Pros
- High initial salary especially for fresh graduate. However, do take note that the salary is pegged on the ever-weakening Japanese Yen, so without consistent salary reviews you will find your pay decreasing every single month. - Flexible working hours, as long as overall you clock in the working hours as stipulated during the contract. - Opportunity for non-IT graduate to break into the IT Industry. You will spend the first 3 months learning the basics of front-end development + another 1 month of internal technology bootcamp, all by yourself. Depending on what you do with these fundamental knowledge in your FREE TIME (e.g. weekends) you may be able to truly break into the IT Industry.
Cons
- Non-existent training and guidance, especially in terms of technical know-hows. During the so-called training period, evaluators focus more on your "ideas and thinking" rather than coding skills. Hence, you may produce rubbish messy codes and still pass the training as long as the "idea is brilliant". During actual work (which, honestly, requires way more knowledge than basic JS, HTML, CSS, and jQuery learnt during training), expect even less guidance. Here, Team Leads got into management way too early that they are often the most detached from the code base out of everyone. Your peers may be knowledgeable, but the lack of motivation means they also produce the bare minimum. The company follows a "firefighting mentality" that focuses more on quick fixes and less on getting into the root problem. - Poor management. Having worked in SG Office, there is never a single moment where I am clear of the company's direction, goal, achievement, etc. All the CEO does is to keep harping on the so-called WORKS WAY; abstract nonsensical notions such as Just Think, No Scapegoating, and Breakthrough. During development, sudden feature requests can be thrown without any warning, disrupting any form of planning done by the Team Leads. Deadlines for these features are often short yet the specifications can change again and again throughout the course of development. - Diminishing salary. Evaluation is irregular and not objective. Worse, good evaluation does not mean you will get salary increase. In fact, you WILL get promoted, given more responsibility, but WITHOUT salary increase. These coupled with the ever-weakening Yen, mean many senior employees find themselves with decreasing pay month after month. - Good people are leaving. For the past 3 months, there is at least 1 "Farewell Email" received every single week. Critical members, and members who produces results are leaving because of the toxic working culture and lack of career progression. Those who are left behind are either actively looking for other opportunities, or stuck because they are unable to move on. At the same time, they are struggling to cope with the demands of the upper management owing to the messy code base and lack of support from the now-gone experienced members. - Nobody cares about the product anymore. Some people may put "chill working environment" as a positive, but actually this is due to the fact that nobody is proud of what they are doing anymore. There is no internal motivation, no sense of pride, and not sense of purpose. Every single bug fix, function addition, etc are done solely because the upper management requested it.