Dublin Is About to Legislate Your Salary Range Into the Job Ad. Hanoi Still Runs on the Tet Bonus and a Handshake.
Priya MehtaSeptember 4, 2026 6 min read
🇮🇪 Ireland · 🇻🇳 Vietnam
By Priya Mehta, The Global Office
By June 2026, Irish job listings will be legally required to state a salary range, and employers will be barred from asking what you currently make. In Vietnam, the number that actually matters — the 13th-month Tet bonus — isn't required by law at all, yet skipping it would be a bigger cultural violation than most legal ones. One country is engineering pay honesty through statute. The other has been running an informal, near-universal honesty system for decades, just not the kind you can look up in a job ad.
Do's & Don'ts
🇮🇪 Ireland
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Expect salary ranges in job ads once the Equality Bill takes effect by June 2026 | Ask a candidate for their current salary — this will be legally prohibited |
| Request pay-level and progression information proactively once entitled to it | Assume transparency rules mean pay itself becomes fully equal — the law targets discrimination, not flattening |
| Prepare for genuinely long meetings that drift off-agenda quickly | Expect Irish "informality" to mean loose hierarchy — expect a strict one underneath the friendly tone |
| Benchmark Dublin IT salaries (avg. €69,050) against national averages before negotiating | Assume Dublin pay scales apply outside the capital — regional gaps are significant |
| Track gender pay gap disclosures if your employer has 50+ staff — they're public | Treat pay gap reporting as a formality; it carries real compliance and reputational weight |
| Push back respectfully in negotiations — self-reliance and initiative are culturally expected | Wait passively for a raise to be offered; it rarely arrives unprompted |
🇻🇳 Vietnam
| ✅ Do | ❌ Don't |
|---|---|
| Budget for and expect the 13th-month Tet bonus if you've been employed over a year | Assume it's guaranteed by law — it's contractual/customary, not statutory, unless written in |
| Understand that expat starting pay often runs double local starting pay for equivalent roles | Discuss your salary openly with local colleagues — it can create real workplace tension |
| Bring 5–10 years of experience or a Master's degree if targeting expat-tier compensation | Expect expat-level pay for entry-level or generalist positions |
| Get everything in writing — a verbal bonus promise is a bonus you can lose | Rely on informal assurances about pay or bonus structure from a hiring manager |
| Recognize the 13th-month payment is prorated for those employed under a year | Expect a full bonus in your first partial year of employment |
| Lean on personal networks and recruiters — they matter more than cold applications | Expect a purely merit-based, resume-driven hiring process |
Ireland: Legislating the Number Out Loud
Ireland is mid-transition from a culture of polite pay silence to one of mandated disclosure. The EU Pay Transparency Directive, transposed via the Equality Bill, requires salary ranges in job advertisements and prohibits employers from asking about salary history, according to [Zellis's HR guide](https://www.zellis.com/resources/blog/ireland-equality-bill-enacts-eu-pay-transparency-directive/). Once in force, employees gain the right to request pay-level information and to see how career progression affects compensation, with the burden of proof shifting to employers in disputes — a meaningful structural change from the current norm, per [Maples Group's analysis](https://maples.com/knowledge/pay-transparency-deadline-in-ireland).
This sits on top of an already low-power-distance culture: Ireland scores 28 on Hofstede's power distance index, reflecting a workplace that formally minimizes hierarchical inequality even as [Expat.com's Dublin guide](https://www.expat.com/en/guide/europe/ireland/dublin/20738-the-work-culture-in-dublin.html) notes offices remain informal in tone but strictly hierarchical underneath — long, meandering meetings included. Dublin's IT sector currently averages €69,050, well above the city's overall €55,000 average, making sector-specific benchmarking essential before any negotiation.
Vietnam: The Bonus Is the Culture
Vietnam's formal salary law is comparatively thin on transparency mandates, but its compensation culture runs on a powerful informal institution: the 13th-month salary, commonly called the Tet bonus. It isn't required by the 2019 Labor Code, but once promised in writing — a contract, a collective agreement, a published policy — it becomes legally binding and effectively un-skippable in practice, according to [Talentnet Group](https://www.talentnetgroup.com/vn/featured-insights/13th-month-salary-vietnam-rules-calculation). The scale of the expectation is real: the average Tet bonus reached VND 8.69 million per worker in 2026, up 13 percent year-on-year across more than 50,000 surveyed enterprises, per Vietnam's Ministry of Home Affairs.
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Layered onto this is a wide, often uncomfortable expat-local pay gap. A fresh Vietnamese graduate in Ho Chi Minh City might earn around VND 7 million (roughly $312) monthly, while an experienced foreign hire can command $3,000–$4,000 — a gap [Quora respondents](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-an-expatriate-earn-living-and-working-in-Saigon-Ho-Chi-Minh) describe candidly, often alongside the advice that openly discussing salary with local colleagues is a fast way to create resentment rather than solidarity.
The Reckoning
The irony is structural: Ireland is legislating transparency precisely because its low-power-distance, individualist culture (Hofstede individualism: 70) still hasn't produced pay openness on its own — the law exists to fix a gap between egalitarian values and opaque practice. Vietnam, by contrast, never needed a transparency law for its most important compensation ritual, because the Tet bonus is a near-universal, publicly discussed, culturally enforced expectation — even though the country's higher power distance (70) and less individualist norms would predict less openness, not more.
In other words: Ireland is regulating its way toward the kind of pay clarity Vietnam already has informally for one specific, ritualized payment — while remaining just as opaque as anywhere else on base salary and everyday raises. Neither country is "more honest" about money; they're honest about different pieces of it, for different structural reasons.
The Part the Brochure Left Out
Expat.com, Dublin forum — A poster preparing to relocate for a Dublin role asked outright whether it was appropriate to negotiate salary before moving, and the consensus reply was that not negotiating was the real mistake — Irish employers expect an opening offer to be a starting point, not a final number.
Blind — A commenter discussing a move to a Dublin-based financial firm noted that despite the country's informal office culture, internal pay bands were far more rigid and hierarchy-bound than the friendly atmosphere suggested, and that title changes mattered more to compensation than raw performance did.
Quora — Someone comparing a $4,000-a-month post-tax offer in Vietnam against a "Western style" cost of living was told by multiple respondents that the number was very comfortable locally, but warned that housing and international schooling costs for expat families could erode that comfort fast if budgeted using local-salary assumptions.
Quora — A prospective foreign hire asking about professional work in Vietnam was advised that specialized skills and a sponsorship-capable employer mattered far more than general qualifications, and that being realistic about location — Hanoi versus Ho Chi Minh City pay gaps are real — changed outcomes significantly.
Expat.com, Dublin forum — A separate contributor flagged that Dublin's cost of living had risen faster than salary growth in several sectors, making the headline average salary numbers less useful than they first appear without adjusting for rent.
Conclusion
If transparency-by-law matters to you, Ireland's incoming regime will hand you real leverage — use it. If you're heading to Vietnam, the leverage is different: know the Tet bonus expectation cold, get every promise in writing, and understand that the expat-local pay gap is a structural feature of the market, not a negotiating error on your part. According to [Mercer's Ireland pay transparency briefing](https://www.mercer.com/en-ie/solutions/talent-and-rewards/pay-transparency-in-ireland/), the shift toward disclosure is already reshaping employer behavior — Vietnam's informal system, meanwhile, has been quietly stable for years without needing the same push.
Priya's honest take, over a drink: Dublin will eventually tell you the range in the job ad. Hanoi will just expect you to know, by December, that the bonus is coming — and to never, ever ask your officemate what theirs was.
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Photo by Pavel Danilyuk via Pexels
Priya Mehta
Staff writer covering financial markets and corporate strategy. Has strong opinions about spreadsheets.