SINGAPORE: On Sunday (Mar 22), a frustrated software engineer took to social media to share that the firm he works for, which he hinted is an “infamous three-letter local IT company,” has been assigning him non-technical work for the past two years.
“I have not learned ANYTHING technical; every project I’m put on is just me doing PowerPoint and admin work,” he wrote on the r/singaporejobs forum. “Yet, I am expected to OT on weekends and even till midnight due to the sheer amount of work there is to do. It seems like the horror stories about this company are true.”
In addition to the non-technical tasks, he said the company forced him to take on web design work because they hadn’t hired a UI/UX designer. According to him, he was only given a brief 10-minute YouTube crash course to follow.
“Is this normal? How would the client feel if they found out they’re paying good money for this? It feels like I’m in a poorly run school project.”
To make things worse, he said his manager recently tried to convince him to leave tech behind and become a “full-blown analyst because engineers will be made redundant due to AI agents.”
Unable to tolerate the working conditions any longer, the software engineer said he has started browsing for other job opportunities online.
However, he admitted that he’s been having second thoughts about actually resigning because after looking at the requirements for various positions, he realised that most of them ask for experience and skills he hasn’t had the chance to develop yet.
“I feel woefully unprepared for getting an offer elsewhere.”
“You will have zero career advancement there.”
In the comments, one Singaporean Redditor told him that his role sounded like a “trap job.”
“Bro, this is a trap job. You will get trapped inside, as your current market value is not reflected in reality to the outside market. It will be very hard for you to move out without a pay cut.”
“Imagine you go to an interview, and you ask for your current pay. The interviewer sees your resume: 2 years doing something simple, nothing big to showcase. They will either reject or lowball you.”
Another user, who claimed to recognise the company the post author was referring to, shared a similar cautionary take.
“They pay well, but you will have zero career advancement there. I have a friend who joined them, and he only did ONE thing there, which was to deploy desktops and laptops to users, and he did this one thing for SIX YEARS.”
“Your bosses will not train you or push you up; they will keep you in your current position until the end of time because someone needs to do the low-level work. Stay there a max of 2 years and jump ship before it’s too late.”
A third user advised, “You need to decide what you want to pursue to follow a path as an SWE or align to what the company needs. Even while looking for other opportunities, you need to craft your resume based on what you have been hired for and demonstrate relevance to your current projects.”
“It doesn’t have to be detailed; you can say that some parts are sensitive and give it a generic theme. This is to get through the interview part.”
In other news, a Singaporean man earning between S$10,000 and S$13,000 a month took to Reddit to ask whether he should give up his stress-free job in favour of higher pay and better career progression.
In a post on the r/singaporefi forum, he provided details about his current job. “I’m in the buy-side investment world. It is fully WFH; the boss is overseas-based and never asks for many deliverables and agrees with almost everything I want to do and my investment calls. I’m super relaxed and not stressed a single bit.”