After six years of working in the Lion City-first as a quality engineer for PCI Ltd., then as a senior field quality and service engineer for STMicroelectronics-Querickiol moved his family to Texas and took a job with STMicroelectronics (Americas) there. Now a wireline-segment quality manager, he has been with the U.S. office for four years and has every intention of staying, at least until the economy in the Philippines "has progressed."

Querickiol's story is an oft-repeated tale. Like him, many Asian engineers have gone the route of relocating overseas in the hope of finding that proverbial greener pasture. Lured by wages that allow them to enjoy greater comforts in life, and jobs that provide ample opportunities to advance in their fields, these EEs can be forgiven for turning their sights offshore.

"I think in the end, it's money," said Arthur Young, president and chief executive officer of PSi Technologies, a power-chip assembly and test company in the Philippines. "Younger engineers get good offers, and the opportunity to live in a different country. Of course, the standard of living, for example in Singapore, is different. The quality of life there is different. You get more, but to live there costs you more. But obviously, anybody who leaves the country [Philippines] makes more. Otherwise he won't leave."

Little wonder that many Asian EE emigres are in no hurry to come back. As Querickiol put it, his current salary "pays the bills, lets me save a little for an occasional vacation, a little for the kids' future and a little to send to the family back home."

And because many Asian engineers, like Querickiol, have made good overseas, working at a job that pays well in a more developed country remains a dream for many.

"A lot of engineers are still going overseas on short contracts, even in this depressed market," said Shambhu Agrawal, northern and western region leader for the IT and telecom practice of ABC Consultants Pvt. Ltd. in India. With the economy depressing U.S. hiring, Agrawal said, Indian engineers are going to other Asian countries instead. "For example, we were recently working on an assignment [to hire] for Agilent in Singapore. We were helping them find some ASIC design engineers," he said.

Of the 400 Asian and Indian respondents to the EE Times Asia survey, a whopping 90 percent said they were interested in working abroad. The most favored destination? The United States (56 percent), followed by Singapore and the U.K. (8 percent each), continental Europe, China and other countries (6 percent) and Japan (4 percent). Very few (1 percent) expressed interest in working in Taiwan.

The desire to seek better working conditions overseas could well be influenced by rubbing shoulders with engineers from other countries. A majority of the respondents (72 percent) said they have had exposure to working with international teams. These teams have provided input mostly in design (40 percent), manufacturing (31 percent) and software (24 percent), and came from the United States, Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia and the U.K.

Young of PSi Technologies thinks that engineers in countries like the Philippines, who want to go into design, eventually will have to leave for places that offer opportunities unavailable at home. "If a guy wants to go into wafer fabrication, there are no opportunities here [in the Philippines], because we don't do that," Young said. "But there are lots of opportunities in assembly and test."