Why Your Regional Hiring Plan Will Fail in Indonesia (And Why It's Your Fault)
So your company just got a new round of funding, or your CEO skimmed a McKinsey & Company report titled “Southeast Asia: The Final Frontier (Until the Next One)”. Suddenly, Indonesia is the move. With its 270 million people, exploding internet adoption, and a GDP curve that resembles a rollercoaster designed by someone on a tight deadline, it’s a no-brainer.
You’re going local now. But not in a chaotic, wild-west, “figure it out” way—no, no. You want structure. You want alignment. You want “Singapore quality” in Jakarta, ideally with Bangkok salary bands and Kuala Lumpur compliance standards. And so, with great ceremony, your hiring model—fresh off the printer from HQ—is deployed. Titles. Levels. Pay bands. Competency frameworks. Global parity. Synergy!
Except, once it hits Indonesian soil, reality punches you in the face. Titles mean nothing, salaries are bananas, and your pristine Regional VP pay structure? It’s currently being laughed at by someone in HR who just told you that “Director” is a flexible term. What’s the Indonesian word for good luck? Doesn’t matter. You’ll need it in every language.
One Org Chart to Rule Them All (and Other Fantasies)
The beloved global org chart, where every box is neatly labeled, every title harmonized, and every salary lovingly indexed to the nearest cent. It’s where a Director is a Director is a Director, whether they’re in Singapore, San Francisco, or Surabaya. A triumph of logic, consistency, and blind optimism.
In this system, a Director in Jakarta should have the same pedigree, experience, and gravitas as a Director in Amsterdam—just slightly cheaper, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments. The spreadsheet says it’s fair. The model says it’s scalable. HR says it’s globally aligned. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Because the only place where this theory holds up is inside the hermetically sealed minds of compensation consultants who get a little too excited about pivot tables. On the ground, in Indonesia, your “Director” might be one slick LinkedIn post removed from still being a Senior Manager. Sometimes, a Manager. Sometimes, a guy who inherited the title because he didn’t quit during COVID.
And here’s the thing: he’s making more than your actual Senior Manager in Singapore. Like, actual-money more. Not adjusted, not theoretical—just flatly, infuriatingly, more. Why? Because in Indonesia, talent is scarce, demand is sky-high, and nobody cares what your spreadsheet says. It's the raw economics of a constrained market, not a tidy Harvard Business Review case study.
Your uniform structure has met the messy reality of Indonesia—and it’s not going well. Turns out, supply and demand doesn’t care about title parity. It cares about who can execute. And in this market, execution comes at a premium—no matter what their business card says.
But Cost of Living! (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Market Economics)
Right on cue, your trusty finance lead pulls up a chart comparing the cost of living in Singapore and Jakarta. Look at that gradient shading! Observe the relative price of lattes, housing, and mid-tier gym memberships. It’s all very slick, very data-driven, and—let’s be honest—completely missing the point.
Because talent economics isn’t a grocery receipt. It’s not about how much nasi goreng you can get for a dollar. It’s about supply, demand, and desperation. Specifically, your desperation to find someone competent enough to lead a team, navigate the local maze of regulators and corporate politics, and still deliver a quarterly report that won’t get flagged by someone at HQ who’s never been east of Changi.
In Singapore, there’s an almost embarrassing abundance of senior talent. They come from everywhere—India, China, Europe, Mars. The government has created an environment where smart, experienced professionals want to live and work. It’s a talent buffet. You need a Senior Manager? There are 40 in the pipeline. You just need to ask nicely (or offer stock options).
Now cut to Jakarta. The market is tight, closed, and fiercely territorial. Top talent is hoarded by unicorns, conglomerates, or just kept in the family business until death or IPO. Poaching someone is less a hiring process and more a corporate hostage negotiation.
So yes, your Director in Jakarta is making more than your Manager in Singapore. Possibly more than your Director in Singapore too. And if you’re still trying to rationalize that using your cost-of-living calculator, you might as well print it out and use it as a coaster—at least then it’s doing something useful.
Titles Are Made Up, and So Are Your Expectations
Let’s peel back the professional façade for a moment: in Indonesia—job titles are about as grounded in reality as a unicorn’s burn rate projection. They’re not so much earned as bestowed, often hastily, sometimes as part of a retention strategy that roughly translates to: “please don’t leave, we’ll call you anything you want.”
“Vice President” in Indonesia can mean a lot of things. Sometimes it means a real-deal operator running a major business line. Other times, it means someone who was around during Series A, knows where the bodies are buried, and got promoted because the founders were too tired to recruit externally. One day they were a Product Manager. Two org charts later: VP of Growth and Global Whatever.
This isn’t poor governance. This is market adaptation. When the talent pool is shallow, and demand is infinite, companies start inflating titles quickly, shamelessly, and without bothering too much about long-term consequences.
Compare that to Singapore, where a Manager is still a Manager, no matter how many languages they code in or how many regional markets they’ve scaled. The place is bursting with talent. People with MBAs, CFA charters, and polished LinkedIn profiles. And yet, still a Manager. Why? Because there are thousands of them. It's a buyer’s market.
So when you attempt to do a “like-for-like” hire across the region, it falls apart immediately. Because there is no like-for-like. There’s just “what title do we need to slap on this person to keep them from leaving?” and “what’s the minimum title this poor Singaporean Manager is allowed to have without offending the org chart gods?”
In this region, titles are vibes—and your expectations should come with a warning label.
Dear Global HQ: Recalibrate or Die Trying
Let’s stop pretending: your regional hiring strategy is not just broken—it’s actively self-sabotaging. It was built in a vacuum, somewhere between a leadership offsite and a budget workshop where someone earnestly said “emerging markets are exciting, but let’s keep title parity.”
If your Southeast Asia plan still assumes that a Director in Jakarta is the same breed as a Director in Singapore—same pay band, same org level, same KPIs—then congratulations, you’re about to hire someone who’s just a few team meetings away from being exposed and poached. They’re underqualified, overpromoted, and already negotiating with a local conglomerate offering a luxury car and a bespoke title like “VP, Disruption Strategy & Family Office Alignment.”
And when your Indonesia operation inevitably stumbles, you’ll blame “local execution issues” instead of the real problem: your org is pretty on the surface, hollow underneath. Built for optics, not outcomes.
Meanwhile, the companies who’ve figured it out? They’re playing a completely different game. They pay more for “less senior” Indonesian talent—not because they’re generous, but because they understand the economics of scarcity. They treat titles as market currency, not universal truth. And they pull rising stars out of Singapore, slap a VP badge on them, ship them to Jakarta, and let them lead. Because capability trumps title inflation every time.
So please. Stop applying your polished, policy-bound frameworks to a market that runs on hustle, scarcity, and the occasional family connection. Adapt. Pay the local premium. Inflate the title if you must. Just do what it takes to actually win—not just look regionally compliant on your next org chart review.
The belief that talent markets should obediently align with your global org design is sweet. But in Indonesia, where supply is scarce, demand is insatiable, and titles are distributed like startup hoodies, your tidy corporate logic doesn’t just fall short—it actively misleads.
Your “harmonized compensation framework” might win applause at HQ, but on the ground, it's ineffective. This market isn’t a cheaper Singapore—it’s a completely different beast. One that eats rigid hiring strategies for breakfast and chases it with your best-laid KPIs.
So please, for the sake of your business write a new playbook. One that accepts you’ll need to overpay for mid-level talent, inflate titles unapologetically, and stop expecting cost-of-living adjustments to explain anything.
Or don’t. Keep using the same spreadsheet and marvel when your Indonesia ops implode in a glorious mess of misaligned talent and misunderstood expectations. It’ll pair perfectly with the next APAC townhall, where once again, no one actually talks about what went wrong.