on and off for 7 years and have worked in Vietnam on 4 major projects, non of which shortened my life so far.

As for teaching English, I have been offered $30 per hour for my time but I declined because I have no wish to deal with a classroom full of other peoples kids.

Be sure of your facts before spouting forth.

Edited to add:  I forgot to mention Iran where I worked for just under a year before the elections made it too difficult for Brit and US ex-pats to work there - and $1000 a day just wasn't enough to put up with the crap of working in a place where they hang people in the street for being gay or pissing off the police, or giving people 150 lashes in public for some minor infraction. "Lol"

I am sure that you have not worked in Iran any time. In 2009, Total, Eni, Technimont, Toyo, GS E&C and many others were working in Iran. According to my European colleagues in these companies, Iran is one of the safest countries in the world. Safer than Paris and London. Especially for foreigners. I think you've seen in Hollywood movies what you said about Iran. The salary of one thousand dollars is correct, as an employer, we even paid $ 1,500 a day to specialist employees, but you certainly were not Iran and you did not receive these salaries.
Be happy

E.Tammari wrote:

I am sure that you have not worked in Iran any time. .. but you certainly were not Iran and you did not receive these salaries.

Your post will not result in a response from EODMatt because he's no longer active on the forum.  He does stop in now and then, but he doesn't participate in a conversation.

As whether he worked in Iran and/or received a certain salary, you may want to wait until his book is published and read it before asserting your certainty again.

Ciambella wrote:

E.Tammari wrote:

I am sure that you have not worked in Iran any time. .. but you certainly were not Iran and you did not receive these salaries.

Your post will not result in a response from EODMatt because he's no longer active on the forum.  He does stop in now and then, but he doesn't participate in a conversation.

As whether he worked in Iran and/or received a certain salary, you may want to wait until his book is published and read it before asserting your certainty again.

For now E.Tammari should look up the meaning of the acronym EOD then he could know why there was such a salary.   

THIGV wrote:

For now E.Tammari should look up the meaning of the acronym EOD then he could know why there was such a salary.   

And then he may understand that when Matt said Iran wasn't safe, he (Matt) meant the word literally, no matter how much E.Tammari and his "European colleagues in these companies" insisted that "Iran is one of the safest countries in the world".  From what Matt saw up close and personal, it's definitely not "safer than Paris and London".