Thursday, December 17, 2015

Singaporeans are not hungry enough

John is the IT manager of a large Temasek linked company.

John - It is difficult to find Singaporeans to do IT work. They are not hungry enough. The foreigners from China and India are prepare to work hard, but not the Singaporeans. At 5 pm, they go home.

TKL - When I was in Sydney, most people go home at 5 pm. They do not need to stay back in the office after 5 pm. They do have a family and other activities to attend to.

John - I am referring to Singaporeans who have just joined us. They need to work hard for one year or two to get the knowledge and experience. If they are not willing to do so, they will never get the competence.

TKL - If you are referring to male graduates, they are likely to be quite old by the time they join you, maybe 26 to 28 years old. If they have to spend another 1 or 2 years to get the working knowledge, they will soon be hitting 30. The problem in Singapore is our full time national service, which takes away 2 1/2 years of their life (including waiting time to be called up) and university which takes another 3 or 4 years.

John - Oh. I did not see it from that angle.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FTs have no family and therefore can spend more time and probably sleep in the company while Singaporeans have family and life after work.You can't compare .
The FTs can sleep and eat and live in the office if possible because that will save them alot of money and money is what they are here for, right?
John, please understand. Try talking to Australians or New Zealanders about working overtime and they will oppose you because you will be seen as sabotaging them.

Anonymous said...

I don't know how biased John is, or how much he actually works side-by-side with the low-level executives. What I know in the last 10 years is that most employees, including S'poreans, don't go back on the dot at 5pm. In fact most office jobs in S'pore officially ends at 6pm. On top of this, most employees will put in another 30-60min to clear loose ends, clear outstanding but not so urgent tasks/emails/correspondence, plan next day's key issues/tasks, etc.

In fact I have a few foreigner colleagues who don't blink an eye and disappear from office by 6pm or 6:10pm at the latest. Sometimes they disappear at 5:45pm and only appear at 6pm to log-off laptop and go off. Hence being "hungry" or "not hungry" is not a nationality thing, but more individual character.

I also know for a fact that many foreign workers are earning 10X to 20X what they can earn back in their home countries. Many of my foreign colleagues are getting 12X to 15X their former salaries back home. Imagine, you work 1 month in S'pore is equivalent to working 1+ year at home!!! This is the main reason why foreigners may appear to treasure their jobs and they often resort to politicking or unethical or simply obnoxious behaviour to keep their jobs. If S'poreans are able to easily go to a foreign country and get normal jobs paying $50,000+ a month, I'm sure the behaviour & mentality of S'poreans will be exactly like foreign workers here.

Actually, many foreign workers have bochap & bad attitudes, both in & outside of work. Some are due to simply bad character & upbringing. Some are due to horrible working conditions/pay. Some are due to the believe that they can easily get another job if they get sacked.

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