Q&A: Retrenched at the age of 45

My regular readers will remember an earlier exchange with Dewdrop where I was accused of not expressing enough sympathy or understanding for the plight of Singaporeans over the age of 40 who have been made redundant (presumably because of increased competition from FTs) and have been reduced to jobs like driving taxis or other positions for which they are overqualified for. I have interviewed a 45 year old engineer who was made redundant earlier this year - he has kindly agreed to this interview to talk about his situation and the challenges he is facing. Let's call him Eng for short, for he is an engineer by training.

Limpeh: Tell me how you came to be made redundant earlier this year?

Eng: Our company had a really bad 2011 and simply needed to cut its salary bill in order to remain profitable. So about 20% of the salary bill had to go.

Eng was made redundant earlier this year. 

Limpeh: How did you find yourself amongst those who made up that 20% then?

Eng: There was no real consultation but I had been working for a new boss for about 6 months and his new direction was not really the same as my thinking. So I was less useful to his team than the others in his team.

Limpeh: How long had you been working there?

Eng: About two years.

Limpeh: Do you think there was anything you could've done, adjustments you could've made, to have kept your job?

Eng: The only thing I could've done was to have remoulded myself to work in a way that my new boss wanted me to work - which I really didn't want to do and I was also told would involve me relocating. I was not willing to relocate either. There were no other jobs available in the company at a similar director level I was at, so there were junior jobs available sure - but that would've been at less than half the salary. So yes I could've relocated and changed my opinions to match those of my boss... but I didn't want to do that.

Eng didn't see eye to eye with his former boss. 

Limpeh: Do you know if they then hired someone at a lower cost (say someone from a third world country willing to do your old job at less than half the pay), or did they function with a smaller number of employees after this round of redundancies? Would the former option have been possible in the first place?

Eng: They continued on with a smaller number of employees, they didn't do as you had suggested.

Limpeh: Would it have been possible? Could they have hired say an Indian or Filipino engineer and paid him half your salary?

Eng: Frankly that's already happened. Over 50% of the engineering team are Indians.

Limpeh: Are they paid as much the other engineers?

Eng: I'm afraid that's confidential information, like I don't know what my colleagues are paid - such information is confidential and it was not something we have discussed openly. The company also has quite a big office in Greece, where they are hiring Greek engineers to work for them, on local rates - and obviously a Greek engineer is a lot cheaper as everything is cheaper in Greece, their economy is in trouble and they may be more eager to prove themselves if they have managed to get themselves a good job, since good jobs are hard to find in Greece today. But it all works as everything is fully integrated amongst all the different international teams.

Limpeh: How did you feel when you were told you were made redundant?

Eng: I actually felt somewhat relieved because I knew that my new boss and I were not seeing eye to eye and then making me redundant works out better for me financially, than me leaving on my own accord. It is a better kind of negotiation to have, then if I resigned and left with nothing.

Limpeh: So they gave you a redundancy package?

Eng: Yes. Because they wanted to get rid of me, so they are morally obliged to help me find something else to do - so if there was anything else in the company, they would've offered that to me. And if there was nothing for me, then that meant I could leave at once and they still had to pay me my notice period.

Eng had a decent redundancy package. 

Limpeh: How did you feel? Were you worried? Upset? Sad? Angry?

Eng: I was very sad that two years of work with the company had come to this - that was sad. I did make some good friends there. And I was worried that in the current climate, finding another job would take at least 3 months to a year. It has been six months since I was made redundant.

Limpeh: How's the job hunt going?

Eng: Basically I've semi-retired - I decided I didn't want to do another job like that again and I am financially independent with my property investments to be able to do that. I am living off the rent I am collecting from those 3 properties and I am spending my time managing those properties for now - it's enough to keep me going. I was lucky in that I invested in property at the right time so I now have this steady stream of rent income coming in every month.

I have tried setting myself up as a consultant, it is one thing that is often said by people coming out of companies like that. Companies like to use companies when they have a particular need for them, say for a project that requires their special skills. Then once that project is complete, they pay the consultants and say goodbye. It is cheaper and less complicated than hiring someone full time and it happens a lot. I tried that route, I have been putting myself out there as a consultant but no work has come from that route yet. Perhaps I am not networking or promoting myself enough as I am new to that system, it's not as easy as I thought it was going to be.

Eng is living off the income from his property investments at the moment. 

My range of skills didn't seem to attract any employers - but the technology world is changing rapidly. The skills I used even 4 years ago are not relevant today, due to the advancement of technology. It is sad but true, but whilst you're working for a company, you rarely get any training that will help you with the job market outside the company. So I have spent the last 6 months going to a lot of tech meet-ups, interesting myself in technology that have developed over the last 4 years and going to hackathons to try these skills out and meet other professionals in the industry. I am fortunate in the computing industry that a lot of this is all available to access, for anybody, for free.

Limpeh: Okay, I know you're financially sound because of your investments over the years. The blogger Dewdrop has talked about people who were in your kind of position - they are in their late 40s, maybe 50s - and they get made redundant. Maybe they have children or aged parents to take care of and so they need money constantly. These people don't have the luxury to do what you did - ie. take some time out, seek new training, do more networking and figure out what their next step should be. If you were in that kind of situation, would you gladly drive a taxi if you needed the money, even if you are vastly overqualified for that?

Are there some very overqualified taxi drivers in Singapore?

Eng: Yes I would, if I needed money urgently. You do whatever is necessary if there are people depending on you. However, if you do something like drive a taxi to earn money, you should still be constantly looking for a job that you really want, in your industry as driving a taxi would probably not match the salary you were on. But you still don't want to be doing a 60+ hour week in McDoland's or in a taxi - you need to set aside time, to research the job market, go to professional networking events in your industry and socialize with people from the industry you really want to be in. That is hard to do! It can take a very long time before that pays off, but what's the alternative?

You need to decide: do you want to stay in your industry or do you really want to change direction and do something else instead? And is that something else 'driving a taxi' or is there something else you do have a passion for? Maybe they wanna move from engineering into tourism, fashion or media and they can retrain for a job in that new industry - that's a challenge of course, but I have seen people successfully switch industries after they were made redundant. It is hard to climb a new career ladder, but they have the passion and interest to help them up that new ladder.

Some people may take this chance to reconsider their career choice. 

Limpeh: Okay, I like what you have said! I am going to be controversial now and ask you this: for those engineers in Singapore who were made redundant and ended up driving taxis - are they not trying hard enough? Are they settling for too little when they are clearly overqualified to drive taxis? Shouldn't they be looking either for jobs within engineering or retraining for a new industry they are passionate about? Could I point the finger at them and accuse them of simply not trying hard enough, of having given up on the challenge of finding something better? Have they just given up on life?

Eng: No, as long as they are doing something - even if it means getting up in the morning to drive a taxi so they can provide for their family - they are not giving up. Giving up means doing nothing, not even driving a taxi; it also means giving up hope altogether. The important thing is that they don't stop looking for what they really want to do - and even if they do want to find themselves driving taxis full time, then that's another career ladder to climb. It may not be as obvious, but public transport is big business and he could think about how he can try to provide a premium service as a driver - maybe double up as a tour guide for tourists - to try to add value to what he does.

It is always a challenge to find a job you enjoy, that is just right for you. 

Limpeh: I guess it's hard for taxi drivers as they cannot get a promotion per se. They can earn more money by working harder, but what's a promotion for a taxi driver? It's not the kind of career which has a clearly defined career ladder for one to progress through - that's why it is seen as a kind of dead end job. You start off as a taxi driver, after many years, you are still a taxi driver.

Eng: I don't believe that there are clear career ladders in engineering - in my experience, it is hard to get promoted within the same company. One is rarely methodically promoted within a company. I haven't even had an annual pay rise within the last decade - promotion and marginal increases in salary have all come from opportunities outside the company. This is why I am beginning to think that people should spend more time networking with other professionals in the industry outside their company and understanding how the industry works, see the big picture because it is changing all of the time. In two years time, it will be different from what we have now in 2012.

Limpeh: Allow me to read you Dewdrop's quote on the issue and I'll like your action to it.

Dewdrop has a pessimistic evaluation of Singapore's situation. 

"There are many people out there who have real skills, knowledge and talent far beyond Xiaxue’s (I’m not talking about bloggers who can’t make it). These folks were top students at their universities and they had their heydays, flying between Singapore and the US on business class on a weekly basis. They have shaken hands with some big names and sealed multi-million dollar deals.

Something happened when they hit their 40s and 50s. They lost their jobs, got replaced by FTs and ended up selling insurance, driving taxis or even offering funeral services. Can you dismiss these once successful professionals as lacking in business acumen or street wisdom? Can you accuse them of not progressing with Singapore?"

Eng: Hmmm, well, they may find that driving a taxi means giving them a better work-life balance, they have less stress, more flexible hours and can spend more time with their families. I know how people in Singapore can end up working really long hours in a corporate environment and there's nothing wrong with saying no to that kind of career if you wish to have a job that allows you to spend more time with your family.

Would you rather work less hours and spend more time with your family?

Limpeh: I am glad you mentioned families because the main concern for many Singaporean parents today is education - it is expensive to educate a child in Singapore and if you have more than one child, it can be a huge drain on your resources. You cannot expect to pay the minimum and expect the best for your child - many parents spend a lot of money buying their children the privilege of a good education so that their children will be able to go to a good university and get a good job. So it's not a question of having a work life balance for their parents, it is about providing or their children and the fact remains that taxi drivers in Singapore don't earn much and they would not be able to get their children everything they need for their education.

Eng: Yes I recognize that everywhere in the world, people face the same challenge and in this current financial crisis, there just isn't enough money for many people compared to a few years ago. But everyone is an individual - they have to make a decision as to what they want to do: whether that is doing what they are trained to do, or try something different like driving a taxi. Are these people driving taxi full time? Are they doing it part time whilst still working on plan B? If someone really wants to work as an engineer or accountant but is spending all his time driving a taxi and not looking at all, then no, that's not right.

You need to think about yourself as a a small business, you are trying to sell your skills to employers out there. So you try to think about where the market is, you try to identify what aspects of your product that will satisfy that market and you then try to fit the product to the market and if it doesn't, then you pivot and see how the market is different to what it was and how your product is different to what you thought it was. And you carry on, it is a process which involves changing and developing your product as you go along, learning more and more about the market.

Is this a fair evaluation of the situation? 

Limpeh: Now I think I irked Dewdrop when I mentioned that there are things one can do to stay ahead of one's game through a combination of hard and soft skills. Hard skills means going for courses, learning new programmes, new languages, showing initiative at work, going the extra mile to prove yourself to your boss that you're the best. Soft skills means getting along with your colleagues, remembering their birthdays, being well liked and making the right kind of alliances at work so people will be on your side should things go wrong. Am I being unfair? Do you think there are things that people can do to save their jobs? Did they lose their jobs because they got complacent and just didn't progress with the company?

Eng: No, well... it's not always their fault. You can't generalize like that. It depends. Every company is different and there are different reasons why people end up redundant. The definition of the word "redundancy" is when a company no longer has the job that you did, so they have to let you go and they cannot recruit anyone new to do that job. So for example, my company in trying to reduce its salary bill by 20% may have eliminated my job and they could not have recruited for the same job. They could've recruited more junior people though and promote them in due course. In my case, no... it wasn't really my fault, I think.

Can you justify your salary to your employers? 

You can argue that if the person who ended up being made redundant is guilty of not having made himself popular enough, so yeah that is why people suck up to their bosses and go out of their way to protect their position in the company. It happens all the time. I have seen that a lot over the years.

Limpeh: Totally. Me too. Good grief. Haven't I! (You can read about it here.)

Eng: But that's a decision to make - do you want to be in a company where you have to resort to that kind of behaviour to stay employed, or would you rather do something else, in a different kind of environment where you don't have to behave like that? What kind of company do you want to work for? Where would you be happier? You have to choose.

Limpeh: True. But let me put this to you: the situation in Singapore is such that older professionals in their 40s and 50s face a lot of competition. A senior engineer in Singapore in his 40s will be paid a lot more than a similarly qualified engineer from the Philippines or India - so if the company wants to save money, then the company can easily outsource that job to Manila or Mumbai to save money. Sometimes, they don't even need to get the foreigner to come to Singapore - they just outsource the job to where the talent is and you end up paying them even less with them being paid local rates in their own country. So, what can older Singaporeans do to safeguard their position at work, short of having to suck up to their bosses as mentioned previously?

Eng: It is a difficult situation. Things in the engineering world don't stand still because this is technology. You didn't mention the biggest threat to older professionals - the main competition is not coming from India or Philippines but from the younger generation! I have seen some young people, some of them teenagers, playing with technology that 5 years ago was only reserved for experts. Some young people are so incredibly good with technology now because they grew up with the internet whilst older people didn't have that benefit - we're playing catch up and working hard to keep up with the latest developments.

There will still be fresh graduates coming out of university who will have such brilliant ideas and do what you do better - they may lack the experience but they certainly make up for it with technical knowledge. So I don't think you should view it as a Singapore vs cheaper third world country competition, but rather the 50 year old vs the fresh graduate competition. That is the real competition they should be wary of.

Now these young techno-savvy kids lack the perspective of experience and that is what the older professionals do have. I am sure that those in their 60s feel the same way about those in their 40s. So you have to recognize that your job will change, it will have to evolve in order to allow the younger adults to do what they do well. The older professionals can offer so much about leadership qualities - older professionals have had years of experience in terms of building a team, running the team, resolving conflicts when they occur and these are skills that no young adult can have. So if you are an older employee, you need to recognize that this is the kind of role you need to fulfil in your company and if you can't deliver on that front, then you are not living up to your expectations as an older professional.

Competition will come from bright, young graduates, not abroad.

Limpeh: So these are people skills we're talking about...

Eng: Not so much people skills but business skills.

Limpeh: Can you explain what you mean by that please?

Eng: These older professionals would've had time to work with and observe teams that work well together as well as those which are dysfunctional. They would've developed some experience to know the difference between what will work and what won't. This generally qualifies them for managerial positions (teams, projects, products etc) that younger, less experienced people would not qualify for. This has to show up in your current work, it's not about reminding people what you have done 10 years ago. You must speak up and make yourself heard, and if people don't agree with you, you must have the conviction to stand your ground and fight your corner rather than back down. An older professional will be expected to have frank discussions about strategic planning and make important decisions.

In my case, I didn't agree with some of the things that were happening and I spoke up, argued my case and that could've led to me being made redundant. But if I hadn't spoken up, then that could've been perceived as an inability to show initiative and direction anyway - so I followed my instincts and did what I did.

How do you come across to your colleagues at work?

I remember when I started work, for a very big engineering company, there were paid progressions and career management ladders. They called them 'professional development paths' which always seem to be out of engineering and into management. I thought that was really stupid - if an engineer is good, he should be able to stay in an engineering role rather than move into management. For some people, that is true - but for most, they would spend more time keeping up with new technology than they would doing their day job. So for most people a move away from technology towards management is an easier option.

But what that means is that when it comes to redundancies and having to slash jobs during hard times, those in management earn the most and they are most vulnerable to the job cuts because they only need to sack one senior person in management rather than 3 or 4 junior engineers.

Limpeh: Lastly, to bring things to a close today, I'll like to talk about the global economy. After all, we cannot turn back the clock to the way things were in the 1980s - we need to accept the fact that we live in a global economy, jobs will be outsourced halfway around the world and the global labour market is increasingly mobile. You've worked in India for a while yourself - so I am wondering if there is any parting words you have for my readers in terms of the kind of what kind of attitude we need to adopt to embrace the challenges of the global economy today?

Can you see the big picture and understand the global context? 

Eng:  There has been a lot of advice about outsourcing engineering to foreign countries like India and all of it comes back to the key question: if this things breaks on a Saturday night, who is going to fix it? If you can answer that question, then you are okay. I've worked in India and I've seen the way people there work - they do whatever they can to earn money and just have that can-do attitude, amazing. For many companies, they will be a better way to get products made than trying to do it closer to the market. I don't think there is any way to avoid this, nor do I think that we should try to avoid it. These people have every right to make creative use of their talents as anybody else and it is clear that their skills are in demand.

One thing I have noticed is that there is always a local market for local problems that only locals can solve. That basically brings you back to more basic needs: food, transport and any kinds of face-to-face service industry. Perhaps that is why a lot of your engineers are ending up in the local service industry instead, because it is far more robust in sustaining jobs and it will never go away. If you want a job that will not be outsourced to India, then do something local - you can't outsource the local primary school to India, you will always need a school locally for the children.

Limpeh: Yes, but they can then get teachers from India to teach if they are willing to work for less money than local teachers. But that has not happened as I think parents may feel uneasy if the school was run entirely by Indian expatriates rather than locals. Yes, I do see your point - some jobs are easier to outsource than others.

Some jobs are easier to outsource than others. 

Eng: I don't believe that all engineering jobs will end up in India one day, that's is only something that can happen with very mature systems and products and there is always room for local engineers to try to find their feet locally. That industry changes so fast anyway, so who knows what will happen 5 or 10 years from now?

Limpeh: Thank you so much for your time today - I really like your insights into the issue and hope that my readers will enjoy reading this article.

Eng: You're welcome.