rizal

In Malaysia, life is currently very good for .NET (and specifically C#) developers. If you have more than 3 years experience, headhunters will call/email you almost every day and try to poach you from your current company. The talent pool is not that big but demand for .NET developers is steadily increasing; and so is their median pay. It's definitely enough to be quite comfortable. As an indication, the salary of .NET developers with 5 years experience is on par with that of managers.

In general, "offshore" software companies (e.g. Monster has a dev center here) use .NET and can afford to pay well. For them it's a simple matter of currency arbitrage. Local startups, on the other hand, tend to choose PHP because PHP programmers are plentiful and inexpensive.

Malaysia is right up there! I am Malaysian and I am surprised. In 1993 I had to apply for a visa to visit France, which gave me the impression that it's difficult for Malaysians to travel. (I've only been to China since then.)

Increase efficiency (and maybe avoid injury to the wrist) by minimizing use of the mouse:

1. Vim / utilize your IDE's keyboard bindings

2. Vimperator for Firefox

3. Vimium for Chrome

4. FreeCommander (or any Norton Commander clone)

5. Activate Gmail keyboard shortcuts

(Edit: added #1 and #5)