I also noticed that the foreign startups they lured in with their juicy incentives were not the better ones. Nonetheless they probably still believe that the same techniques that brought in Shell in the early days needed to be adapted for the "modern world".
Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.
They managed to persuade Grab to move from Malaysia to Singapore though.
Tech salaries are not poor if you compare them to other South East Asia countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc). If you compare them to other professions in Singapore... then I can't say (I don't know).
Moving Grab isn't a big deal, considering Grab's founders are Malaysian Chinese, and likely face indirect discrimination thanks to Malaysia's constitution. Malaysia drove them away, Singapore didn't persuade them.
Edit:- to counter your example, devs are not as highly paid for the living costs of Singapore. And they don't even form part of the upper bracket, which is largely populated by people in finance and management.
Top devs in India and China are usually paid on par with the managerial salaries there. I have a bunch of mates who get paid on par with/more than mid-level IB bankers.
I wonder why this is the case. I also heard the software engineers are not considered "high status" as well in UK. Not sure in Europe (like Sweden, Germany, etc).
Despite throwing money at tech salaries are still poor. Everybody gets that money except the developers.