“First we will have our young people employed by the foreigners, and then we will start our own companies. It is like building a building. Today, the U.S., you are the designers, the architects, and the developing countries are the bricklayers for the buildings. But one day I hope we will be the architects.”~ Dalian’s Mayor on outsourcing in the book THE WORLD IS FLAT.

Gosh, I just think that the paste of change will be much faster in this century then the previous one! Globalisation! We need to get ready!!

Have been innundated with lots of work lately, which explains the long absence from blogging. Sorry folks

Was talking to Sebby during one of our lunch breaks. What makes a good sales man? Being able to lie positively? It appears in this age and time, that most sales people are more interested to make a quick buck than to sell a genuinely good product/service. And how do you know if a product is good unless you make it yourself? Which means that for those of us starting sales job….are you sure what you are selling is value for marnie? But there is one thing I certainly know that we ought to sell! Greateast value for marnie man…prizes for those who guess correctly!

There are many rags to riches programmes that capitalize on people’s disillusionment with their current lifestyle - being bossed around, with low pay and long working hours, with little promotional prospects. How to get rich fast and attain financial freedom? If you do not have an ivy league track record, then 3 ways - do sales, do finance or set up your own business. Certainly, a few die-hards with abit of luck (or blessing) will make it. The rest is left holding on to their tattered dreams, year on year. Question is, what is the point of it all, even if you are rich? You live 80 years and still mati wat… So what if I have no financial freedom, I can still survive on milo peng and hor fun!

Ultimately, I am in desparate need to get to know people with an ideal slant in life. Am surrounded by much pragmatism here in S’pore man. Not that its bad…its just alittle homogeneous for the health of our society

This economic principle seem to prevail at every corner of our lives.

I found myself wrestling with these thoughts even as I sought to find a biblical framework to make sense of it all. For example, we want a good job, but the labour market is horrible. Should we then trust God and wait until we get a good one or should we lower our expectations and take what is offered to us? In Singapore’s context, the labour market is not good at all. A huge portion of manufacturing related jobs are shifted overseas because Singapore’s labour cost is just way too high. This is in spite of the fact that many companies site their Asian headquarters in Singapore. They simply just shift the manufacturing portion outside! (Really bad news for us engineers) So the labour market is irreversibly restructured. To add to this, look at the rising number of tertiary students and business graduates. With such a big supply of paper qualifications, supply and demand sets in to eliminate the value of paper. What counts in the future, is experience and top notch paper qualifications. Period.

Function
Sometimes, I can’t help but look at my peers in law and medcine. For these people, they are shielded from the market forces and could command a premium in their pay. Why should they, when we attend the same universities? How did these professions managed to do it? Surely, the top hierarchies of people in these professions are perpetuating this? Are lawyers more capable and smarter than engineers? Also, by tradition, most CEOs are either from Sales & Marketing or Finance. Have you ever heard of a CEO from Operations or Human Resource? With our government’s recent drive for the biomedical industry, we have a huge influx of interest in PhD work. Will our scholars and aspirants in the universities come back and become researchers? How many of them are really interested in Science purely? How many will end up in business development, intellectual property and project management once they graduate? I think knowing the Singapore psyche, the later is much more probable. If we use carrots to motivate, then we get rabbits rite?

Firm
There are firms which have reached a certain level of brand equity, that makes it prohibitive for a new graduate to enter. 2 good examples are SAP and Dell. Just check to see if they take in new entrants. Because of the market power they command, they find it easy to recruit the best people from other companies. Why train the young people when they will leave once they have learned the ropes and acquired marketability?

Industry
How about people in the oil industry? These guys make tonnes of money because oil is a limited supply and sky high demand item. They get obscene bonuses, rocket pay and stay on their jobs for ages and ages. Just look at the employee turn over in the electronics industry! Another charming industry is finance. Everyone wants to go where the money is and I guess finance deals directly with money. I have engineer friends who are branching into finance all over the place man..sigh

Country
Lets have a show of hands, how many of us wanna migrate to Australia? Haha…I went there to work once and was sorely tempted (just kidding). 20 Million people in such a huge swarthe of land?!! Gosh, just imagine the resources available. Surely supply and demand works to our advantage! If you hear about the labour laws there, you will be very perplexed why you are still toiling away in the rest of Asia. Minus the racial discrimination, I think this is a very idyllic place to live in

Singapore faces a tough fight by virtue of its geopolitics. Alot of the policies that our government engenders are towards economic survival. So much so that in order for us to stay ahead of the pack, we become a very pragmatic people; much unlike our western counterparts who can pursue education for the sake of passion without being concerned about the future career prospects. These students simply take gap years! They would just take one year off to travel and get involved in non-economic activities. Just look at Singaporeans and Malaysians? Is this something we feel as value adding? No! The guys would feel that after 2 years of NS, it is time to chase the American dream. We are already 2 years behind the ladies, taking another gap year will leave us irrevocably behind!

To survive and to survive excellently, we need to regionalise! And thats how our jobs have to be in order to remain marketable - to reach international shores. Singapore cannot afford to stay within our shores. We have nothing intrinsic except our people. China and India are good places to start because of the high growth potential and huge markets.

So when choosing a job, one should look into

1. Function
2. Firm
3. Industry
4. Country

Are these the most important criteria? I guess they can be, but they are also informal factors such as whether your boss likes you and grooms you, the culture of your company, the colleagues you work with, the developmental potential of your job - whether you can rise in the ladder and expand in your work scope, growth potential of your company, the working hours and so on.

Finally, for all the things I have said above, they are not the most important ones. They are merely factors of consideration in the secular world. If all these things are the driving force in my decision making, then surely, I miss the essense of living. I am first and foremost a spiritual being, then an economic one. But these are shown so that we don’t overspiritualise things or give simplistic answers in our decision making process. Rather, squaring off with what we see in the world, we struggle in our inner being to apprehend the wisest choice.

I have finally tendered my resignation to my current job, culminating one and a half years of jet-setting and doing projects. For those who do not know, my role is a Solutions Analyst in Exel, implementing warehouse projects. It is really a fun job cos you get to design the varied flows between IT systems, people and documents. I got to train others in the IT system, meet customers and understand their requirements, provide solutions, provide troubleshooting and not to forget, the privilege of flying around in Asia.

I enjoyed the most when I am teaching others. The joy is greater when my “student colleagues” start pointing out certain things that even I as a teacher would miss out. This process of transmitting knowledge, sharing information and learning from each other is exciting. No wonder people look at “teaching” as a noble career With Singapore’s transition from a manufacturing lead economy to a service oriented one and now to a knowledge based one, I really do hope that the monetary carrot is not the only motivating factor for the next generation of Singapore’s leaders. May the Lord raise up authentic Faith/Work Christians. We need to have abit of “Heaven on Earth”…else work is really, simply, toiling under the sun.

My tenure in my current job has been eventful. God led me through periods of desert and emptiness as well as intense activity. Times of emptiness because for a period of time, I didn’t have a concrete role in the company, and was like a wandering waif, wasting away…that was during the early part of my time in Exel. I couldn’t stand doing nothing….it is as if your identity was torn away. But I learnt alot through that time of vexation; to be patient, to wait and to trust Him completely that He works for my good and that he really answers prayers!

That was before my current role. Which really blows my mind, because to me, it is the most ideal job possible in the company. Then came intense periods of project activity. It is during this phase that I really learnt alot about myself and other people. Myself in terms of understanding my strengths and weakness. Other people in the context of my work interaction with them; nasty fear mongers who breathe down your throat to get you to do what they want (i.e. the big bully technique), dependant people (i.e. responsibility fearers) who are so reliant on you that you can’t leave them once the project finishes. But for most of the time, it was really an enjoyable time meeting people of varied cultures, ranging from developing nations to 1st world countries.

Why then do I want to leave? Many of my peers would gladly be in my shoes. Its a regional role and you are getting so much exposure at such a young age! To be honest, the pay was low. And this is not just my own experience, its widespread across my division. So really, performance wasn’t really linked to my pay. But the more important thing is that I feel the need to localise, in this time for myself. Travelling really makes your life fragmented. You get to know friends and colleagues for 2 weeks and then its time to leave. There isn’t an opportunity to build up friendships and make commitments back at my home church.

There is a season for everything under the sky. And I sense and feel that in the next few years, there will be many things moving in my Church and also in Singapore. Would definitely like to stick around when that happens!