Q: So what's this new company then?
I have created a new company upon leaving my old job earlier this year - the purpose of that is to be able to offer my services as a consultant to several different clients, enabling me to work for more than just one company. I don't like the idea of putting all my eggs in one basket in these uncertain times, so this is an effective solution that allows me to do what I want without worrying about any conflict of interests. In my previous job, there was a clause in my contract that allowed me to do 'outside work' but it was quite limiting - if it had absolutely no conflict with my job (say if I went to teach a class of gymnastics at my local gymnastics club), then they were fine with it but if I did something like star in an ad, the bosses wanted to make sure that there was no conflict with the corporate identity and they wanted to have final say as to whether or not I could appear in the ad. So when I did that Christmas food ad for a big British supermarket chain, they were fine with that but if I got a role in an ad for a bank, then they would have probably vetoed it. But that's all in the past - my relationship with my clients now is so different. I do the work I am contracted to do, I invoice them for it and that's it - I'm not an employee but an external consultant. So if I wanna go do an ad or go on a nice long holiday, I can do whatever I want since I am effectively my own boss now. It has worked really well and I only regret not having done this years ago.
Q: But you had been self-employed in the past right, so what's different now?
If I may be honest, it's the tax situation. Sure I could be self-employed but that means all my income going through income tax. Whilst I am able to bring down the amount of income liable for tax through careful management, the UK is not a low-tax regime. The moment you earn more than £50,271 your income tax goes up to the next bracket of 40% and the moment you cross the £100,000 threshold, all kinds of new taxes kick in and you will hit the highest rate of 45% income tax once your earnings exceed £125,140. So if you earn less than £50,000 a year, then by all means remain self-employed and keep things simple. Even if you earned £75,000 a year, then it is only the last £24,729 that is subject to 40% income tax, not the whole £75,000. But if you expect to earn more than £100,000 a year, then it makes complete sense to avoid putting all that through personal income tax and instead set up a company as corporate tax rates are lower at 25%. The rule of thumb is to never exceed £100,000 in personal income tax as you would lose your tax-free allowance and it's like your virginity, once you lose it you can never get it back. So even if you exceeded that threshold just one tax year, you can never have that tax-free allowance for the rest of your life. So I intend to pay myself just under £50,200 through my company to stay below the 40% tax bracket and then pay 25% for everything else I earn on top of that - this will mean that my overall tax rate will be somewhere between 20% and 25% despite earning enough to be in the top tax bracket. Thus there can be a lot more I can do with the assets of my company to mitigate the tax burden, to ensure that everything is structured in the most efficient manner and this is normal practice for business owners like me.
Q: Are you doing this to avoid paying your taxes?
There is a massive difference between tax planning and tax dodging. The former is completely legal, the latter is illegal. Now what I am doing is the former, I am using an accountant to make sure I have an appropriate structure to deal with my multiple streams of income to make sure that we use the most efficient tax planning tools within the laws of the UK. Tax avoidance or fraud is completely illegal of course and who would be stupid enough to brag about committing a crime on their blog. Tax planning is a big industry actually - there are plenty of lawyers and accountants working in this field, so a tax planning firm might say to a big customer, yeah we charge you £10,000 a year but you'll save more than that when you get your final tax bill after we work our magic, so effectively it would be a win-win situation. Most working class people won't benefit from any kind of tax planning - say if a train diver does one job and has only one employer, his situation is so straightforward that there's just nothing a tax planning lawyer can do to help him. But for someone like me with multiple sources of income, I could benefit a lot more from good tax planning as my situation is a lot more complex.
Q: Is there anyone else employed in your company?
No, it is a one man band. Just me, myself and I for now.
Q: Do you intend to hire anyone?
I have no plans for that at this moment, I have no need to.
Q: Is it expensive to set up your own company?
No, it's very cheap and fast - it costs about £12 to register the new company and it can be done in an hour. Then I have to get professional accountants to file the taxes for my company but the accountant will also be doing my personal taxes as well at the same time. I work from home and so I keep my costs low - we're so used to working from home after the pandemic and I don't waste money by renting office space. My living room will do for now, I have everything I need here.
Q: So what's your website?
I don't have one. I don't need a website to register a company in the UK. It is not a legal requirement to have a website.
Q: What? But how are you going to find clients without a website?
The answer is simple - I already have a wealth of contacts built up over the years and thus I already have plenty of people asking me to do work for them. I can now tell them, you don't need to give me a full time job, just give me a small piece of work to do and we will negotiate a price for it. I'm not expecting potential clients to find me through a Google search and then make an inquiry - I already have so many clients asking me to do work for them that I've had to turn people away as I only have 24 hours in a day. By that token, I simply don't need a website. All that's gonna do is to get loads of people to spam me, trying to sell me crap I don't need. The clients who are willing to pay me a lot of money to do work for them know me well and have seen the good work I've done in the past - they know I am very experienced and good at what I do, it's not because they saw an impressive website and decided to get in touch with me. There's just no way you can sell this kind of services on the internet to complete strangers, thus 100% of my clients are people who have known me for a very long time so they are old friends who have seen me in action and know what I am capable of.
Q: So you already have some clients?
Yes I do, one main one which has given me a lot of work (and are paying me well for it) and a few others which have offered me some work, but not that much. There's no jealousy amongst my clients and I often try to cross pollinate to see if there's any mutual synergy. Today I introduced my biggest client to my second biggest client, it looks like we're going to work on a few projects together given how much overlap there is in our professional interests. I'm very satisfied with the current progress my young, new company is making so far. I'm already busy enough and am not looking for new clients.
Q: Who do you bill in this case if you're doing work for two clients simultaneously on one project?
There is enough trust and goodwill amongst all parties to attempt this collaboration without worrying about how I will be paid if we do become extremely successful working together - the big client does pay me a retainer. So this is not a 'salary' per se, but a fixed amount of money every month to make sure that they always have my attention (since I have several clients) and in return, I'm under pressure to add value to their company everyday to justify why I'm worthy of this nice retainer. Look, it's all quite new to me and right now, I'm just happy enough to have this nice retainer to ensure that I will be doing well this financial year but that's suppose to be just a little something to give me financial stability and I expect to be earning a lot more in bonus and commissions too so I am diversifying, putting my eggs in different baskets.
Q: Where are your clients?
There are two in the UK, one in Luxembourg, one in the USA. I'm in talk with a few others but not actively seeking more.
Q: Any interest in finding clients in Singapore?
No. Not particularly. after all; after all, I am totally agnostic when it comes to the nationality of my clients, Thus I really don't care where in the world they are as long as they can afford to pay my rates, then there is a deal that can be made.
Q: Are you still dealing with your previous employer from Peru as a client?
No, that's a shame but when they realized that I had accepted a contract from that big company paying me a retainer, they cited it as a conflict of interest and decided not to deal with me anymore. That's a shame but if I may be quite arrogant, that's their loss if they decide not to use my services anymore. I say good luck to them but there's a reason why I left and I'm more than ready to move on with my life now given the way things have been going with my new company. I wanted to prove that I could work in a Spanish-speaking environment and I have achieved that, so been there, done that, got the T-shirt, I have proven that my Spanish is completely fluent. As a one man band now, I only have so many hours a day to work so if they don't want to use my services, fine - I have others clients who are happy to pay me for my services.
Q: Are you promoting yourself or your company to find more clients?
No, you have to understand that I really have a limited number of hours a day I can sell my services for as a consultant and given that I really only wanna work a couple of hours a day, leaving enough time for my beauty sleep, leisure activities, social life and sports - there's absolutely no point in drumming up so much business that I simply cannot serve. Allow me to compare this situation to my friend Sam who lives in Los Angeles - Sam is originally from Kuala Lumpur and she runs her own catering company. Like me, she is a one-person catering company. If you had a big birthday party and wanted authentic Malaysian-Chinese food for your guests, then Sam would turn up and prepare a Malaysian feast for you. She prides herself in using very traditional Malaysian recipes and her clients are usually either Malaysians or Singaporeans longing for a taste of home. However, Sam refuses to expand her business by taking on more staff as she doesn't want to have to train others to cook her dishes - when she does everything herself, she can enforce quality control and she loses that control once she hires people to do work on her behalf and we're just talking about preparing Nasi Lemak here for crying out aloud. So just like Sam, I really don't want to lose that quality control by hiring other people to implement my sales and marketing strategies - I don't want to spend my time training people and then managing them. I'd rather keep it small, do everything myself, maintain my very high standards and as long as I can earn enough money to keep me in the lifestyle I'm accustomed to, I have no intention to either grow the company or canvas for more clients than I already have. Like Sam, quality control is very important to me. I believe in the mantra, if you want something done well, do it yourself. Sam has such a good reputation and so many happy customers today and you'd have to book her months in advance if you want her to cater for your event, she does not need to do any advertising now.
Q: Surely both you and Sam can scale up your operations?
That's not easily done. For Sam, she has a difficult choice - either focus on what she does best (ie. cook the most delicious, authentic Malaysian cuisine) or spend a lot of her time training others to do what she does. Would she be able to find someone to learn from her? Would she have to pay this young chef who is undergoing training to make sure that they don't quit after a few weeks to work elsewhere, just to be able to earn some money to pay the bills? Most young people pay to go to culinary school to take a course where they learn how to cook but how would Sam be able to charge for that since what she is offering is something quite niche rather than mainstream? Thus given the lack of students willing to learn her craft and not having a clear business model to monetize that process, Sam has simply passed on it and just focus on running her business as it is. Likewise, I don't want to be stuck in that process as well, I really don't want to spend any time teaching others to do what I do, when I'd just rather do it all myself and get it right the first time. I can just imagine Sam tasting her trainee chef's char kway teow and saying, "no, that just tastes wrong, there is no wok hei at all. You can't serve this to my customers." Likewise for me, I don't want to look a trainee's sales & marketing plan only to spend the next hour telling them why it is such a disappointing, unimaginative, uninspired piece of work. Sam and I both have high standards and we simply want to do what we do best rather than train or teach others to do what we do.
Q: Are you ever worried if you don't have enough clients or if the work dries up one day?
That's always a possibility of course but right now, I'm turning people away because I just don't have enough time to even look at their projects. It's a great position to be in - essentially, I am a sales and marketing expert for investment products. I deal with a whole range of asset classes and of course, these investment opportunities can take many different forms and structures. This German guy tried to get me to look at his product this week and whilst I know he has handled some pretty interesting products in the past, his current project didn't get me excited at all as it is a company battling for market share in what is already a very crowded market place. I could instantly name some of this company's direct competitors and thus I simply told this German guy no thanks, I'm afraid I just don't have the time to help him on this occasion but maybe in the future. It's such a luxury to do that - now imagine if I actually worked for this German guy's company and he paid me a nice salary, then he says, "Alex, this is our project for our important VIP client and so we have to raise a lot of money for them." I then look at project, frown and think, oh dear this is going to be very difficult as I am not even personally convinced by their business model. Hence I actually think that being able to cherry pick the best projects I want to work on and being able to refuse those that I don't like is going to make my job a lot easier as I'm can make sure I am always going to go for the lowest hanging fruit to make more money, so this is a very good position to be in actually.
Q: So what's the name of your company?
It is Kennis Is Macht, that means 'knowledge is power' in Dutch. Why Dutch? Because I'm pretentious and I speak Dutch, I want people to take a look at that name, do a double take and ask, what does it mean? What language is it? But if you go into a regular shop, you can buy shoes, ice cream, mobile phones, shampoo and other things - there's nothing in my shop. I don't have any physical items to sell you at all, I only have my knowledge, my contacts, my social networks, my expertise, my experience, and my insights. For the right price, you may get to tap into all of that; thus my knowledge is my power. But given how everyone remembers me as the guy who speaks 25 languages including Dutch, it just makes complete sense. Besides, the phrase 'kennis is macht' is repeated quite often in one of my favourite Dutch TV programme "Wie Is De Mol". The other phrase they use a lot is 'follow the money' (in English, not Dutch) but that sounds a bit crass. In any case, my clients simply know that they are dealing with me and they probably don't even remember the name of my company as it only appears in my invoices so it really does not matter what the name of my company is.
Q: What's your goal for the next ten years?
I want to maximize my Big Mac Index, rather than my income. Some people pursue wealth by working very long hours and I am very much against that. I believe in working smart - so I can command a very high daily rate for the work I do whilst actually working very few hours a day. Since I am operating as a consultant and selling my good ideas for a high price, I don't actually need to be seated at my desk, staring at my computer for many hours a day to come up with those ideas - I can be doing sports, going shopping or something else equally relaxing whilst still actively engaging my brains to come up with great business ideas. I also want to travel more to make up for lost time during the pandemic - so for example, I am engaging some clients in Africa with the hopes of taking a trip to East Africa in the not so distant future if I am able to do a deal with them. Obviously, if I can get my clients to pay for me to fly out to a city like Nairobi or Kampala, then I will spend a few days there on holiday. So I can be on safari in Africa, looking at the amazing wildlife on the savannah - whilst I'm so relaxed and happy, I could still come up with great ideas as my brain is never really switched off. That is the kind of lifestyle that would make me happy and it has taken me many years to finally get to where I am today.
Q: Any thoughts on retiring yet?
No, not really. My reader Choaniki has just started a new career in finance and I'm seeing how hard it is for him to get started, he has so much to build up from scratch. I've spent years doing all that and now I am in a very comfortable position to make some easy money whilst working a few hours a day only. It would feel like a shame to work so hard to reach this position only to give it up and stop making money like that. People retire if they have done a job they really hate but they have hung on for all those years just to be able to access a state pension - I saw that in my parents when they finally managed to retire as primary school teachers. To be honest, I see my eldest sister in the same position - she is in a job that is not that well paid, she works crazy long hours and she doesn't complain much as that would tantamount to admitting that she ought to look for a better job. However, she probably feels like she is way too old to change jobs now, hence she is going to just hang on in there until she can retire and when that day finally comes, she finally would walk out of that office with a huge sense of relief, thinking, "I'm so glad I don't have to do that terrible job anymore!" Is her situation unique? Probably not, loads of people are stuck doing jobs that they don't like but they need the money to support their families. I am not in the same position, I actually enjoy what I do and I'm able to earn a lot more money running my own business, on my own terms. I know an experienced lawyer in London who is now in his late 60s, he is still doing a little work on the side as it is such easy money for him whilst he is enjoying life the rest of the time, taking long holidays in beautiful places - I want to follow in his footsteps, doing exactly that. He is now in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
That's it from me on this topic, I'm off on holidays tomorrow (Serbia and Croatia) so don't panic is I don't respond to your comments immediately. Otherwise, leave a comment below - I'll catch you guys next week and many thanks for reading.
Bon voyage!
ReplyDeleteThank you, it was a great trip! I will post some stories soon.
DeleteAre you subjected to any dividend taxes after corporate tax?
ReplyDeleteYes, but the tax rate is lower than income tax and I can draw it at a rate that I like, so if I make something like £250k this year (not saying I will, but just to make a point), I will not draw all of it as dividends in this tax year and pay massive amounts of tax on it. I will draw upon it slowly at a rate that I need, whilst making sure I never take more than I need to spend in order to minimize my taxes. So the money can belong to the company and the company can get rich whilst I stay 'comfortable'. I tried to look at corporate tax and holy shit it's complex. So many people have told me to stick to what I do best whilst engaging a good accountant to deal with it all, so that's what I'm gonna do.
DeleteAh okay, so you're basically using the lower corporate tax to give yourself more savings, and only using your living expenses for the personal income tax. That's fair, most people don't spend all their income in a year but get taxed for the whole amount. Yeah I also looked at corporate tax structures, it's a lot of paperwork to file and best left to an accountant.
DeleteY'know, I recently multiplied my income after graduating, and I'm also shocked at how high a tax rate people making 6 figures or more have to pay, 37% is the highest tax bracket. But I don't necessarily spend more money per month than before, I just have a nicer apartment, and have extra money for savings I leave in the bank. So I basically am paying more taxes for the privilege of having savings. I guess the top 10% of highest earners just have to shoulder the burden of paying most of the taxes because of how unequal our society is, but it does feel quite painful to fork over 4 dollars of every extra 10 you make. Which makes me wonder, how does Singapore get by with such low taxes. They're New York/London level expensive, without New York/London level taxes.
@Amanda most of the HNWI don't pay taxes. For e.g. I won't need to pay any income tax next year (legally). This is because SG doesn't have a wealth tax, capital gains tax, or inheritance tax. So it will suck for people getting an income.
DeleteAs for corporate taxes SG has one of the lowest in the world which is what attracts all the corporations here. Maybe you want to move back to SG as an expat?
Yes basically, you get the idea - so I can draw out enough to pay for my living expenses, I can offset a lot of stuff against taxes if I can justify it as a legitimate business expense and I can also invest back in my own business. I know of this guy who doesn't have as much flexibility as he has two children at university, so he cannot structure it in a way to reduce his personal income as he has so much outgoings with the children's education. I don't have a mortgage, I don't have debt, my biggest expense ironically is my travel which now I will try to tie into my business trips and I am living quite well whilst minimizing my taxes. Singapore has much lower taxes as the state provides a lot less for the people whilst our government has been way too generous for too many years and that's why our taxes are high. Take something like unemployment - there is the welfare state that enables unemployed people to get some money. They call it the jobseeker's allowance but it's just welfare. It's free money for poor people. The PAP would never agree to something like that in Singapore.
DeleteOh yeah travel(and even restaurant business meals) is tax deductible for business owners. I guess effectively you're using your company like a retirement account that is only taxed upon distribution. Lol another reason kids are expensive, tax burdens. Btw I'm also surprised public school isn't free in Singapore. My Singaporean friends complain that the government tries to pay them cash to have kids, but it's not even enough to cover the school fees. That's another way taxes are reduced. I wouldn't move back to Singapore even for low taxes, even if I got a job as a quant. America has its issues, just like any place, but culturally I'm just not very Singaporean.
DeleteI googled the unemployment rate in the UK, and it's only 5%. But I forget about all the social services that the UK provides, not just cash payments for the poor, all that adds up to needing higher taxes. And considering the average Brit pays only 4-6k pounds in taxes a year (you and I pay many multiples more than that), that would add up to only 200 billion pounds in tax revenue a year, and UK social spending alone is 240 billion pounds a year. The shortfall has to be made up in the top 10% income bracket.
Also this discussion about taxes makes me realize why the UK makes it so easy for highly skilled immigrants to get a work visa, but are very hostile to refugees coming on boats. Highly skilled immigrants have to speak English well, and are unlikely to be unemployed and taking the jobseeker allowance(they're not entitled to it anyway). When they are employed, they are likely to be paying 40% in taxes or more. And because they did their education elsewhere, the government didn't have to spend anything to educate them, especially because highly skilled people are expensive to educate. If they're young, then that also replaces the population when the locals don't have kids, and their taxes can support social services for pensioners. In contrast a refugee is unlikely to find work due to little to no English, low skills, or even in high skilled cases, unrecognized degrees, and would cost the state a lot of money in jobseeker allowance and social services. I get that it sucks to be a refugee and having to leave because of war, but I also understand there's a fiscal limit to how many refugees a country can take in, especially because the locals complain that the welfare payments aren't enough for themselves. When you said Singapore hates welfare, that explains why they take in zero refugees and only accept high income bankers, engineers, and scientists.
DeleteAll good points but I would like to add one more element to the refugee situation: the gaps we have in our labour market right now are for the most poorly paid working class jobs. We have had a problem for many decades now whereby the well educated young people aspire to get into well paid jobs (and thus shun poorly paid working class jobs) whilst those who are working class themselves often realize that there is little reward for doing a really physically demanding working class job when they can remain unemployed and live off benefits. Sure you get less money when unemployed, but you're not even getting out of bed in the morning and the money is there; whilst the workers who work at my local supermarket at up at the crack of dawn, working so hard for so little money. I realize the refugees have language barriers etc but right now, we don't need more scientists, engineers, bankers or IT professionals, we need people to do the worst paid working class jobs and you don't need much of an education to do terrible jobs like that, just a willingness to put up with a lot of hardship and I doubt those refugees are gonna complain too much about their working conditions if you give them a job like that. It does solve so many problems, the system is cleared quickly: we tell the refugees that they can stay in the UK if they accept this job - it's a straightforward take it or leave it offer. Accept it and stay, reject it and we deport you. That has gotta be far better than the current system where refugees wait years for their cases to be processed.
DeleteOh yeah I remember there was a trucker shortage in the UK at one point because Brexit made the Eastern European truckers not want to come back to the UK. It was at the same time that refugees were coming on boats, and my brother joked the UK navy should wait in Dover for refugees and ask "who here, can drive a truck?" Driving a truck is not a very high skilled job, doesn't need much English either. But I get that the government doesn't want to grant leave to remain to refugees, and have them at some point decide that lowly paid jobs aren't worth it compared to sitting at home and collecting welfare. That's why Singapore does have temporary work visas for low skilled jobs like construction workers, but won't let these people permanently settle. The work visa in effect forces people to work to stay in the country, unlike locals which have the option not to. I mean in theory leave to remain doesn't guarantee welfare entitlement either, but is a path to citizenship which does. But not processing refugees or solving the labor shortage has its own issues, so being a politician is about choosing the lesser of two evils and hoping voters won't crucify you for it. This is why I wouldn't wanna be a politician, even if I made the best choice out of 10 terrible available choices, explaining it to the public would be near impossible.
DeleteOh we lack more than just truckers - there is a huge shortage of people willing to work low-skilled jobs as they're poorly paid. Technology has gone some way to fix that. A simple example would be the supermarket self check out machines where we scan our own purchases, then pay by card, walk out without speaking to a human. So that enables supermarkets to run on a much smaller staff now without the need for cashiers. As for truckers, when will we have driverless trucks, so we can just load up the truck at the warehouse or depot and then enter the destination into the GPS without the need for a driver? The technology is still years away but we have seen how Japan has tackled this challenge - Japan is high tech but has an ageing population and is leading the way in using automation to replace human labour. If I were to do this, I think I'd be pragmatic, I'd strike a deal whereby if the refugee agrees to work a certain job that is useful (like driving a truck), then we'll fast track their application.
DeleteI think Germany did something similar to what you're describing where they tried to use the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis to solve an ongoing labor crisis. They actually put effort into hiring more civil servants in order to interview and process refugees very quickly and resettle them. Meanwhile, the UK was turning away many Syrians coming on boats in 2015, even though many of the people coming picked the UK over Germany or France because they already spoke English and had family in the UK. I dunno, is the UK government just really hostile to refugees compared to Germany? It's strange because they issue a lot of work visas anyway, especially for the NHS. Maybe Germans are just more welcoming to refugees because after WW2 many ethnic Germans in other European countries were kicked out and sent to Germany, effectively making them refugees.
DeleteBy the way, the US also has a labor shortage after the pandemic. It's a situation like you mentioned where working class people don't think working class jobs are worth the effort. Yesterday I went to the local pride festival with some friends, and because it's America they chose to hold it outdoors even though it's extremely hot in the summer. In Southeast Asia, nothing is held outdoors, all major events are in air-conditioned conference halls. Anyway, it was so hot me and one friend walked to the nearby KFC to get some air-conditioning to cool off, but we were disappointed because we found the dine-in area was closed, and the KFC was only operating the drive-thru. In fact, many fast food outlets in America are operating drive-thru only because after the pandemic they can't find enough staff to clean the tables and floors after each patron leaves. Operating the drive-thru is cheaper because they only have to clean the kitchen.
Also I went to a tech networking meetup recently where a guy there told me he recently graduated from a coding bootcamp 3 months ago, but hasn't landed a coding job yet. He's a bit older, in his 30s with a mortgage, and went to university for a music degree but works a minimum wage job. Yup even the working class people don't want working class jobs. But unfortunately for this guy, I think it might be his age that is making it hard for him to find a job, because at the same meetup were graduates from the same coding bootcamp who did land jobs, but they were in their mid to late 20s.
Hi Amanda, why is the UK so hostile to refugees? Well, it is a political hot topic - there are enough votes to be won by wooing the working class + right wing vote by demonizing refugees. The working class have had it really tough in the last few years with the cost of living crisis - so it's easy to say, "we'll stop the refugees from coming, so we can spend the money on our own communities instead of all of these refugees who keep turning up." The working class voter will think, "do I want the government to spend the money on my local schools, hospitals and police force or do I want that money to be spent on refugees?" It's a simple narrative to win votes. Of course, refugees can indeed contribute to the local economy and communities if they come in and do the jobs that the locals don't wanna do (especially the low skilled working class jobs which are very low paid), but the problem we have here is that the refugees are stuck in limbo. When they first arrive here, they need to be processed and the system simply isn't geared up to deal with such numbers - most refugees have to wait years for their cases to be heard and it's a hideously slow processed. The government departments that are responsible for dealing with refugees are so understaffed. This creates a situation whereby the refugees who want to work are not allowed to work because their paperwork isn't even processed - so they're seen as a burden on the state, living on handouts whilst they argue, "I want to work, I wanna get a job, but you won't let me, because you haven't even processed my case!" So part of this problem is caused by the government - if they hire enough case workers to process the backlog of refugees in the system, then grant those who want to work the right to work, then we will have less of a backlash against them as people will then say, "okay, those refugees are working hard, paying their income tax and contributing to our society." But that's not the case now.
DeleteOh so it's the same situation as America then, where it could take up to 3 years to be processed as an asylum seeker. The right wing politicians here also demonize refugees at the Mexican border, and as a result the democrats don't want to be kind to refugees and process them faster for fear of losing moderate democrat voters. Australia is also similar in how they treat people who come by boat. I sorta feel like this is a uniquely anglophone capitalistic thing. Not that there aren't racists in Germany who don't want refugees, but the working class in Germany probably don't feel like they're competing with immigrants for the same jobs like the working class in the US, UK, or Australia. I'm not surprised Labour in the UK aren't fighting the corner of refugees, there are a lot of working class Labour voters.
Delete@Amanda talking about labour shortage, I think what we are currently facing is a shortage of people willing to work the lowly paid working-class jobs. During the pandemic the was a hiring glut and tech companies hired basically everyone like there was no tomorrow. Now they are doing the opposite and laying off massive amounts of people. But I doubt they are willing to take a massive pay cut and work as a truck driver or supermarket cashier for e.g. In fact I just found out my previous position at a university is not being replaced and the headcount has been frozen. They will depend more on contractors and freelancers (like moi) moving forward.
DeleteHi Amanda, it would be wrong to assume that working class voters would automatically vote for Labour and be more supportive of refugees. It's a lot more complex than that actually. You see, working class people are far more likely to be poor to the point where they have concerns about financial security - now whether or not that's real (ie. you look at the state of your overdraft and you are instantly upset about how overdrawn you at right now) or perceived (ie. you wonder how the hell you're gonna afford nice things in the future like a new car, getting on the property ladder, your children's education etc). That fear of financial security can make poorer, working class people a lot more right wing and anti-immigrants - like I mentioned, that kind of poverty may drive working class voters to choose anti-immigration, anti-refugee right wing parties who are downright racist. This is built on the rhetoric of "the government has a finite amount of money from tax payers, now would you like us to spend that on you the working class of this country, or would you like to see all that spent on refugees who have turned up two days ago?" That's an easy way to win some votes if you're willing to do anything to get into power and if these right wing parties have no qualms about turning their backs on refugees, then so be it - you get a nice fat salary + a lot of power if you are voted into power but if you lose an election, then you have nothing. If Labour goes too left wing in terms of being nice to refugees, they will alienate a lot of working class labour voters. It's not a left wing vs right wing issue, it's a poor vs rich issue. I'm rich and I'm pro-refugee as I can afford to be compassionate, I'm not reliant on the government for handouts, I don't mind if the government spends more money on refugees and less on the poorer working class families. It makes no difference to me anyway since I get so little from the government given that I'm rich and I'm not entitled to all of those things the working class get from the government. So rich people like me can afford to be liberal and pro-refugees, whilst poor working class people are surprisingly anti-refugees. It's a simple function of poverty and politics. Labour do ultimately wanna get into power again and they cannot afford to be too pro-refugees at this point, because that's a vote loser and would jeopardize their political momentum building up to the next election.
Delete@LIFT you basically just described all the boomers and poor people voting for PAP in SG because pork barrel and other reasons (asset enhancement). I have never voted for the lightning party even when I am poor (like I am now 😭) because I don't like their policies and I outright loathe some of their candidates like Jo Teo and TPL.
DeleteI mean even if a dog ran against the PAP I would rather vote for the dog since it is loyal, unlike the PAP who are only loyal to their own interests.
After all, in politics, you need to be in power in order to do anything be it the environment, the education system or refugees. A very left-wing pro-refugee party will just never ever get into power given how many poor, insecure, working class voters there are in this country - they cannot depend on people like me who are the very rich, urban elite with left wing ideals about how we should all be compassionate and care for refugees to vote them into power. The working class is poor - that's why they're working class and not middle class, they don't have enough money, they have terribly poorly paid crap jobs and that defines their miserable lives. If they had access to better education and can earn more money then they'd attain social mobility and become middle class, but no, they're not educated enough to do so, hence they're trapped in their working class poverty. People like that are defined by their lack of money and struggles with money. Poverty can make you selfish when it comes to compassion for refugees - if you don't even have enough to feed your own children or buy yourself new shoes when you look down and see holes in your shoes, you don't become more empathetic to the plight of refugees because you're suffering like them. No, instead you become more and more selfish when it comes to fighting for your own access to help from the government and if it means supporting a hard line anti-immigration party that will shut the door to refugees, that's what they will do. Whereas rich folks like me have the luxury of doing charity, being kind to people, donating my money to help the less fortunate. Refugees cannot vote, they cannot repay the party which shows them compassion at the ballot box at the next election - so helping refugees is something that doesn't help any political party and only fucks them up really. Political parties have nothing to gain and everything to lose by helping refugees. Look, I always vote for the Green party as they have all of these nice policies for refugees and the environment but they have absolutely ZERO chance of ever getting into power as the working class voters will never support the Greens. For me, it's a protest vote against what the main two parties are doing but let me be clear, the Labour party is far more interested in getting into power than helping refugees and it's an either/or choice: if they help refugees, they will damage their chances of getting into power. Do too much to help refugees and it will alienate working class voters and drive them to the arms of the anti-immigration right wing parties, so even if Labour wants to help refugees, guess what? It'll be political suicide.
DeleteAnd @Choaniki, as for the labour shortage, I think the bottom line is that as long as you're highly skilled and adaptable, you can weather any storm that is thrown at our economy. We know that the economy will evolve and change over our working lives and what we need to do is to make sure we have enough skills to adapt to the changes over time. We have already talked about this topic on the hero to zero story about your friend who ended up as a taxi driver as he totally failed to adapt to a constantly changing environment. He failed to evolve.
Delete@LIFT I guess the keyword here is adaptable. Otherwise you might be highly skilled like an airline pilot but still be out of a job once another pandemic strikes since your skills are too niche.
DeleteBut I guess the new economy would belong to the highly-adaptable, open-minded, fast-learning individuals since they are able to pivot quickly whenever a new technology springs up (e.g. ChatGPT).
Hey Alex. That's a very interesting take you have. Because you make too much money to qualify for any government benefits, to you a refugee and a working class Brit are both poor people, but one is willing to work and pay taxes to stay in the country while the other doesn't have to and is less likely to, but demanding more in benefits. In fact the person who works is likely to reduce your tax bill rather than raise it. I'm in the same boat where if refugees or other immigrants come to the US, it wouldn't make as much difference to me because I don't qualify for government assistance anyway, and aren't likely to be competing for the same jobs. Surprisingly, in the US old people are against universal healthcare, and it's because they already get universal healthcare due to being old, and worry they will get less benefits if the program is expanded to younger people. Wow I learned something new today, people who get government assistance are very hesitant to share it with anyone else. Come to think of it, I've met Americans who the minute they're jobless immediately blame immigrants for outcompeting them, when in reality companies must pay a $10k USD premium to hire an immigrant over a local because of work visa fees. But I've never seen that attitude among the Americans at my university, where there's lots of immigrant doctors and professors, because those people are financially secure so they're very liberal and pro immigrant. I once had a black Uber driver who noticed I was Asian and asked if I had been a victim of any racism or hate crimes in my time here, and I said no, because the circles I hang out in are among white collar people who feel secure in their jobs. Though it's kinda funny how a lot of times locals can be nicer to immigrants than to another local that is of a different social class.
DeleteHi Amanda, yes your analysis is much better now - from my POV, as a rich tax payer, even if you put compassion and morals aside, a refugee is much more likely to contribute more to the economy than a local working class person as a refugee will be entitled to very little but be given the opportunity to work legally here. So the refugee will work really hard in a job that nobody wants to do, pay their income tax etc whilst the lazy local working class person will be going on strike when their demands are not met. So from a purely economic POV, rich people should be EXTREMELY welcoming to refugees but of course, we live in a democracy and politicians are not thinking about 'what's best for the economy' but rather 'what policies can help me win the next election'. And of course, there are far more poor people than rich people in this country, the wealthy are in the minority, the poor are in the majority, thus our policy towards refugees is shaped by that because it is still one vote per person, regardless of our wealth status.
DeleteHey Alex, your points explain a lot about why Brexit happened in the first place. There's more working class voters than middle and upper class ones, and a bus saying "we send 350 million pounds to the EU every week" is gonna hit an emotional nerve with working class voters despite middle and upper class voters being almost indifferent to that. Upper middle and upper class voters can use private healthcare, rent/buy on the private housing market, and send their kids to private school if they had any. So it wouldn't make a huge difference to those voters if the UK government stopped sending 350 million pounds to the EU every week, because they won't see that money anyway.
DeleteWell there's less than 2 more years till the next UK general election. Usually left wing parties are elected during economic crises, Obama was elected after the great recession. So Labour might have a good chance if working class people think a government which won't cut spending and taxes would better serve their interests.
Oh that whole thing about the 350 million pounds to the EU is a big fat lie. We live in a world of fake news and alternative facts, thanks to Trump where you can just make up completely fake bullshit, repeat it many times, put it on the side of the bus and try to get away with it if people are dumb and uneducated enough to believe it. Look at how many people in the US blindly support Trump and believe his lies. That whole figure of £350m a week is completely FALSE. The relationship the UK has with the EU is a lot more complex than that - we gave a lot of money to the EU regularly but because we participated in so many programmes funded by this pot of money that we paid into, about the same amount back in EU funding! Imagine if you went into the supermarket and spent $350 - did you just lose $350? Were you robbed in the store?! No, you got $350 worth of groceries - you no longer have the cash but you now have everything you need, your money bought you your favourite ice cream, a massive bag of rice, strawberries, chicken pies, Swiss chocolate, French pastries, fresh orange juice, soya milk, tomatoes, cucumbers, a bag of salad, salmon steaks, pasta, potatoes, a pack of 6 blueberry muffins etc. You did not walk out of the store empty handed screaming, "I've been robbed! They took all my money and now I am left with nothing!" No, you left the store with a week's worth of groceries that you're now loading into your car in the parking lot outside. That's exactly the lie that Boris Johnson and his bus told - he made it sound as if we gave the money to the EU and got nothing in return, when in fact, we got plenty in return and it was all funding a LOT of very essential services in the UK. But of course, here I go demonizing the working classes again - the working classes are way too stupid to understand what I have just explained and they are too quick to blame the EU. "So that's why I am so poor and stuck in a working class job, if we leave the EU, then I will become a rich man!" Hahahahaha we have had our Brexit and the working class is so much poorer as a result of Brexit, fuck them. The working classes deserve to be punished for being so stupid they believed the fake news just because it was written on the side of a bus. And is there any wonder why I really hate the working class in this country?
DeleteWell Alex, you're financially comfortable enough to not be emotional about slogans on buses or anywhere really that you can be rational enough to take out your phone and fact check. Someone who is constantly living paycheck to paycheck and having to deal with the Tories announcing cuts to benefits is a too emotional to think logically because it hits too close to home. This is why I don't like politics, because it's too easy to manipulate a majority of the population using cheap tactics like the bus slogans. Yeah the UK wasn't robbed at all, they were paying for all the staff required to maintain the single market and conduct health and safety checks on things like trains, planes, bridges, medicines, etc. During the pandemic the entire EU approved vaccines as a bloc instead of having to do 27 separate FDA approval processes. That saved a lot of time and money for each country, but requires a central pot of money to fund.
DeleteBtw I just went on a date with a working class guy who is now a software engineer. Oh god it went so badly, he tried to impress me saying he had a big startup idea that could make millions. Just to see if he was serious about it I mentioned you and how you raise money for investments, and he immediately backtracked lol. He even said he went to a school in a bad neighborhood and probably makes the most of his entire school batch. Oh gosh with everything in life, one should be subtle... He just came off as corny thinking he's always the smartest guy in the room because he grew up among uneducated people.
It's not about being rich enough, it's about being smart enough. It's like when Donald Trump tells yet another lie and I just roll my eyes and think, yeah right, as if, who the hell believes a word you say. In the age of fake news, we need to question everything we come across and exercise judgment - whether it is the latest interview with Trump, a Russian news report about the coup attempt or what you might see on the side of a bus. There is so much misinformation and fake news out there and we need to be smart enough to fact check - it's not about being rich or emotionally stable, it's a simple skill that everyone will need in this day and age. The irony of course is that I have working class roots as well, my parents are soooo working class but I changed my mindset because of a combination of my education + my work experience. As for bad social skills, I have finished my latest post - just need to find time to edit it. Guess what? It's back to the topic of social skills again after I went to a meeting with two guys and between them, they made 3 dumb mistakes. Oh people would be afraid of meeting me after that post as I will use their mistakes as blog material.
DeleteJust out of curiousity, if this software engineer had such poor social skills, then why did you go out on a date with him then? Was it a blind date that a friend set you up with? Or was it a Tinder thing? Or did he somehow manage to persuade you initially that he was a nice enough person but the moment you had a proper conversation, things fell apart when he instantly got defensive about his background and upbringing? Or was he at least good looking though? What's the point in comparing yourself to people who are poorer than you - I work with people who make more than me and even though I'm good at what I do, I would never compare myself with those who are worse than me, like what's the point of that? And did he ever question how you might have reacted to that?!
Delete@Amanda, I was just watching this video by leadership expert Simon Sinek and he mentioned that sales is like dating. We should always start with 'why' when selling just as when we go on a date. The negative example Simon uses is this guy who tells his date he makes a million dollars, has a nice house, appears on TV because he is good looking. Sounds abit similar to the software engineer guy you went out with.
DeleteThe positive example Simon gave was this guy says he loves what he does, he is the luckiest person alive. He wakes up every morning to inspire people to do the things that inspire them. He also happens to be very successful at it and made a lot of money, met many famous people, and has a nice house. Now you probably would be more interested in going to his place. The exact same content but he was leading with a 'why'.
DeleteHaha that is true, there are dumb rich people too (Boris, Trump, lots of other politicians). It's just that the wealthy are generally shielded from their mistakes more than the working class are.
DeleteWow so this date was a really big shocker, some people are just kinda schizophrenic where in one setting they can appear normal, but behind the scenes they're almost a totally different person. I met this guy at a tech networking meetup where people mostly talked about professional stuff. I mentioned leaving my PhD because my advisor was investigated, and he said he'd like to hear more about it over dinner. Fast forward to last night where we have the dinner, he never even asks to hear about my advisor at all. Instead he just starts talking about how he's bored in his current job and how he's so smart compared to his peers from high school. What surprised me the most while he was pitching me his startup idea was that he wanted to make money from homeless people. Uh, is that even a big market with lots of purchasing power if these people can't even afford housing because they don't have a job? And after he pitched me his concept, he said "ugh, I'm so smart..." That's when I wanted to see whether he was just talking out of his ass and trying to impress me, or is he really serious about this idea, so I brought up how you call experts to question investments before committing to working on a project. The silly thing is this guy thinks that you don't even need to prepare a huge report of market research or a professional pitch deck to get $10 million from a venture capitalist, you just need to say "wouldn't it be cool to blah blah blah?" to a random rich person at a party and then you get the money if they like you. That told me this whole idea was just a pipe dream he didn't really think he'd ever get money for. Maybe that's how poor people pitch a business idea to their friends and family to borrow money for a for a small bakery or window cleaning business, with limited success, but it's not how Zuckerberg or Bill Gates pitch a tech idea to a VC. Figures because he was also bitching about how he was rejected from all the ivy leagues and other rich private schools in America because of classism(he's white but the poor kind), and that he's been shut out of opportunities all his life. It's like he thinks he'll never get the money anyway, so why bother taking it seriously. Other "greatest hits" of his social faux pas(am I saying that right? Probably not haha) last night was when he said he was bored with work and needs something harder, I mentioned I originally studied theoretical physics, and his first response word for word was "not hard enough..." Mate, he seriously told me to my face the thing I do is not hard enough before I could even elaborate, I wasn't even gonna suggest he do theoretical physics. Like the world doesn't revolve around him hahaha. I guess he just grew up the smartest kid in the room among people destined for minimum wage, so whenever he'd brag about himself people wouldn't question him because he was the hottest shit on the block. Sure he can probably act like this and impress a working class girl who works at a supermarket and makes half to a third of what he makes, but among other middle class and upper class people it just comes off as arrogant. By the way one of my favorite parts of this blog is listening to you talk about social skills during incidences on vacation and breaking down what went wrong and how it could've been done better. For an autistic person social skills aren't intuitive to me so I like studying them as if they're like something technical like gymnastics techniques or how to softboil an egg in chemistry terms.
Also I do have my first contract for my side hustle. But I didn't ask for any money until I increase profits or save costs for the client using my algorithms and software. The client is my best friend's dad anyway. I don't want to look like a nepo baby who doesn't take this seriously and is just taking advantage of the fact I know wealthy people to get myself into good jobs other people need way more experience and several rounds of difficult interviews to get. But that's how I manage to get money from rich people for my ideas while this guy can't. Being humble is so important in business. Like choaniki said, you don't close a deal by saying "oh my idea is so great it will make you so much money! Give me the millions!" You can't even sell a laptop to a person at a computer store by saying "this is the best laptop in the world, it will make you so productive!"
DeleteAlso I have no doubt America is a very classist country, even more so than the UK and far more than Singapore. One thing that software engineer said that to me could sound like he's feeling sorry for himself, but I had to fact check was "it doesn't matter what grades you have in high school or college, you make the same in the end compared to someone with worse grades who went to a worse school, unless they went to Harvard or some other rich private university." Now to be fair, the average salary for college graduates of most universities by age 34 is only $40k USD/year. In my state, my university has the highest average salary of graduates by 34, which is somewhere in the 70-80k range, but the university with the 2nd highest average salary is in the 50-60k range, and the university in 3rd place is in the 40-50k range, then dozens of universities afterward are in the 30-40k range. For comparison Harvard is about 80-90k. And this guy went to a pretty average university. That's just how unequal the income distribution by degree institution is, but saying it's not worth trying is dooming him to not try harder to make more money. But it also shows that a lot of making money is not just being smart, it's also having good social skills to get your idea across. I remember he also told me he used to work for "big tech", but when I asked which company, it wasn't even a FAANG company or Microsoft. This I could forgive, because my idea of big tech looks different compared to someone from a bad neighborhood who doesn't know much software engineers among friends and family. But being arrogant...nah, hard pass...
@Amanda, for an autistic person I'm surprised you go out to meetups. My youngest brother is a diagnosed autistic. I am probably somewhere on the spectrum. When I was young I never spoke up and my report cards always put quiet but hardworking. But somehow I managed and if you look at me today you wouldn't think I am on the spectrum. Though I sometimes tend to talk too much and ramble on even when the other party has lost interest (definitely autistic).
DeleteI am more comfortable being in a quiet place with my thoughts and don't really seek out social situations. That probably makes me an introvert? But I don't believe in that since I believe human personality is also on a spectrum and there are no pure intro/extroverts.
@Choaniki - I too am autistic but I refer you to the Paralympics and the way blind athletes compete. They can be totally blind and they can react in two ways: they can say, I can't see a thing, I'm blind, I'm giving up on life and giving in to my disability. Or they can say fuck that, I'm showing the world how I am so incredible and I can still do sports at a very high level. The scariest one for me is blind skiing because I ski a lot, I know how hard it is but to fly down the side of a mountain covered in snow and ice with no visual cues is ridiculously scary, but they do it regardless. When an autistic person goes for a meet up, that's like a blind person going down a very steep ski slope on skis. It's hard enough for a sighted person to be able to do that but for a blind person, it's a thousand times harder and more scary. Autism doesn't mean we can't develop social skills, we can still develop social skills the same way a blind person can ski and win a medal at the winter Paralympics. It's just a question of whether you are determined enough to overcome the odds or if you're the kind of person who simply gives up at the first obstacle.
DeleteYeah Alex made a good analogy. Another one I have would be the difference between piloting a submarine with a window vs piloting a submarine with no windows. In the former you don't have to think too much and it doesn't require much training. While the latter requires so much study and practice to master learning how sonar systems work and how to calculate position from sensor datapoints. That's how I describe going to social events, I had to train how to talk to strangers like how someone studies to work on a windowless submarine. For most people they don't have to study at all to talk to strangers and look totally normal. And also like choaniki I was suspected of autism in childhood because I wouldn't play with other kids in kindergarten, barely spoke, and when I did I would speak out of turn, and would eat lunch alone constantly. But this being Asia, parents don't want to think their child is disabled unless it would prevent them from getting a job. Thankfully my case is mild enough I didn't have problems finding employment, so it was just never brought up. At my university, because this is America, after I told a psychologist I might have autism they asked if I wanted an official diagnosis so I can get accomodations at work. I declined, I think I can manage it well on my own and I don't want people to think I will avoid the need to be professional that everyone else has to do just because I may have mild autism. And honestly, nowadays I treat interacting with strangers like a fun game that I play consciously.
DeleteMaybe social skills are trainable like all skills are. With enough time and experience anyone can develop them. Or I might just be a crazy optimist.
Delete@Choaniki - I go back to the example of the Paralympics featuring blind people skiing. Is it possible for a blind person to learn how to ski like that when they can't see anything? Yes, it is possible. But it is a lot more difficult for them to do it without the visual cues that a sighted person would have when skiing. It's not about blind optimism, it's about simply recognizing that some tasks are a lot harder for others if they have some form of disability holding them back but it doesn't make it impossible - it just makes it a lot harder that's all.
DeleteOk that probably explains why I hate receiving and making phonecalls. I have no visual or other cues to guide my interaction. And with the crappy audio quality (from compression) even auditory cues are sometimes misinterpreted.
DeleteAnd just for additional difficulty, I'm often doing that in languages that I'm not fluent in.
DeleteMight I also add I don't intuitively make eye contact. I had to be trained to do that when talking to people as a kid. No eye contact is a classic sign of autism. Somehow as an autistic person I don't think looking at a person's face is necessary to communicate, but normal people think that's very rude if I don't. Sometimes I feel like I prefer written communication over verbal actually... because there's less visual cues to pay attention to. Like for a long time growing up I had no idea what "body language" even was.
DeleteTalking about turkeys voting for Xmas and working class people, I just LOL-ed at all the comments over at this post:
Deletehttps://theindependent.sg/security-supervisor-s1839-monthly-so-this-is-what-our-so-called-leaders-aspire-the-citizens-to-be-netizens/
Why do they expect a 1-2 day course at NTUC (https://www.ntuclearninghub.com/en-US/security-academy2?name=pwm) to raise their wages to superscale levels? Even a full-time degree or diploma makes barely liveable (2-3k) wages and that is a 3-4 years committment at least!
And furthermore didn't they know there were so many easier and faster way to make big money (@Amanda surely can attest) like doing some website development or coding bootcamp courses which could let them start churning out simple projects that will only increase their income as they gain more experience.
As for easy and brainless ways to make money I can think of 10 more like knowing or marrying someone rich and influential (aka TPL), sex work, marketing, drop shipping, teaching training courses at NTUC (rofl), setting up a business then going bust the next year, the list goes on...
Hey Choaniki, I would chalk it up to the working class just being unaware of how much time and effort commitment getting rich(and staying rich) really takes. And there's also an element of hopelessness to it, I mean this is the group that buys the most lottery tickets and falls for the most get rich quick schemes. Even that working class guy I went on a date with didn't think he had to put in much effort to pitch an idea to Alex to get investor money. He thought it was 100% pure luck whether someone would like him enough to give him money, so why put in effort? I have some working class friends from my PhD studies who also like to say things like "oh LinkedIn is just a pool of survivorship bias..." They think even if they have a PhD, for people like them it's still luck of the draw whether they can land a good job. Yes there is an element of luck to everything, but the people who get the job also had to put in hard work. There are many cases of nepo babies being handed good jobs without working hard, but for people who didn't grow up rich, most people who were given good jobs did work hard. In short, I think people who think there's a small chance of succeeding hope the cost of entry is at least low to offset that small chance of success.
Delete@Amanda, I used to be like them too. I was raised working class with ignorant parents like @LIFT. I also fell for get rich schemes, MLM, ILPs, forex, insert scam here, etc. I blamed by parents, PAP, rich people, etc. I forgot at which stage my thinking started changing, but it was all due to education. I followed and read all of @LIFT's blog post probably close to 10 years ago, way before you even heard of him (Alex knows this).
DeleteBut you know @LIFT was the impetus for my first career switch (and 2nd as well). I starting taking personal responsibility and accountability for my career path. So what if other companies couldn't value and pay me for my skillset? I will carve out my own portfolio career and get paid what I am truly worth, on my own terms!
This is why I am insulted when I hear people like your white angmo male friend and PhD mates saying stuck and luck and survivorship bias. I spent over 100hrs re-doing my LinkedIn profile (available in 3 languages). These people are devaluing hard work and time put in by people like me! Fuck those haters!
Even the best smart phone in the world needs marketing otherwise no one will buy it. Which is why Apple spent massive amounts on PR (https://youtu.be/VtvjbmoDx-I). Their success is definitely not "luck"!
@LIFT I have no advice to give to working class or middle income people. You can lead a horse to water, even force its head in but it will only drown, not drink.
DeleteBut what I can do is laugh 😂 at them from the sidelines since I think their comments are hilarious to the point of delusion. Even if SG were a welfare state why do they think they deserve a single cent from the government compared to a blind, deaf, amputee, mentally unsound person for example?
@Amanda and I suddenly remembered male SG are inherently disadvantaged by 2.5 yrs + 10 yrs of reservist training (been there done that). But for me it is already water under the bridge. No point being bitter about things you can't control. Resentment is like taking poison and hoping your enemy dies.
DeleteThe thing about resentment is that everyone is at some disadvantage in some way. I may have grown up rich but I have mild autism and an abusive mom. If I compared myself to my similarly rich peers who don't have autism and have two loving parents and how much easier they have it, I wouldn't get anywhere in my life. Likewise, one of my labmates who is working class and thinks they will be discriminated against for being working class in a white collar setting isn't doing themselves much favors. I will say, that one labmate is young, he's a pretty nice guy and very talented but this is the first time he's ever been in a private school so he feels like a fish out of water (went to public schools for high school and undergrad). I get he feels a bit insecure when most of his peers can call an uncle or a family friend or their friend's parents to get them a job after graduation while he can't. But I'd help him get a job if I knew anyone who needed his skills, he's really good at what he does. It's just he needs to be more confident on the social skills side instead of just being scared of rich people looking down on him.
Deletehttps://www.todayonline.com/voices/my-learning-diaries-social-work-2161076
ReplyDeleteThis propaganda piece so hilarious. It sounded like he was some top IB but he merely had an operations role which is more like middle office job. Maybe I should write my story titled, 'I left my stable job in a world famous hospital for a career in financial services.'
He graduated in 2016, found the job in 2017 and left after 1.5 years. He managed to get the foot in the door but it's a starting position, he would never get to work in a senior, lucrative role right from the start like that. If he had stuck to it and worked his way up the corporate ladder, maybe in due course, he would be in a more senior position but he left after just 1.5 years.
DeleteOk i did further digging and this is what I found:
Delete1) He has no LinkedIn profile, which meant his job must not have been very important and definitely not client facing. Even when I had an IT position I already had a LinkedIn profile.
2) The story was intentionally vague, it did not specify which financial institution could even be an insurance broker (maybe a small one), but I doubt it was some brand named FI.
3) From the above two points I would hazard a guess that his role is back office and easily outsourced and definitely not importnant. Even doing application support in a bank is more lucrative and henced valued.
4) Even if he had stuck to it, I doubt he had much prospects so making the switch (like I did) to healthcare. Whether he has better job opportunities and remuneration there would depends on how he networks and moves around once his bond with his current company is up.
1. It depends on what you're looking to achieve with Linkedin, it's all about networking, planning your next step, getting to know people who could help you with your career advancement by sounding out new opportunities. But if you're happy to do a 9 to 6 job, stay in your lane, leave the office promptly on time to go home to spend the evening with your family, then you don't care at all about career advancement and that sounds pretty much like his mindset here.
Delete2. I don't think it would have been fair to name the company he worked for lest it gave people the impression that the company had treated him unfairly (and gave him a reason to leave). He didn't complain about bad treatment, but it was more the nature of the job that he didn't like - though I would say that it wasn't really that important to the story at the end of the day. It was about him changing careers rather than boasting, "look how fucking amazing I am, I got this fucking amazing job at this big company." It was never about that.
3. True, but a lot of people do start at the bottom. I have a former colleague who started out in a role like that too with a Swedish bank, that was his foot in the door but he has gone very, very far in his career since. To be fair, he was a fresh graduate and I have to manage your expectations here Choaniki - fresh graduates getting their first jobs, well, that's always going to be entry level, just get your foot in the door, your first job will be terrible but your future is up to you once you get your foot in the door. Even I feel you're being way too harsh on him because I actually think he did okay! He has a shit diploma followed by a useless degree from a terrible university - yet he managed to get his foot in the door in the industry, which isn't bad going at all.
4. It's just a foot in the door Choaniki, I don't for a moment pretend that it's a good job, it's probably a fucking awful job. But nonetheless, I see it as that vital step into the industry, that foot in the door gets your onto the first step on that ladder - how far you go depends on the individual of course but getting onto that first step is vital. Nonetheless it is evident that it is not right for him and I do wish him all the best in his new career in social care.
Thus IMHO, perhaps it was his writing style that was bad - he wasn't a good story teller, as a blogger, I did shake my head at his writing style but that's actually okay. So he sucks as a writer, but that's not what he does for a living - he now works in social care and writing well is not part of his job at all. His story is interesting of course but when you allow someone like that to tell their own story in their own words, then you are limited by their writing skills and let's just say he isn't a particularly good story teller. That's why the article didn't come across well, I wouldn't find fault with his previous job though, but it took someone like me to study the dates and the details to figure out the context.
DeleteI'd admit he is not a good writer which is why it reads to me like a propaganda piece. Contrast it with an article like mine (shameless plug) which I think tells a better story.
DeleteAnd his call to action is also sounds very like government propaganda (maybe influence of his editor?). Passion$ doesn't pay the bills so why the fuck will you keep asking someone to follow their passion?
A better CTA would be to buildup transferrable skills and do something you are good at. Success will follow if you stick to it and don't give up!
And my final critique of his article - 文不对题!
DeleteHe mentioned learning diaries but he didn't reiterate what he learnt and hence nothing the reader gets to takeaway!
Well yes, absolutely - he sucks as a writer and we can both definitely agree on that. The title was wrong and he didn't leave the readers with anything insightful that they could take away from his journey. He had a story but he didn't know how to tell it.
DeleteStorytelling is such an crucial skill that even MIT offers a course on it: https://executive.mit.edu/course/communicating-data-through-storytelling/a054v00000jk27LAAQ.html
DeleteWhether you want to inspire, motivate, sell, communicate, etc with someone you need to tell a good story. But I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir.
Oh and in the beginning of his article he mentioned that he had childhood passion for finance. So the learning point of his article should be don't follow your passion or you will end up like him - having to make a career switch to "make a difference in people's lives".
DeleteYes, exactly my thoughts as well! Also I'm pretty sure he did an internship or two. At any point in his job experience did he question his "passion"? Or was he just cruising thru for the grades.
DeleteUnlike him I was really good (probably still am) at computers and singlehanded setup the IT infrastructure of a brand new office in Shenzhen, China. My reasons for switching had more to GTFO than anything else.
And he also failed to explain why he chose social work as opposed to something else in healthcare (e.g. nursing, other allied health). He might end up disappointed in his switch. He mentioned that he didn't regret but I would say it is still to soon to tell.
And unlike him I am also pretty good at my previous career as a radiographer. My ex-manager just contacted me to go back as a locum to cover her full-time staff who were on leave/sick. So I can still find lots of paid work in that industry.
And to answer any questions about why I wanted to switch to finance - I follow the money. I'm really enjoying the work I do right now being paid to think and not merely for my labour (skilled or otherwise). I have the freedom to dictate my hours and place of work. What is there not to like right?
Well actually I have a good theory about why he found the job so crushingly awful. When you study economics, finance and banking at university, you learn a lot about the system, you learn the big picture - everything from macroeconomic theory to something more specific like crypto or niche asset classes. Universities do go out of their way to cram their students with a lot of knowledge because, that's just what universities do. So this guy graduates and think, right I know so much and I'm ready to be a CEO and run my own bank! But reality bites, he is a fresh graduate with virtually no real work experience, so he has to start at the very bottom and do something quite junior, mundane and boring. Like honestly, who is gonna let the young, fresh graduate into a senior position two weeks into the job? The realization then sinks in that the next few years is going to be really boring and most of all, none of his managers give a shit what he studied at university, they just want him to follow the instructions and get on with the job without asking too many stupid questions. He becomes more and more disillusioned with the situation, realizing that he might end up stuck in middle management at best after 20 years in the industry but never ever have any real decision making power - he would forever have a boss and be forever taking instructions in a "just do as you're told" situation. As he realized that everything he has learnt in university is never ever going to be of any use in the real world, he eventually just gives up and leaves finance altogether, because the gulf between what he did at university and the real world is just way too big.
DeleteAllow me to use a very Singaporean analogy, imagine if this super ambitious soldier makes it to OCS and that has been his dream to become an officer. At OCS, he gets put in the elite unit and get taught in everything from urban street combat to drone warfare to rescuing hostages - he gets to play with every modern weapon there is during his course and he feels ready to run into a war zone to show the world what he is capable of after his training. Upon finishing OCS, he gets sent to a sleepy unit where he sits behind a desk, following orders from a senior officer who just wants this young officer to follow orders without asking too many questions. The young guy may know a lot but he is outranked and is obliged to obey the chain of command. Boredom sets in very quickly under those circumstances as the kind of exciting life that he thought OCS was preparing him for is vastly different from the mundane reality he is facing. This may be why the guy in your story may have enjoyed studying about banking but the job he eventually managed to get was a far cry from what he was hoping for. It's the classic expectations vs reality scenario.
DeleteLike I said that still doesn't explain the internship portion. When I was an intern I got to do all the saikang (shit job). Definitely worse than a full-time position I would say. Didn't he realised the job wasn't going to be C-level like (especially given his lack of prestigious qualifications?). I'd also be the first to admit I have lousy school grades since the local teachers mostly suck and didn't engage me (probably I'm stupid too). I didn't even graduate a local university so I have no excuses as well. But I did grind for 20 odd years to reach my level of somewhat success.
DeleteAhh, the classic "entry level fresh grad, stuck at the bottom of the totem pole" issue. My thoughts are that it is going to suck in the beginning no matter what, and one should work a couple years to get experience, then use social skills to get a better job using that experience. I was stuck in the same situation, except for engineering and in a shitty entry level job at a windowless factory. I left after 6 months and got a better paying job in research, then went to gradschool in America and now I'm in a job making 4x my first job's salary. It isn't enough just to do your job day in day out and hope for a promotion, there's the human aspect of convincing people it would benefit them more if they gave you a better role. When I read that article, I also thought it was propaganda to promote retraining schemes. But I also felt this person didn't have sufficient social skills to deal with the non-fun parts of a job, because no job is 100% exciting all the time. In my current job, about 30% of the time I get to do the fun part of making cool A.I algorithms, and the other 70% I'm doing boring things like webscraping, setting up cloud infrastructure, cleaning data, hopping on zoom calls, writing emails, communicating things to non-engineers, etc. And the funny thing is, that 70% of the job was never taught in university, the soft skills aspect basically. Only the 30%, which is arguably important but not the sole factor to succeeding in a job, was taught in schools. But oh well, if this person is happier in social work where there is a higher ratio of "doing fun stuff" compared to "boring routine maintenance work", then I'm happy they made the switch. Not everyone has the necessary discipline to put up with a lot of bullshit to get to the fun stuff in their job while also getting paid a lot. In social work I suppose the "fun stuff" is right away, but the pay isn't great.
Delete@Choaniki: As for the issue of whether his internships gave him a realistic picture of what he was going to do in the real world, I think it's a question of managing one's expectations. Let me give you an example, when I was young and had a full head of hair in year 2005 - I did a very short contract for a famous person (who shall remain unnamed but she's mega famous). The money wasn't good but I did it because I wanted to take a look inside her world, get to meet her and see what her world was like. Now imagine if I did that as an intern, it would be great work experience of course, it would be something you'd wanna have on your CV. However, I walked away from that with some stories to tell and that was it - I didn't say, "one day, I am gonna be like (that famous woman) and do exactly what she does." Perhaps, I am guessing here, that guy in Singapore worked for a company where he got to shadow an impressive woman who was mega successful, he walked away from that experience thinking, "she is amazing and I'm gonna do exactly what she does when I start working!" And then of course, if that's his expectations, the reality was a far cry from it - he was never going to achieve that level of success in the short run anyway - perhaps after 20 years of hard work but not in the short run.
Delete@Amanda You raise some good points - firstly, we all start at the bottom, to get our foot in the door but we then need to use our social skills to make sure we advance faster than our peers in this rat race. If you don't have those requisite social skills, then you're gonna be left behind quickly and that can be very frustrating. And we need people who are willing and able to do social work - it's a vital service for those who depend on it, if this guy is happy to make a career in this sector, then just as well. If everyone wanted to become investment bankers and nobody wanted to become carers, then there would be a massive problem in our societies as there are those who really need social workers to help them.
Delete@Amanda, my first career switch came after 10 years in IT industry. Ask @LIFT, he knows me well. And my second came after 5 years. So I have put in the hours and endured the entry level grunt work.
DeleteHey Alex, yes a society requires multiple occupations to function. I recently watched a youtube video titled "are we overeducated?" on economics, which likens low skill workers to "water", and high skill workers to "diamonds." Most people prefer to be the "diamond" in society, but no society can function without water, even if it doesn't sell for very much. Singapore does have a lack of government services in general, so if there are some people willing to be social workers, then great for them and society. Also money isn't everything, some people just hate certain jobs even if they pay well. Like I for example could never be a doctor, I just don't like the job. I also don't like being a trader, even though that was my foot in the door into finance recently. I'd rather take a paycut than work either job, or try to make the same amount of money through a harder path (engineering).
Delete@Amanda sounds like a video I watched at the Economics Explained channel, not sure if it is the same one.
DeleteAnd just to correct you, I am not sure which engineering field you are talking about, but I know for a fact that being a Dr is no means easy. Graduating 5 years of medical school is a feat. Then there is the 2 years of houseman training in a hospital where you frequently have to clock 72 hour shifts. Even then you are not done with training because if you want to be a specialist there is a huge rush for in-demand places (like dermatology) and the 5 years or so of training just to be able to hit consultant level. I highly doubt a professional engineer takes that long a path.
Yeah I think it's the same video that we watched. Great channel, economics explained. I'm referring to software engineering or robotics. There is less of a defined route to making half a million dollars a year than being a doctor. Yes being a doctor isn't easy, there are some 30 hour nonstop shifts that doctors in training have to go through in the US, but if you make it out the other side you get paid a lot more. With engineering, the "eat shit" barrier to making millions is founding your own startup, or trying to climb the corporate ladder to the C-suite. Most people don't succeed, but I dunno how many surgeons in training wash out and never become a practicing surgeon. Trying to get rich as an engineer is probably not more or less difficult than training to be a heart surgeon, but it's a lot less defined with a set path. Though to be fair, my university's medical school has an acceptance rate of 1.5%, for the other graduate departments(including engineering), it's about 10%. So there is definitely more early screening of candidates to be a doctor than there are for engineers. The barrier to study engineering is lower than medicine, but I guess the average salary of engineers is also lower than that of doctors.
DeleteHi guys. Yes I saw that video too actually. Amazing coincidence!
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