Salary Negotiation FAQ for Singapore & Hong Kong Tech Job Seekers

Quick, honest answers to the questions I get most often about negotiating tech offers in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Is negotiating a job offer actually culturally acceptable here?

Yes, and in tech specifically it's expected, not just tolerated. Some candidates in this market — more so than in, say, the US — are genuinely hesitant to push back on an offer at all, worried it looks presumptuous or greedy. In practice, recruiters and hiring managers in Singapore and Hong Kong tech build some room into an initial offer expecting a counter, and a calm, specific counter doesn't damage how you're perceived. What does land badly is an aggressive, ultimatum-style negotiation imported wholesale from more adversarial negotiating cultures — the substance of asking for more is fine, the tone matters more here than the ask itself.

Should I disclose my current salary?

Generally, no — or at least not as your opening move. You're not legally required to in either Singapore or Hong Kong, and disclosing it early tends to anchor the conversation to your current number rather than to the market value of the new role, which usually works against you if you're underpaid at your current job. If asked directly, it's fine to redirect to the range you're looking for based on the role and your experience, rather than stating a figure. If you're moving from a significantly lower-cost market, this matters even more — your current salary is a weak anchor for what the new role and location should pay.

What's a reasonable counter?

For Singapore tech roles, asking for roughly 10-20% above the initial offer is a realistic range that tends to get a genuine response rather than a flat no. Go much higher without a specific justification — a competing offer, a documented market gap, unvested equity you're forfeiting — and the request risks being dismissed outright rather than countered, because it reads as untethered from what the recruiter can actually act on internally. Anchor your ask to something concrete rather than a round number that feels good.

How much do allowances like housing or CPF actually matter?

CPF (Singapore) and MPF (Hong Kong) contributions are mandatory and not negotiable in themselves — don't spend effort there. What matters more, and is genuinely negotiable, is everything around them: bonus structure (many Singapore companies pay a 13th month plus a variable bonus), and in Hong Kong specifically, housing or rent allowance for roles based in expensive districts like Central or Cyberport. Rent is often the single biggest cost-of-living factor in Hong Kong, so a housing allowance can be worth more to your real take-home than a modest base salary bump. See our guide on negotiating the full package for how to weigh all of this together.

Should I negotiate before or after I get the offer in writing?

After. Verbal numbers shift, get misremembered, or get walked back in ways a written offer doesn't. Wait for the formal written offer — it gives you something concrete to respond to, and it protects you if there's ever a discrepancy between what was discussed and what's actually on paper. Negotiate after the written offer and before you formally accept, not in the informal conversations leading up to it.

What about equity at a startup — how do I know if an offer is fair?

Ask for the specifics in writing: number of shares or options as a percentage of the company on a fully-diluted basis, strike price relative to the last valuation, vesting schedule and cliff. Public compensation data for equity is thinner in Singapore and Hong Kong than in the US, so lean more on direct comparisons — a recruiter who places candidates at similar-stage companies, or peers in comparable roles — rather than trusting a single salary site. Our guide on negotiating equity at Singapore/HK startups goes through this in more detail.

My current employer countered when I resigned. Should I stay?

Think about why you started looking in the first place. If it was purely pay, a counteroffer might genuinely fix it. If it was a manager, a stalled role, or a ceiling you could see coming, a bigger number doesn't fix any of that, and those reasons tend to resurface. Our guide on handling a counteroffer walks through how to think about this properly instead of deciding under time pressure.

Does Prepair's negotiation practice cover this?

Partly, and I want to be specific about what it does and doesn't do. Prepair's salary negotiation practice is a Pro-tier feature where an AI plays a recruiter or hiring manager in a turn-based, text-or-voice negotiation — you pick the scenario and how firm they play it, run the actual back-and-forth of countering, justifying a number, and responding to pushback, and get a scored evaluation afterward. What it's built for is practicing the live conversation itself — staying calm and specific when someone pushes back in real time, which is the part most people haven't actually rehearsed before doing it for real.

What it doesn't do: it won't calculate your CPF or MPF contributions, compare offer packages for you, or tell you what a fair number is for your specific role and level. You still need to do that homework — market research, peer comparisons, working out your real total compensation — separately. The tool picks up after that, when it's time to actually have the conversation out loud.