He asked what I earned in Vietnam.
I was interviewing for a marketing role in Singapore. Things were going well. Then the managing director leaned back and asked, casually, the way people ask questions they have asked a hundred times: “So — what was your last salary in Vietnam?”
He was not making conversation. He was reaching for an anchor. He wanted my Hanoi number in the room so that everything after it — every figure, every counter, every “well, we were thinking more like…” — would orbit around a salary set by a city with a different cost of living, for a different job, at a different point in my life.
Here is the part that matters for you: I am German. European passport, European CV, European education. And it made no difference at all. He still went for my postcode first, because postcode is the cheapest lever in the room and it is always the first one anyone reaches for.
That is why this story transfers. The anchor does not care about your passport. It came for me in Singapore exactly the way it comes for a candidate in Manila, Hanoi, Jakarta, or KL. I just happened to be standing in it.
“We pay local rates” sounds like a fact. It is a frame. And frames can be refused.
I took the local number once
Years before that Singapore interview, I landed in Hanoi and took a job that paid a fraction of what I had been earning in Germany. A major step down. And I took it gladly — I had been travelling for months, I was itching to work again, and it was my way into marketing, the only subject I had ever been genuinely good at. My university grades tell the whole story: marketing and sales, excellent. Financing and taxation, we do not need to discuss.
I do not regret it. Taking the local number once is not a character flaw. It is how most people start.
But you only get to not-know once.
What that job taught me — slowly, expensively — is that the number was never a measurement. Nobody weighed my output and arrived at it. It was a default, applied because I was standing in Vietnam and had no argument ready. The moment I understood that, the Singapore question became answerable.
So I did not answer it.
“I’d rather not anchor this to Vietnam — different market, different role. What I want is a competitive Singapore salary for this role and the goals you’ve described for me. What’s the budget you’ve set for it?”
That is the entire move. No confrontation. No number. I priced the role instead of my postcode.
The belief that has to go first
Most people reading this hold a belief they have never examined:
“My salary is set by where I live.”
It feels like gravity. It is not. It is a pricing decision someone else made, in a meeting you were not in, and then presented to you as weather.
Here is the frame that replaces it:
“My salary is set by what I deliver. Geography is a frame someone chose — and frames can be refused.”
The proof is uncomfortable but simple. A campaign that earns a company €500,000 earns them €500,000 whether you built it from Berlin or from a co-working space in Chiang Mai. The revenue does not know where you sat. The client does not know where you sat. The only person for whom your location changes the value of the work is the person deciding what to pay you — and only because you let them.
One honest caveat, because I would rather you trust me than be impressed by me: my own path is not proof that this works for you. I arrived in Hanoi from Germany, which means my local number was low relative to my market, not to the market I grew up in. That is a different starting position from someone whose local market has always been the market. My story proves the tactic — that geography is a frame and the frame can be refused. It does not prove your outcome. Nobody’s story does. What follows is the tactic.
The five refusals
1. Refuse the anchor
Never hand over your current number. Not as a courtesy, not to seem cooperative, not because the form has a field for it.
The moment they have it, the negotiation is about your past instead of their budget. Every subsequent number gets measured against a figure that describes a job you are leaving, in a market you are leaving, at a version of yourself you are leaving.
“I’d rather not anchor to my current number — different market, different scope. What’s the range you’ve budgeted for this role?”
The common mistake: treating the question as a compliance test. It is not. It is the first offer, disguised as admin.
2. Refuse the postcode
When it comes — “our rate for someone based in your region is lower” — do not argue that they are wrong to have a benchmark. Argue that it is the wrong benchmark for this hire.
“I understand you have a local benchmark. But you’re not buying my location — you’re buying my output, and my output isn’t local. It’s the same work your Berlin team does, to the same standard, for the same clients. The question isn’t where I sit. It’s what I deliver and what that’s worth to the business over the next year.”
The common mistake: getting indignant. Indignation reads as a candidate who cannot afford to walk. Calm reads as a professional stating a price.
3. Name the margin — to yourself
You do not have to say this out loud. You do have to know it.
When a company says “local rates,” they are trying to keep, as pure margin, the entire gap between what they would pay in Europe and what they think they can pay you in Asia. That gap is real money and it is sitting on the table between you.
Some of it belongs to you. Not all of it — they take real risk hiring across borders, and they are entitled to a return on that. But not all of it belongs to them, either, which is what “we pay local rates” quietly proposes.
You will negotiate differently once you can see the gap. That is the only reason to name it.
4. Claim the contractor multiple
This is the most expensive thing most Southeast Asian remote workers do not know, so let me be slow about it.
As an employee, the company pays your salary plus employer-side costs — social contributions, benefits, paid holiday, sick leave, severance, compliance admin. Depending on the country, that is roughly 20–40% on top of your gross.
As a contractor, you invoice them and they pay the invoice. Nothing else. No social charges, no benefits, no paid leave, no severance, and they can scale you up or down without employment law in the way. Every one of those savings is theirs. Every one of those protections is now yours to buy, out of your own pocket.
So the logic should be burned into your head: if you absorb all the risk and save them all the cost, your rate goes above the equivalent employee salary. Not equal. Certainly not below. The working rule of thumb is 1.4 to 1.6×.
Concretely: a role that pays €60,000 as an employee is worth roughly €84,000 to €96,000 as a contract. Same work. The premium is not greed — it is the arithmetic of everything you absorbed and everything they stopped paying.
Now the part that costs people houses over a career. Most contractors quote a rate equal to or below the employee salary. They hear “contract” and think “less commitment, so ask for less.” Exactly backwards. They hand over a 40–60% discount, carry all the downside for free, and never learn they did it.
“I’m happy to work on a contract basis — that’s simpler for you. But a contract rate isn’t an employee salary. I’m covering my own tax, benefits, leave, and security, and you’re saving the employer-side costs and the commitment. So the rate reflects that — it sits above the equivalent employee number, not below it.”
Say it calmly and two things happen. They realise you understand the structure, which means they cannot quietly underpay you on it. And “contractor” flips from cheaper and disposable to a premium arrangement that happens to suit them. That reframe is worth more than most raises.
The common mistake: accepting a contract structure at an employee number because the flexibility sounds appealing. The flexibility is the thing you are being paid for. Charge for it.
5. Ask what relocation would pay — even if you will never move
Late in the process, someone asks: “Would you ever consider moving to where we’re based?”
Most people answer it as a loyalty test. It is a pricing question in disguise.
“I’m performing well from here, and the async advantage is real — you’re getting output around the clock. If you’d want me to relocate, I’d consider it. But my cost of living here is meaningfully lower, so moving would mean reopening the package. What would that package look like?”
Read the last line again. Ask what the relocation package would be, even with zero intention of moving. If they put a number on it, they have just told you what you are worth to them with the cheap-location discount stripped away. That number is your true market value inside that company.
Most people never ask. So they never find out. And they spend years negotiating against a discounted version of themselves.
I missed this one myself. Early on, with the company I contract for now, I never asked what relocation would have been worth — I assumed staying remote meant staying at the remote number. Years later I understood the question was free leverage and I had left it on the table. Do not make my mistake. Ask. Bank the information. Then decide.
What the numbers actually look like
Market benchmarks, not promises:
- Double your local rate is the floor for the same role at a European or US company. That is not the ceiling, that is the entry point.
- Three to five times local is the ladder — reachable over a career, as you perform, get promoted, and move between companies. Not on day one.
- 1.4–1.6× the employee salary is the contractor multiple. Non-negotiable arithmetic, routinely negotiated away.
Your field, your seniority, and your negotiation all move these. Anyone quoting you a guaranteed multiple is selling something.
Do this before your next conversation
Write your three sentences. Today. Not when you need them.
- Your anchor refusal — one sentence, declining to give your current number and redirecting to their budget.
- Your postcode refusal — two sentences on why your output is not local, with one specific piece of work and what it was worth to the business.
- Your relocation question — one sentence that ends in “What would that package look like?”
Then say all three out loud, ten times, until they are boring. This is the whole trick. These sentences fail when they arrive as a speech — improvised, tense, slightly aggrieved. They land when they are so rehearsed they sound like admin.
The conversation where you need them is not the conversation to write them in.
The number was never a measurement
You are not underpaid because of where you live. You are underpaid because someone priced your postcode and you did not have a sentence ready.
That is fixable this afternoon.
I took the local number once, in Hanoi, and it taught me exactly what it costs. The second time — in a Singapore office with a managing director reaching for my Vietnam salary — I had a sentence ready. That is the only difference between those two rooms. Not my passport. Not my CV. A sentence.
Write yours.