Phone dropped but it's good to hear your inputs. A few questions to ask you someday.

Q1: why do you feel there are fewer (below 10) big MNC in the S'pore infrastructure market than there are financial firms. What are the MNC you count as “first tier”? Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, SAP. Trying to understand your qualifying criteria.

Q2: I feel most developers I know (including many less strong than you, Xia Rong or Hou Li) can qualify to work on Wall Street, because the minimum person-requirement is actually modest. Now consider the product support role you are in. It sounds more stringent and most developers won't qualify, and would fail on the job even if they try it?? I know what it means to fail on the job — You asked me how hard it was to break into wall street… Well I actually have some negative, near-death experiences.

Q3: why have you not left SG while so many (50%) of our China-born IT friends have?

When i come back to SG, 1st choice would be trading developer jobs in the banks — barcap, Merrill, UBS, MorganS, JPMC, Stanchar, RBS, Macquire, but I feel the other sector is worth considering, namely IT mega-multinationals like IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, HP, SoftwareAG, Cisco, google. However, I'm no longer an experienced Unix person or DBA. Not good at project management or people management. My favorite roles include presales, architect, lead developer … then you hit me with your observation on outsourcing, ie the competition, the alternative offered from the outsourcing model. Most of my favorite roles are green-field development roles. Actually, many green-field projects in NY/London are outsourced to Singapore.

Wish your wife and new baby a good start.