I haven’t blogged much in the last 2 months because quite a bit has happened. Main change being my wife has to go back to work in the office 5 days a week with no work from home. And there’s going to be a company-wide restructuring over the next few months so who knows whether she will still have a job next year. Job uncertainty is a pain to deal with and retrenchment is the worst possible outcome.
I have been reading The SG Hustle blog. And his recent posts about dads shouldering heavy family responsibilities, facing possible retrenchment, not daring to quit their jobs and betting on a side hustle instead of climbing the corporate career really resonated with me. So here’s a shoutout that you are not alone and I agree with everything you are saying & doing.
I have 2 young kids and are they not even in primary school yet so I still have a long way to go. As I get close to turning 40, I find myself looking back at what I should have done or should not have done. As a form of self awareness and acknowledgement of what I need to change about myself to have any hope of pivoting from where I am. And also to shape the way I guide my kids.
They are already observing what we are doing for work such as going into the office. And asking questions about why we need to go into the office and what is a job. This was the advice I used to get as a kid – study hard and you will get a good job & salary. I don’t blame my parents. It was a different time and that advice worked well then. For my generation, the advice wasn’t bad and I could still make something out of a job with decent salary income if I navigated my career well. However, this advice will be bad if I pass it down to my kids. Because I honestly think it’s going to be more difficult for them to get a job with decent salary income and even harder to keep it.
I don’t even have to look that far. With each graduating cohort entering the workforce every year, I think it’s been getting tougher to land a good job as local and foreign competition has gotten stiffer. There are less entry-level positions in general because companies are trying to automate grunt work. There are also fewer positions at lower, mid to senior level because firms are merging or downgrading roles. Increasingly, you get more experienced candidates fighting for positions they are overqualified for. It’s like a downwards spiral that is accelerating. And the lost jobs are not coming back, they are gone permanently.
My company has been using natural attrition and retrenchment to downsize slowly. While it’s not as bad compared to what my wife is facing, what’s concerning is that it’s happening everywhere based on our discussions with current and ex colleagues. Sure, the unemployment rate is still low in SG but it’s slowly climbing. More jobs are definitely being lost than being created here. The seniority and pay levels of these jobs have also gone down.
Since that’s the trend, I’m trying to guide my kids so they don’t end up in a worst position than us by following what we did. My focus for them should be more of digital and online skills building outside of the school system. Trying to excel in an outdated and standardised education system is not going to work out well for them. I cannot predict what are the skill sets they will need in the future. But I can encourage them to be open-minded, adaptable and be willing to learn & work hard on new things, stuff they are good at and stuff they are interested in.
Studying for exams to get decent grades should be to put them in an environment where there are more positive than negative influences. Beyond that, the academic results they obtain, schools they get into should matter less over time. I have no idea how to do this practically because I can’t draw on my past experience. So I’m hoping to improve myself first and influence them positively from there. I cannot imagine putting them through the same thing I went through or worse knowing the negative outcome it will lead to.