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I have been working in the IT industry for over 20 years and was retrenched in 2002. Without wasting any time, I started sending out job applications to all advertised jobs. For almost 1.5 years, I heard nothing from any of the job applications I sent out. Around that time, a lot of companies were busy outsourcing entire departments and projects to other countries and also our Government was increasingly getting more “foreign talents” into Singapore.
Three years after retrenchment and 3 small contracts later, I gained a better understanding of what was happening out there. The rules of the employment game had changed and Singaporeans might not be aware of it –experience and qualification do not count any more. Nationality plays the biggest part.
Here is my story of the 2nd contract position I took with an Indian IT body shop. In fact, I wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office about it in late 2005 and MOM subsequently replied me in early 2006, stating that they would look into it. I have not heard from them since.
In 2004, I received an urgent call for an IT consultant position for a project in KL. I took up the position and found out later that the consultant I replaced had been sacked for incompetence. He was engaged from India and the project was just starting.
This was a multi-million dollar project involving a Malaysian client, a top-notch consulting firm and a small staff of external consultants. There were about 40 people in the project team. Part of the project was outsourced to this Indian IT body shop, which brought in 3 “consultants” directly from India plus myself from Singapore. I was supposedly hired for a “6-month” period.
The Indian IT body shop could not get Malaysia work passes for the 3 Indian consultants to work in Malaysia. So, their Singapore counterpart applied Employment Passes for them in Singapore instead. On the day they failed to get Malaysia work passes, the 3 Indian consultants took a night train from KL to Singapore on a Friday night, arriving at 8.30am on Saturday morning. They then headed straight to MOM and got their Employment Passes by Monday morning. Right after that, they went back to work in this project in KL.
Throughout the project, before their maximum 30-day “social visit” in Malaysia was up, all 3 would hop onto a night train and arrive in Singapore early next morning. After some rest and window shopping (these guys never spent a cent) in Singapore, they would return back to KL the following day. They were abusing both the Singapore Employment Pass issued to them and the Malaysia “social visiting” rights accorded to them.
The Indian IT body shop was paid a considerable amount per consultant. Only a fraction of this was paid to the consultants. Before the end of the project, I was told by my Indian employer to “hurry up and finish your work because you are expensive”. Yes, I was paid more than the other 3 Indian consultants but then I did come with more than 20 years of IT experience and I knew for a fact that my team mates were nowhere nearly as experienced. On one occasion, out of utter frustration due to liquidated damages incurred, the client lined my team mates up and had a good yelling session at them, basically, for incompetence. The client paid through its nose for sub-standard quality work.
The Indian IT body shop was the one laughing its way to the bank. I had to leave within a week, after barely 5 months on the project. I was in fact, offered to stay on by the client and was also offered to work on a new project in JB by the project consulting group. I had to turn both down because I needed to come home due to family obligations. I came back to Singapore to face unemployment once again. What frustrates me is that there are plenty of such IT contract positions in Singapore but inevitably, they all seem to go straight to foreigners. I have to look outside Singapore for similar jobs but that means I will have to be away from my family. On another occasion, I even had an Indian manager telling me “only Indians can do technical jobs” (i.e., only people from India can do technical jobs). He wouldn’t even look at my resume.
During the project (forgive me but I have to share this one), I had the woeful experience of working with this Indian “talent”. He was a “technical consultant” whom I sat next to. He came with a very “impressive” resume which obviously must have impressed the client a lot. He spent a record-breaking 9 days on the project before being dismissed by the client. Just to relate how bad he was, he approached me for assistance when his laptop stopped functioning. I explained to him that his laptop battery had gone flat. Seeing a puzzled look on his face, I proceeded to take out the power cord from his laptop bag and plugged it in for him before the laptop came back up again! This may seem like an April fool’s day joke, but sadly, it isn’t. Whilst there are exceptionally good talents from India, here is a classic example of the absolute opposite.
Singaporean IT consultants are a dying breed. If the Government doesn’t do anything to stop the abuses by these foreign IT workers, there will not be any
Singaporean IT people left by the next generation. .
Yours truly, An Indian Singaporean IT Consultant who is scared to be retrenched again!
http://www.temasekreview.net/2011/05/19/the-woes-of-a-singaporean-it-consultant/
Three years after retrenchment and 3 small contracts later, I gained a better understanding of what was happening out there. The rules of the employment game had changed and Singaporeans might not be aware of it –experience and qualification do not count any more. Nationality plays the biggest part.
Here is my story of the 2nd contract position I took with an Indian IT body shop. In fact, I wrote to the Prime Minister’s Office about it in late 2005 and MOM subsequently replied me in early 2006, stating that they would look into it. I have not heard from them since.
In 2004, I received an urgent call for an IT consultant position for a project in KL. I took up the position and found out later that the consultant I replaced had been sacked for incompetence. He was engaged from India and the project was just starting.
This was a multi-million dollar project involving a Malaysian client, a top-notch consulting firm and a small staff of external consultants. There were about 40 people in the project team. Part of the project was outsourced to this Indian IT body shop, which brought in 3 “consultants” directly from India plus myself from Singapore. I was supposedly hired for a “6-month” period.
The Indian IT body shop could not get Malaysia work passes for the 3 Indian consultants to work in Malaysia. So, their Singapore counterpart applied Employment Passes for them in Singapore instead. On the day they failed to get Malaysia work passes, the 3 Indian consultants took a night train from KL to Singapore on a Friday night, arriving at 8.30am on Saturday morning. They then headed straight to MOM and got their Employment Passes by Monday morning. Right after that, they went back to work in this project in KL.
Throughout the project, before their maximum 30-day “social visit” in Malaysia was up, all 3 would hop onto a night train and arrive in Singapore early next morning. After some rest and window shopping (these guys never spent a cent) in Singapore, they would return back to KL the following day. They were abusing both the Singapore Employment Pass issued to them and the Malaysia “social visiting” rights accorded to them.
The Indian IT body shop was paid a considerable amount per consultant. Only a fraction of this was paid to the consultants. Before the end of the project, I was told by my Indian employer to “hurry up and finish your work because you are expensive”. Yes, I was paid more than the other 3 Indian consultants but then I did come with more than 20 years of IT experience and I knew for a fact that my team mates were nowhere nearly as experienced. On one occasion, out of utter frustration due to liquidated damages incurred, the client lined my team mates up and had a good yelling session at them, basically, for incompetence. The client paid through its nose for sub-standard quality work.
The Indian IT body shop was the one laughing its way to the bank. I had to leave within a week, after barely 5 months on the project. I was in fact, offered to stay on by the client and was also offered to work on a new project in JB by the project consulting group. I had to turn both down because I needed to come home due to family obligations. I came back to Singapore to face unemployment once again. What frustrates me is that there are plenty of such IT contract positions in Singapore but inevitably, they all seem to go straight to foreigners. I have to look outside Singapore for similar jobs but that means I will have to be away from my family. On another occasion, I even had an Indian manager telling me “only Indians can do technical jobs” (i.e., only people from India can do technical jobs). He wouldn’t even look at my resume.
During the project (forgive me but I have to share this one), I had the woeful experience of working with this Indian “talent”. He was a “technical consultant” whom I sat next to. He came with a very “impressive” resume which obviously must have impressed the client a lot. He spent a record-breaking 9 days on the project before being dismissed by the client. Just to relate how bad he was, he approached me for assistance when his laptop stopped functioning. I explained to him that his laptop battery had gone flat. Seeing a puzzled look on his face, I proceeded to take out the power cord from his laptop bag and plugged it in for him before the laptop came back up again! This may seem like an April fool’s day joke, but sadly, it isn’t. Whilst there are exceptionally good talents from India, here is a classic example of the absolute opposite.
Singaporean IT consultants are a dying breed. If the Government doesn’t do anything to stop the abuses by these foreign IT workers, there will not be any
Singaporean IT people left by the next generation. .
Yours truly, An Indian Singaporean IT Consultant who is scared to be retrenched again!
http://www.temasekreview.net/2011/05/19/the-woes-of-a-singaporean-it-consultant/
