Citigroup@Hongkong or Microsoft@Beijing?

these are two completely different jobs.

Citi HK pays global pay - does Microsoft BJ pay global pay?

Hong Kong is arguably a better city for expats than Beijing - but Beijing/Shanghai will have more opportunities than Hong Kong very soon.

How's your Chinese?

it really depends on what you want to get out of your experience. also, i dont think these two jobs are comparable because the nature of the two is drastically different.

To be honest, although I can make up a lot of stories during interviews, I actually do not know what I want to do in the future. Maybe making some decent money to support a family is the only thing I have figured out so far. That is why I ask which one has better pay growth/promotion opportunities.

Now Citigroup Hongkong's job offer pays less than Microsoft Beijing'. But normally I guess banking has better pay growth/promotion opportunities, such as bonus or sth? But people also say Citi is famous for being cheap, and from my experience, Microsoft is really generous, at least when they extend an offer.

I understand the two jobs are so different. Basically my dilemma is a bad company in my favorite industry (tons of people on this board said Citi is a no-caring, low pay, bad culture bank), and a good company in an industry I have no idea of.

Any suggestions or thoughts to share? Thanks

By the way, is it easy to transfer from Citi Hongkong office to US or Canada after working for a few years there?

From my understanding it is easier to transfer from Citi in the US to Citi in HK, than to do the opposite. That said- I don't know exactly how hard it is to go HK > US. As for Canada, I have no idea, sorry.

Thanks asiamonkey,

it is a rotational middle/back office job, will rotate among strategy, business development, M&A, financial planning/ analysis, treasury, financial reporting/control functions.

It will be appreciated if somebody would like to share a little bit about which ones would be your top 3 roles? which roles have better chances to land a front office job after the rotations. thanks

I don't quite understand... how is M&A a middle/back office job? Is there any way you could post a better description of your options? I would have thought that M&A would simply refer to the M&A group within IBD, which is definitely front office. Maybe I'm missing something obvious.

Aside from that, I have no idea the relative degree of difficulty in moving from back/mid to front office amongst your different choices. From what I've read on WSO, I get the impression that back/mid office is a trap and that escaping is extremely hard, but that could just be exaggeration.