Tech professionals in Vietnam prefer foreign companies: IT salary report

Designed to address and understand the multifaceted IT job market with tons of “rosy myths” about salary and tasks, “Salary & Job Expectation of IT Professionals in Vietnam 2022-2023” builds on a detailed analysis of 1,257 IT workers’ responses across the country.

With an employee-based orientation, the latest report reveals, including but not limited to, IT professionals’ salaries based on positions and experiences, expectations among employers, and desired improvement areas.

Information technology (IT) jobs have been in high demand as technology products and services become more integral to our lives. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects the computer science and IT industry’s employment rate to grow 21% from 2021 to 2031, much faster than the average for all occupations.

The job market in Vietnam is not an exception, which is witnessing an expansion in the IT field regarding the number of companies and jobs. While there are still unexplored facets in the field, the report titled “Salary & Job Expectation of IT Professionals in Vietnam 2022-2023”, for the first time ever, has been released to reveal in-depth aspects of IT jobs based on 1,257 responses from IT professionals.

Positions with the highest salary

Game, Data, and AI/Machine Learning positions have the highest salary, compared to others with the same years of experience.

According to self-report salaries from IT professionals in different types and years of experience, IT professionals in the field of Data and AI/Machine Learning, who have at least three working years, can earn monthly salary of VND30,500,000.

Meanwhile, with the same experience, Front-end Developers and Designers make only VND23,000,000VND and VND28,000,000 per month, respectively. Even professionals with more experience in the job market receive salaries that are lower or just slightly higher than those in Data and AI/Machine Learning positions.

Four-year experienced Back-end and Full-stack Developers, for instance, have a median monthly salary of VND30,000,000 and VND29,000,000, correspondingly. Mobile Developers with five experienced years can make VND33,500,000 per month. In contrast, by merely acquiring two years of experience, a Game Developer can receive a monthly salary of VND27,000,000.

Salary by IT for position & years of experience scatter chart in the report. Photo courtesy of itviec

Trendy programming languages

Trendy and specialized programming languages like Python, TypeScript, and Go may guarantee higher pay than other skills. IT professionals mastering these languages have a monthly salary of VND30 million to VND40 million with three to five years of experience. HTML/CSS, conversely, is the lowest-paid skill, with a salary of VND16 million per month.

With skills in Dart and C# programming languages, it may be more challenging for IT professionals to earn a competitive salary. Their monthly median salary is VND22,500,000, with four-year experience, and VND28,500,000, with five-year experience, respectively.

JavaScript, Bash/Shell, and Ruby languages are worth keeping an eye on if IT professionals want higher earnings, thanks to their essentiality and productivity.

Hybrid working

The Covid-19 pandemic might impact the way employees in all professions think about their working modalities. A total 70.2% of 1,257 IT professionals participating in the research were attracted and cared more about job offers that allowed hybrid working mode. Nevertheless, it was not their top concern when applying for a job.

The top four topics an IT professional would love to discuss during a job interview include the working style of future leaders, company culture, company/product development potentiality, and new challenges to conquer.

Interestingly, while salaries do not appear as IT workers’ most prioritized consideration, a large number of them expected to receive at least a 20% salary increase to accept a new job offer.

Salary is the main deciding factor for IT employees when it comes to reasons for quitting their current job. Unsatisfying salaries and rare/no chances to raise wages are the top two motives leading IT professionals to give up. Two more are no challenges in working tasks and rare/no promotion opportunities. Employees may find no conquering tasks when their assignments are too easy, on a small scale, or already in shape. Factions and politics at the workplace also contribute to employee decisions to resign.

Regarding an ideal company, IT professionals tend to refer to corporations originating from European countries, America, or Canada. Vietnamese companies come in third place, which is moderately higher than Australian and New Zealand corporates.

Once again, flexibility to work at home or no timekeeping required plays an important role to make employees stay loyal. Other factors concerning company culture are getting along with colleagues and reasonable workload, particularly, limited overtime tasks.

A clear vision of prospective growth from the company, leaders and themselves is the most significant preference of IT professionals when considering staying with a company. They would love not only to know their development and promotion potential but also to have leaders who can provide explicit foresight and orientations.

Training suggestions for HR departments

Most IT professionals want to enhance their technical skills & knowledge for short-term plans, covering 60% of responses, while switching to management skills and positions involve long-term objectives.

The top two improvement areas that they focus on are English and technological expertise. They are looking forward to learning new programming languages including Python, Go, and TypeScript at 25,3%, 22,4%, and 15%, respectively. If you find those languages familiar, yes, you read it from the second takeaway. It is reasonable to learn skills that bring you more stipend.

The report has been released for the very first time, conducted and published by ITviec, the leading job site for IT recruitment in Vietnam. The report’s findings aim to provide employers a better understanding of each IT position/type, thus, developing more successful job offers.

Qualitative information was gathered via in-depth interviews with professionals in typical IT roles. An online survey was employed consisting of multiple short questions and can be completed within 20 minutes. Qualified respondents are ITviec users and from other sources that do not relate to the ITviec platform. The report does not include IT freelancers and people who do not work in IT.