If you worked long enough you will find many people are just operational, nothing strategic about them. They happen to be "lucky" to get the job due to their "qualifications", ethnicity (angmo hired by angmo, ah neh hired by ah neh, chink hired by chink, list goes on), at right time right place.
Very few will change the status quo (even if very obvious changes seen in the market). That is why many established companies sinked once their iron rice bowl business model is drastically affected by macro-economic-social-political changes.
To narrow things down, the macro-changes in the world (digitisation, open door economy, information available everywhere) meant that the Singapore (who ride with the post-WW2 and cold-war western economic boom) advantage has ended. That is nothing unique or special about Singapore or its work-force which can be readily replaced by anyone anywhere.
It is quite obvious that PAP government has zero leverage about the MNCs here (shown by the non-local job hirings and support for Pink-Dot) as they can easily move to KL or BKK as regional hubs. In fact these days with superior IT reporting technologies, the need to regional jobs or offices are making less sense as many local-country sales office can directly report to HQ (and even conduct meeting online).
Just think carefully, how many unique and powerful Singapore brands are there? I can't think of much. Or really successful investment houses or funds in Singapore? Also none.
If one compared to HK, they have a lot more locally owned companies which have global footprints (for example Lee Kum Kee). Lee Kah Shing's Hutchinson investment group has way way more success than GIC or Temasek. Even the HK based Malaysian owned Kerry Group which is based in HK very well oiled machine in the agriculture commodity business. Just compared the value of the listings on HKEX versus SGX. That is the most obvious report card.
