Pros
Singapore office has generally good benefits. Very nice office interior and office building. Pockets of people across entry-level and managerial roles are in empathy of each other and connect closely with each other in face of the toxic work environment, creating unexpected cross-functional bonds amongst the silent majority to overcome the poor office culture.
Cons
Toxic work environment within the global TR team making it difficult for anyone competent to stay long in that team. This makes everyone’s lives difficult as the design team has a significant presence in the company and you cannot avoid interacting with them one way or another. Talents looking to stay in the company for long were driven away. The good ones leave. The remaining who have been around for more than a handful of years put up an appearance of ‘working’ while being overly defensive. Not surprising considering the global TR team is full of micro-aggressions amplified by people who have been there for decades. A team has a stinking reputation in the Singapore cosmetics industry and no experienced hires from competitor brands are willing to join. Retail designers are looked down upon. They are often emotionally manipulated to succumb to peer pressure, will be given inappropriate sexual comments including about their bodies, and are expected to have their personal lives intruded upon. People have burst out crying in office and a few were unwilling to even stay past their probation periods. Whoever leaving is always to be blamed and during their notice period will be ignored and treated to be non-existant while also being squeezed to cover all the work for the next few seasons before their last days. The resignee will be criticised about, with false information spread about the resignee not doing any work and not being involved in anything. Everyone leaving is left with a stain in their mental health, never ever forgetting their traumatic experience. Another team is weak, and people cannot speak nor understand English at all. Avoids confronting problems and sweeps issues under the carpet instead of fixing them. Incompetent. Easily manipulated. President is either too oblivious to the office drama or simply too biased to the old staff to take action. No one is honest to the president and everyone tries to paint a false but beautiful picture (until the company empties out and problems become blatantly obvious). Everyone overreacts to anything he says, and the smallest side comment from him become a big task-force meeting. HR does not allow people to speak up openly while being anonymous, since they cannot fix the toxic culture within the company. Either be anonymous and have your question/feedback completely ignored, or be brave enough to speak up openly with your name tagged to it. High resignation numbers in the company and the company is practically empty now. People jumping off the sinking ship. Everyone’s either there for too many years or totally new to the company, so everyone’s running around like headless chickens. Company is now trying hard to please the employees with superficial material benefits and company events, without actually getting to the root of the problem and fixing the rotten core.
