Warning: Long Post ahead!
> You’re a Singaporean and you’re still young. It’s easier for you to find job compares to your peers.
I admit, back then this didn’t really hit me enough, until now that I’m still an unemployed for 6 months and counting.
A little context about myself, I am a millennial and just past 30, born and bred locally here in the little red dot. I was a contract staff working in IT in one of the financial institutions. As of recent years, a lot of people lost their jobs, and I’m one of them. Part of the reasons is reorganisation, as we know it, it’s simply saving cost. The fact was that many jobs was offshore to other countries because our salary here is equivalent to 2 or 3 people in other countries.
My team is a fairly small team, 2 colleagues who are a father (Colleague A) and a mother (Colleague B), with children to take care of, and my team lead. I am single, youngest of my siblings and parents to take care of. For those who aren’t in IT, its an office job yes, the thing is there are changes, updates, maintenances etc at night or weekend.
I often took the ungodly bulk of the works during weekend, holidays and nights because of the differences in our commitment. Colleague A was like a mentor to me, he guided me and helped me a lot, and he even stayed overnight and sometime, more than 48 hours like me to resolve issues that occurred during such processes. I truly appreciate his help from the bottom of my heart, without him I would have been crushed 6 feet below ground long ago. His effort and dedication was the reason why I believed in what I am doing. I learnt from him, and slowly I was able to handle issues on my own.
Now then there’s Colleague B. Unlike Colleague A and me who are local, Colleague B and Team Leader comes from the same country. During the arduous and grueling works that involves weekend, nights and holidays, Colleague B won’t be around. Especially for the difficult tasks, since the time I was here (she was here earlier than me), she has never touch on the difficult tasks before, not once until I’m at the second last month of my contract that she took the task but it failed. Colleague A had to come into the office on a Saturday night to resolve the issue, while Colleague B went home to rest.
Colleague A actually was in the office from Saturday night to Monday morning.
My Colleague A was angry, obviously, because this wasn’t his task initially but it ended up being his to clear up the whole situation, and his weekend gone without spending time with his family. Where was I? I pulled a 72 hours implementation on the prior week (Saturday morning to Monday morning) and therefore I was exempted for this particular task. Since we have duty, the duty personnel had to perform the task but because there was an issue that Colleague B could not resolved, my team lead called Colleague A back to help out.
After that incident, Colleague A expressed his dissatisfaction to my team leader on his differential treatment to protect Colleague B till the point that she could not perform a task, and yet renew her contract. It was her first time doing it despite being in the organisation longer than me. Colleague A is the most experienced out of my team, even my Team Leader does not know the things behind our work and that’s why people look for Colleague A instead of my team lead regarding projects and issues. His words weigh more than the Team Leader and that’s why my Team Leader listened to him.
My team leader told Colleague B that she needs to step up and take on more difficult tasks since the team has lesser people, she needs to help Colleague A more and bear more responsibility for her own tasks. I’m not sure how she took it but it was revealed that she rejected the renewal of her contract at the end of the day and cleared her leaves including medical leaves, which was the reason why we didn’t see her the entire time until she left, 1 month before my contract expired. However, if we put all the difficult things aside, Colleague B helped us with our administrative works, which we admit can be really annoying. She expressed that she felt troubled about handling these difficult tasks to me once when I joined not too long ago, when she saw me and Colleague A stayed up all nights for a few days without break to resolve the issues, and I’ve been honest about it that we shouldn’t turn away from our responsibilities, we have to face it some day; it’s only fair that everyone plays their parts so we can help each other. On days when Colleague A went for holiday, we helped each other.
It felt injustice to left out the part where Colleague B was good at, she’s good at tasks where there are a clear set of instructions. As long as there are instructions somewhere, she can manage, it’s only when the tasks became complicated, affect multiple altitudes of processes that she lost confidence.
Maybe because I wanted to work hard and climb the ladders, I did not complain much back then when I took the brunt of the works. I am eager to learn and finally able to stand on my own two feet. Maybe because I am single and that I have lesser commitment compared to my peers that I willingly play my part and sacrifice my own free time, weekend, holidays and nights just so I can cement a place that I can grow. I realise this part of me was childish and one-sided, I overlooked the most important people next to me, my parents who have aged while I was a workaholic. The days where I didn’t get to see them due to my work. The places I didn’t get to bring them to because of my work nature and shift.
I had my priorities wrong, I’m working to provide for my parents who took care of me, not working to go up higher and leave my parents behind.
When my contract ended, my close colleagues had a farewell for me and asked what’s my next step. I told them the time spent working overnights had taken a toll on my body. I took a career break and brought my parents overseas, I was finally able to breath.
They say when a door closes, another opens. There are a few companies who came and they are offering me back to the place that didn’t renew my contract.
I’m still in contacts with my close colleagues including Colleague A and they told me how the management has changed and how much is the market rate over one of our dinners. I’m not sure about going back to the same place so I gave the people who came looking for me a salary that’s about 15% lesser than the market rate (I lower it because the agency would have earned nothing if I simply ask for market rate) and they told me it was too high, since I will be a contractor of another’s company headcount, I have to lower my expectation. However, that was my limit, I wasn’t ready to accept the same cut knowing how the working environment was in the organisation previously.
Well, it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m not ready to work in hell when I’m not even expecting AWS, 13th Month or any variable bonus like what my past contract offered, which clawed 40% of the market rate just by simply placing me inside.
I learnt a lot of lessons in life. In this particular one, I just want to share that if you’re a jobseeker like myself, do not put yourself down. It’s really not worth it. I was desperate to look for job that I am willing to lower myself even for a low pay job, to work hard and diligent and prove myself isn’t always the right answer. Every workplace is different. Though this may seem like a bad experience, I’m grateful and cherished my former colleagues whom I’m closed with, especially having able to meet Colleague A was the reason why I decided it wasn’t an entirely a waste of my time.
Now that I look back to the start of this topic, I wonder why I wrote this. Perhaps I hope to be enlightened by others on how I should approach this stage of my life as I look for new opportunities. I guess the rejection has found its way to be buried within the feelings I’ve bottled up all these while, only for me to find a way to release it. Till this day when I remember what I was told, I tried to convince myself there’s a certain truth in it. A consideration for me that I wasn’t in control of the outcome, and I should not be sad over it.
I don’t have any update or good news regarding my job search but I hope in many years to come, I am in a better position myself to tell my yesteryears that my effort wasn’t in vain, that I can still continue to strive hard in life and keep the people I love close to me.
