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Korean startups

South Korean firms bullish on hiring developers from India, SE Asia 

The skyrocketing costs of hiring tech talent are driving startups and tech juggernauts to look beyond the peninsula

By Aug 08, 2022 (Gmt+09:00)

3 Min read

Tridge, an agro and livestock products trading platform operator in South Korea, has hired a number of non-Korean developers in recent years (Courtesy of Tridge)
Tridge, an agro and livestock products trading platform operator in South Korea, has hired a number of non-Korean developers in recent years (Courtesy of Tridge)


Travel startup Storicity Inc. tried for a year to find a developer in South Korea – to no avail.

But when it expanded its search abroad through a third-party agency, the company was able to find and hire a developer with 10 years of experience in Vietnam in just a week.

The new hire’s annual salary is 60 million won ($45,997). 

“If we were to hire someone domestically with similar experience, it would not have been easy even with a 100 million won ($76,685) offer,” the company’s CTO Choi Seung-hoon told The Korea Economic Daily.

Choi added the company hired another person from Malaysia with a similar background at that pay scale. 

Another company that has been in business for more than 20 years recently hired five non-Korean developers.

To work locally, it hired a full stack developer who worked in the Samsung Electronics Co.’s India office for 11 years and a backend developer in Vietnam with five years of experience. The developers’ salaries are around 60 million won and 30 million won, respectively.

Lee In-sil (right), commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) shakes hands with Dinh Huu Phi, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam following their July 15 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland (Courtesy of KIPO) 
Lee In-sil (right), commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) shakes hands with Dinh Huu Phi, director-general of the Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam following their July 15 meeting in Geneva, Switzerland (Courtesy of KIPO) 


HALF THE STAFF

The skyrocketing costs of hiring talent in tech have driven startups and tech juggernauts alike to look for developers beyond the peninsula. 

Most overseas hires are contracted programmers based in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in South Asia; and Vietnam and Malaysia in Southeast Asia.

While some of the overseas workers are based in their countries of origin, others have been hired to work in the Korean offices after being with their respective employers for some time. 

The Korea International Trade Association announced Sunday that 114 out of 236 startups surveyed – nearly half of the respondents – answered that they recently hired non-Koreans.

Seventy-eight of the surveyed Korean startups signed contracts for remote work for foreign hires.

A whopping 78% of the companies answered that they plan to hire non-Koreans. 

STARTUPS BULLISH ON FOREIGN HIRES

The main reason why eight out of 10 companies would look to hire non-Korean developers is because of the affordability.

The average annual salary for developers with less than five years of experience is around 52 million won, according to the South Korean research platform Open Survey.

The average figure excluding the pay for workers who do simple coding would be much higher. 

The first-year salary for developers at a unicorn startup or a big tech conglomerate hovers around 60 million won. The figure increases to 100 million for those with five to 10 years of experience. 

Danggeun Market, the startup behind Karrot, adjusted the first-year salary for developers to 65 million won last year. Karrot is South Korea's largest neighborhood marketplace and community app.

Karrot is South Korea's largest neighborhood marketplace app
Karrot is South Korea's largest neighborhood marketplace app


Leisure app developer GC Company Corp. provided an incentive worth 100 million won to senior developers. 

Real estate app operator Zipbang promised 80 million won for the first-year salary, and up to 100 million won as a signing bonus for experienced developers. 

The average salary for developers in Southeast Asia and South Asia is half that of South Korea. 

The average salary for developers with less than five years of experience is 32.8 million won in India and 26.8 million won in Malaysia.

Senior developers with around a decade of experience get paid about 65 million to 82 million won. 

Co-founder and CEO of Supercoder Yoon Chang-min said, “Even though hiring from Latin America and Africa is increasing, there is still a preference for Southeast Asian developers due to the narrower time difference and similar corporate culture.” 

Supercoder helps firms hire and manage remote workers outside the Korean Peninsula. 

In just a year since its launch, more than 6,000 developers in Southeast Asia have applied through the firm to work in South Korea. 

Silicon Valley-based Turing.com, which has a similar business model but for the North American market, became a unicorn late last year by raising $87 million in a Series D round with a valuation of $1.1 billion.

Write to See Eun Lee at see@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.
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