1. If you are hungry for success, go elsewhere. Though there is a career path, most of the top jobs are in London or Chicago. There is a limit of how far you can grow unless you are willing to relocate.
2. The leadership doesn't respect the local culture by "helicopter in" managers from other offices and run Singapore office thinking that we should be like "the office they came from".
3. A disempowering environment for managers. As an individual contributor, you can still make some decisions IF you have a supportive manager. Ironically, when you are a manager, everything has to be decided by everyone else but you. The lack of structure and segregation of duty is appalling! Processes tend to be very ambiguous and confusing when you are new.
4. Even though the starting salary is competitive, the annual increment for a top performer is a nominal difference with average performers. The variable bonus is almost non-existence for a non-sales person. It is standard across the board. Not much of motivation for people to strive and you will feel like you slowly transform into one of the lemmings. And, it is frustrating to work with people who are not performance driven.
5. The business change is not well orchestrated, or the management just plainly poor in communicating changes. So, any changes for specific departments you will only hear it from your colleagues in another department after the event.
6. The management doesn't believe in external training AT ALL. At times, it is the blind leading the blind during the in-house training programs. The trainers are the colleagues within the division. It is not that they are not competent; it is just that not everyone can be a good teacher (or they are not trained to be one). More so, when the training is not from the accredited source.
