Job Discussion Forums

[Vietnamarama]

I was wondering if people could give me any up-to-date info about salary ranges and cost of accommodation in HCMC.

I have been in Vietnam for the last year teaching English, but not in HCMC. I have now been offered a job in HCMC. The job is full-time and if I take the job I would be teaching a range of school subjects at different high schools. I was told there would be a maximum of 25 teaching hours per week (mon-fri) but that the average would be around 15. Transport to and from the schools is provided. During office hours, one is expected to be in the office unless one is out teaching. So it really is full time in a way.

Could someone tell me what a reasonable salary for such a position might be? I would be teaching A level subjects, so something quite advanced. From what I have read on the forum, English teaching salaries are somewhere between $15 and $20 per hour in HCMC. Could one expect a higher salary for teaching science, mathematics, etc?

My second question is about the cost of an apartment or other type of accommodation. The office where I would be working from is in district 1., Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street to be precise. I would like to find some accommodation reasonably close so that I could walk to work or perhaps ride a bicycle. I don't need anything luxurious but do want a place where I can be comfortable.

If anyone could give any insights into salaries and accommodation that would be very much appreciated!

Cheers

[mark_in_saigon]

I will let others tackle the money question, your 15 to 20 seemed accurate enough, but the real question is about your need to hang out at the office. If you are required to be somewhere, you should be getting paid for your time, as you lose the opportunity to be somewhere else and making money. So unless I misunderstood on this (you said "out teaching", does this mean it is okay to be out teaching for pay for another school and NOT be in the office?), this is a way to have you available but not pay you. If that is the case, there is no way I would recommend this job. Perhaps others have some similar job requirements and can comment on this feature of your employment.

On housing, it is a mess. Using Craigslist is very tedious. The VN agencies flood the site with ads for apartments in the 20 to 30 dollar per square meter range, sometimes up to a dozen ads for the same unit. They are attempting to convince the expat community that is the normal price range. To the VN agencies, this is how a market works, not by supply and demand, but by deception, collusion and other nefarious practices. Those of us who are so out of touch that we pay two or three times as much as we should for other products may actually be overpaying for these units and keeping the deception alive. Recall, the average VN wage is something like $1,000 per year, not month, like 5% or something of what we earn. To think the average price of rent here is $1,000 per month is just ludicrous.

To get a more honest feel for prices, start with hotels. It is fine to stay with hotels until you work your way thru this mess. Your price may be more like $14 a square meter, but the electricity is paid and you can leave at any time, no long term commitment. They will usually negotiate down if you go by the month, and you may actually find you want to stay in a hotel long term, or just move from hotel to hotel just to enable you to explore different areas. It does take a while to find a proper deal on housing here, because the agencies are mostly focused on their scams. It is possible that the scam agencies will also feed you properly priced units if you prove you are not a sucker.

To all expats who are using these agencies, please be very open about telling them that you only want to see places that are really as advertised. Don't waste your time looking at places that they will not guarantee the status and financial terms of. If the pictures on the ad are not the pictures of the unit, they are deceiving you. If the lower priced unit is not available when you arrive, you will just turn around and leave. If the amount of money required for a deposit is unreasonable, you are not interested (big danger for us is getting back a deposit). If using CL, do a search on the ad you are looking at, if you find many identical copies of this ad, you know what kind of agency you are dealing with. The problem is, because no one regulates them (including CL, who makes it much harder to scam like this in the west, and is therefore central to this nightmare) they are all rather forced to work at the same level. A decent agent here is like a puppy among a pack of wolves. Just one horror story after another about dealing with the agents. However, the actual owners of the properties are not all scammers, (and maybe not even mostly) so the trick is just working your way thru the mess, and understanding the mentality of these agencies. Far better to use your own VN helper in the process, having him/her look for you, without you, at a VN rate of pay, and have you show up only when you have a viable opportunity. A VN can sniff out a scammer among their own people far more quickly than we can, and the scammers may crash the deal and save you both time when they see you have a professional process that is not susceptible to their practices.

It is also fine to run your own ad in housing wanted, where you can build in more control of your process, or to consider doing a share with another expat who has already gotten a decent thing going. The ads for shares usually reflect more reasonable terms, most of our guys do their homework it seems.

[LettersAthruZ]

[mark_in_saigon]

I am mostly independent also, I have done some work here for schools, but am not an expert on this question, but if this is common, people need to address this. I have seen it discussed a bit, but my knowledge is that it is not the standard process. I also have been encouraged to hang around for no obvious reason, with the promise of some kind of bonus, but not the normal hourly rate. It seems the reasons would be:

1 - so the parents dropping off and picking up see another foreign teacher, you are essentially a living and moving mannequin.

2 - for occasional tutoring at no additional cost for the students.

3 - for emergency back up use when another foreign teacher dematerializes.

The way I see it, if they have you scheduled to be there, you should be getting paid your normal rate.

[Vietnamarama]

Thanks for the replies.

I was not clear enough in my original post but Mark interpreted rightly what I said: The job is a full time jobs and I am expected to be at the office between 8am and 5:30pm (take a break around 11am I guess). I will be teaching around 20 hours per week for them so when I have a class at a school they will provide transport between the office and the school. I would not be able to do any other work unless it is in the evenings I guess.

I have just received an offer from China and it is the same deal. 20 hours of teaching and 20 hours of office work. I don't necessarily mind this provided I am being adequately compensated for my time.

So then I would like to ask: what is an appropriate salary for such a job in your opinion? I agree one should be paid for this time but I can also understand that it is perhaps not reasonable to expect the same rate of pay as when you are out teaching.

Thanks for all the helpful info regarding accommodation! If I took the job I would start by just staying in a hotel and then look around for something suitable. But could some people give me a ballpark figure of how much a 1 bedroom apartment SHOULD cost per month? I just want to get a rough idea of how much money I would have to spend on housing. I would prefer to have a place to myself rather than share.

Thanks again everyone!

[toiyeuthitmeo]

A small flat, especially conveniently located (D1, D3 or not far off), is going to be in the range of $400 (a bargain) to $600 / month (a bit steep). How you can spend less is finding a Vietnamese family with a large house and renting a room from them, sharing a house with some other expats, or getting really lucky.

Mark is totally correct. My Vietnamese friends here in my town find modest but totally livable rooms for $75 -$150 / month, and will often share these rooms with two or three others. But if it is not actually a law somewhere, it is certainly an unwritten law that Westerners are never going to get local prices to this effect.

[LettersAthruZ]

[Oh My God]

[Vietnamarama]

I do not know the exact amount I will be offered yet. I have had informal confirmation that the interview went well etc and that a formal offer would be sent out soon. I suspect the offer will be 2000usd per month.

I think $2000 net for such a position is low because I would be required to be present during office hours.

Any views, opinions,advice?

Cheers

[mark_in_saigon]

Very simple, just do the math. You said 15 hours a week. 2000 bucks would be about $31 an hour (NET!). 20 hours a week would bring you down to $24 an hour. Bring it up to 40 hours (your statement about hanging around the office), it becomes about $12 an hour. But getting paid 12 net for just hanging around doing the wave to the parents and surfing the internet is pretty good. Net means a lot, so $2,000 net means you are not paying taxes, that has to be worth several dollars an hour. Being driven to and from the place is worth something, not having to scramble around from one school to another is worth a lot more, being able to actually work that many hours (in one place) is worth a lot also, I think 40 hours is pretty tough for most guys to actually accomplish. So, based on the math, it could be a lot worse. Reality? Reality is usually a huge issue here. We make our plans, do our calculations, cook up our dreams, then the whole story becomes taken over by something you are not even thinking about. Maybe I am too cynical, but I almost never see things really happen here (in the workplace) the way we would expect them to happen in a professional environment. It is one thing to live your personal life that way, and we can actually control our personal lives more, and have some pretty nice situations develop. But in the workplace here, it is best to always have an exit strategy, a plan B, and to have very low expectations until proven otherwise. You already know this, right? We all do. My bottom line on this, $2,000 net for working 15 or 20 hours and hanging out another 15 or 20 sounds better than it is really going to be. If it is really that, without some huge unknown that makes it a disaster, then it could certainly be a lot worse.

Second opinions, docs?

[LettersAthruZ]

[Oh My God]

[Vietnamarama]

I'm not reluctant to be transparent, it is just that at this stage I do not yet have all the info. I posted my original question here to get some idea of salaries and cost of rent in HCMC so that when I do receive an offer I have something to gauge it by.

I don't think (I could very well be wrong!) I would be spending a lot of time waving and showing my white face around. The company is not a school as such but it provides teachers to various schools to teach a special program. So I would be working in the office doing lesson plans etc and when I have a class to teach, the company will transport me to the school.

Something around $2000 net I suppose is quite a good salary for HCMC/Vietnam. I just think a big downside is that it would take a full 40 hours per week to get.

[mark_in_saigon]

If you get in 40 paid hours in one location in one stab, you are saving 10 to 20 hours of your own time which would you would have to spend, without being paid, in order to get a real 40 hours. Go home, wait a while, shower, change, drive way the heck out in the other direction, repeat endlessly. Plus, the net figure means your taxes are paid by others, which is a very big factor.

To repeat, the big issue is not the pay. Your big issue is that reality is quite likely not going to be what your mental picture of all this is. Realities here rarely are, as we should all already know.

If at this stage you do not have all the info, essentially you are speculating. Often posters do this, then when they find out more, their original questions seem so unimportant. They see it was an illusion. Whatever you are experiencing in the north, assume that the same level of professionalism will be what you find in the south, with perhaps a few twists.

An intelligent approach would be to instead ask questions about your potential employer (the name of the organization). Are they honest? Do they do this extra time thing on everyone? How does it work out for these people? Work permits? Unpleasant surprises about pay? Well organized, or is work a nightmare? This is what you really need to know.

[Vietnamarama]

Ok sure. The name of the company is EMG Education. They are located in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Today I received an offer from them. Te details are:

We are pleased, after the interview with you, to offer you a position with us in Hochiminh City.
This is a full time teaching position, each teacher will be teaching 25 hours per week or 100 hours per calendar month as direct class teaching, with the remaining day time activity devoted for preparation and other academic work.

The salary offered to you will be 2,000 USD (gross) paid in Vietnamese currency.

So it turns out I was mistaken about the salary being net.

So do people think this is a good offer or not? Also, does anyone have any experience with EMG Education?