My New Job
itunes: Kyoto Jazz Massive, Spirit Of The Sun (2002)
Today maybe I should talk about my 1-week old new job. Let’s look on the good side of it first:
1) A managerial position in Finance, with an attractive yearly package.
2) A prestigious French MNC, with a male French boss. This is my ideal working format. It’s not that I’m being potato but I’m really sick of working in a Chinese company environment where your voice is drowned in their centralized kind of management. Even if you manage to raise your opinion out and loud, Chinese bosses will deem that you are a troublemaker. On the contrary, a westerner boss will be better in the sense that they listen and respect what you are going to say even though they may not agreeable. I guess this is the basic human rights that most Asian failed to have. Also, a male boss is definitely better. Lady bosses are mostly petty and they have forgotten what materiality is. I simply do not understand why she would want you to show the numbers right up to 0.01 decimals when we are looking at numbers in thousands. The most important is that I do not have to face an emotion rollercoaster whom you do not even know if she is on the high or low, especially those days in a month.
3) A understanding boss (I mean so far so good) who is willing to provide enough training and support just for me to settle down in my work fast. I heard that as long as one completes his tasks, he does not really bother and care how you behave in the office.
4) The company located in a beautiful modern building in the heart of town, which is I need to take 20mins to reach. Let me show you the breakdown:
Leaving house, doorsteps to platform in MRT stations: 8 mins
Wait for train during rush hour: 2 mins
Travelling time to the station nearest to office: 6mins
From station to my office: 4mins
5) A nice room to me, with a 90 degree full view of the city. It really nice to look out of the windows to see the bustling downstairs once in a while.
Does it sound perfect as an ideal job? But it seems I have been feeling disturb about the prospect of this job/position.
Now let’s look at the negative side:
1) A managerial position in Finance, with 4 assistants outsourced! What kind of arrangement is this? I was not told that all my assistants, so called report to me but they belong to the outsourced company which located a unit next to my office. Looks like I do not have control over their work processes, performance to simple things like leave applications. That would mean I would be at their mercy all the time.
2) A prestigious French MNC, which has been taken over by a fellow bigger French rival group 6 months ago. As much as the new parent company claimed that there will be no change for the time being, as a Finance guy, it’s hard not to think that a consolidation of resources (restructuring) is imminent. The in-thing in the corporate world is being cost efficient. Till then, what are the chances of my position surviving when my team is outsourced?
3) Another piece of not-so-nice-to-know piece of information that I managed to gather is that this year happens to be worst performance of this company in the 10 years that it was established in Singapore. 2 reasons constitute to this phenomenon:
a) Singapore’s strategic hub role in this industry has been slowly eroded by the surrounding cheaper economies. As much as Singapore can play the efficiency card, cost still matters. In general, Singapore cost 40% more than these developing economies. The world’s No. 1 & 2 players has moved the main bulk of activities out of Singapore and my parent company, being the world’s No. 3 after being taken over my company group, has already long pulled out of Singapore, leaving a small representative office here only.
b) Our new parent office has taken over some of our most profitable activities in the act of so-called consolidation of operations to achieve cost efficiency so that the activities of the 2 groups do not conflict. I heard that our brand name is big for the African markets so I can strongly believe that they just want to retain our brand name and yet, slowly take over our African operations.
4) Indeed, my office and my room are beautiful and conducive for work. The bad news is once the lease of this office expires next June, we will have to pack and move into our parent rep office in the other side of town.
5) I was told that the books has been messy and leaving outsourced accountant did not respond to any queries made on the numbers by the HQ in Paris, let alone solving the problems. It’s already May and yet the audit report for FY05 is still not out, shows very much the concerns the auditors have on the issues. Well, I guess the clearing of messy will be my immediate responsibilities.
I understand I should take the best out of it and be happy about it, but with my career prospect at stake (even though I’m safe for the time being), the feeling is just not good at all. I was very upset for the fact the outsourced Finance arrangement, the messy books and takeover has not made known to me during the job interview. Of cos, they are not stupid to disclose these; else I would not have accepted the job offer at all. Bluntly speaking, I feel so cheated and the idea of having to stay here in this office for another second just irks me a lot.
The sad thing is I can’t act on impulse and resign straight away and return to the kind of nervous stay-at-home-wait-for-job kind of life. This is not an intelligent decision to make for the second time. Guess I have to wait for the next job alternative to arrive. Sigh, just because money beckons, I’m stuck in the quicksand. That’s life, really. We are work hard for our money, is not it?
Today maybe I should talk about my 1-week old new job. Let’s look on the good side of it first:
1) A managerial position in Finance, with an attractive yearly package.
2) A prestigious French MNC, with a male French boss. This is my ideal working format. It’s not that I’m being potato but I’m really sick of working in a Chinese company environment where your voice is drowned in their centralized kind of management. Even if you manage to raise your opinion out and loud, Chinese bosses will deem that you are a troublemaker. On the contrary, a westerner boss will be better in the sense that they listen and respect what you are going to say even though they may not agreeable. I guess this is the basic human rights that most Asian failed to have. Also, a male boss is definitely better. Lady bosses are mostly petty and they have forgotten what materiality is. I simply do not understand why she would want you to show the numbers right up to 0.01 decimals when we are looking at numbers in thousands. The most important is that I do not have to face an emotion rollercoaster whom you do not even know if she is on the high or low, especially those days in a month.
3) A understanding boss (I mean so far so good) who is willing to provide enough training and support just for me to settle down in my work fast. I heard that as long as one completes his tasks, he does not really bother and care how you behave in the office.
4) The company located in a beautiful modern building in the heart of town, which is I need to take 20mins to reach. Let me show you the breakdown:
Leaving house, doorsteps to platform in MRT stations: 8 mins
Wait for train during rush hour: 2 mins
Travelling time to the station nearest to office: 6mins
From station to my office: 4mins
5) A nice room to me, with a 90 degree full view of the city. It really nice to look out of the windows to see the bustling downstairs once in a while.
Does it sound perfect as an ideal job? But it seems I have been feeling disturb about the prospect of this job/position.
Now let’s look at the negative side:
1) A managerial position in Finance, with 4 assistants outsourced! What kind of arrangement is this? I was not told that all my assistants, so called report to me but they belong to the outsourced company which located a unit next to my office. Looks like I do not have control over their work processes, performance to simple things like leave applications. That would mean I would be at their mercy all the time.
2) A prestigious French MNC, which has been taken over by a fellow bigger French rival group 6 months ago. As much as the new parent company claimed that there will be no change for the time being, as a Finance guy, it’s hard not to think that a consolidation of resources (restructuring) is imminent. The in-thing in the corporate world is being cost efficient. Till then, what are the chances of my position surviving when my team is outsourced?
3) Another piece of not-so-nice-to-know piece of information that I managed to gather is that this year happens to be worst performance of this company in the 10 years that it was established in Singapore. 2 reasons constitute to this phenomenon:
a) Singapore’s strategic hub role in this industry has been slowly eroded by the surrounding cheaper economies. As much as Singapore can play the efficiency card, cost still matters. In general, Singapore cost 40% more than these developing economies. The world’s No. 1 & 2 players has moved the main bulk of activities out of Singapore and my parent company, being the world’s No. 3 after being taken over my company group, has already long pulled out of Singapore, leaving a small representative office here only.
b) Our new parent office has taken over some of our most profitable activities in the act of so-called consolidation of operations to achieve cost efficiency so that the activities of the 2 groups do not conflict. I heard that our brand name is big for the African markets so I can strongly believe that they just want to retain our brand name and yet, slowly take over our African operations.
4) Indeed, my office and my room are beautiful and conducive for work. The bad news is once the lease of this office expires next June, we will have to pack and move into our parent rep office in the other side of town.
5) I was told that the books has been messy and leaving outsourced accountant did not respond to any queries made on the numbers by the HQ in Paris, let alone solving the problems. It’s already May and yet the audit report for FY05 is still not out, shows very much the concerns the auditors have on the issues. Well, I guess the clearing of messy will be my immediate responsibilities.
I understand I should take the best out of it and be happy about it, but with my career prospect at stake (even though I’m safe for the time being), the feeling is just not good at all. I was very upset for the fact the outsourced Finance arrangement, the messy books and takeover has not made known to me during the job interview. Of cos, they are not stupid to disclose these; else I would not have accepted the job offer at all. Bluntly speaking, I feel so cheated and the idea of having to stay here in this office for another second just irks me a lot.
The sad thing is I can’t act on impulse and resign straight away and return to the kind of nervous stay-at-home-wait-for-job kind of life. This is not an intelligent decision to make for the second time. Guess I have to wait for the next job alternative to arrive. Sigh, just because money beckons, I’m stuck in the quicksand. That’s life, really. We are work hard for our money, is not it?
posted by music-nazi ~ musik mit uns at 10:25
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home