Chinese engineers in top cities (Beijing, Shanghai, etc.) get paid comparably to the West. An entry-level SDE at Alibaba in Beijing gets offered like 80k USD, which is close to the compensation in Toronto (~110k USD for an entry-level at Amazon), Berlin (~70k for the same position at Amazon), and London (~80k for the same).

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Huh. That's impressive, but I guess poor countries are also often unequal countries. Does that go for civil and mechanical engineers as well?

[–] zephyreks@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

No idea, that's not my industry. There's a reason Chinese people value education so much. It's a key driver in upwards socioeconomic mobility.

[–] KevonLooney@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With large construction projects, skilled labor is not as expensive as the land needed.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm going to guess land is cheaper in Indonesia too, but I'm not sure.

Why is that? You'd expect that labour requirement would scale with track length just as land requirement does. Or do you just mean the engineers?