I normally 3-4 days per week and I am also studying. My partner works Monday to Friday usually from 7am-3pm.

Today, I felt my heart properly break for the first time. The course I’m studying has quite a heavy workload so I haven’t been going home for the past three weeks. My father came to visit me today. He is rarely ever free and today is one of those days that he could make time.

My father is close to 70 years old and he is still not retired. He works as a cleaner at a country club during the day and holds another cleaning job at the community centre near my house at night. For some reason, he had half a day off today and he said he wanted to tour my hall. He came over and after showing him my room, we decided to get dinner at the Kopitiam at Kent Ridge MRT.

I know my father doesn’t have money so I offered to pay for his dinner. Guess what? The silly man ordered the cheapest thing he could find – fishball noodles. There was a lady (very well dressed, looks to be at least middle-class) infront of us in the queue and she left her chilli on the counter then walked away somewhere. My father didn’t see it and thought that that was an extra sauce so he just took it and put in on our tray. When the lady returned, she said very sarcastically that someone took her chilli while glancing up and down at my father. He immediately apologised and explained to her that we were not aware and that she could have her chilli back but she replied “你动过的我才不要。肮脏死”, which loosely translates into “I don’t want what you’ve touched. You’re dirty to death”.

This was when I realised that my father was still in his uniform. I almost screamed at this lady seeing as she was clearly younger than my father and was being rude. However, my father held me back and simply apologised again. He said that he’s used to it and it suddenly hit me that this is what he does all on a day to day basis. He apologises and lets people walk over him. He is invisible. I always knew my dad worked hard and is always at the mercy of others but seeing it with my own two eyes was an entirely different experience. I couldn’t even hold back my emotions and start tearing uncontrollably while we were eating. I had to lie that I was tearing because I got chilli in my eye but the truth is I was heartbroken by how my dad has to swallow his pride all the time.

I can’t wait for the day when I can tell him to stop working and stop apologising for everything. All my dad ever did was love and dote on me but everyone else has just been so awful to him. Dear rich people, what did we ever do wrong to you?

I’m a NUS alumni and current a Senior Manager for one of the biggest IT Firm. Just last week I met guys from my batch, most of whom were hiring manager in reputable firms.

In our conversation we realize we have the same serious issue, and our solutions to that is exactly the same, but we’re still not getting results.

We have a talent shortage. Our solution is high salary, head hunt and expand to non-CS people.

What we found out were the same, most of the fresh grads are not qualified for the job, cannot perform under stress, fail deadlines and leaves between 6 – 12 months. It isn’t that we didn’t vet our candidates, we have rigorous interviewing process, with in-person coding test, personality test and a 60-90k package for fresh grad, much more if you’ve xp.

On average only less than 10% manage to go into final round of interview. Yet 80% leaves within the first year without producing any good results, and those who stayed on would have another offer lined up by their third year. University and GPA are poor indicator, in fact I had xp with a few poly student out performing NUS FCH but leaves due to better offer, our company refuse to pay non-degree holder more than 50k per annum. Some of the wiser among readers can guess my firm.

We also realize that many younger candidates, <5 yrs xp, has an average of 1 yr tenure but virtually same as fresh grads. Despite that many still demand high salary, we think GES is partly to blame. Interestingly, we also realized that a particular group of them were also willing to accept a much lower package for a less demanding role, I guess their xp have traumatize them. Tracking our ex employees, we realize that about half of those who couldn’t handle it change to a different field and a sizable portion took easier roles.

Those >5 yrs xp is a huge mix bag but many have unrealistic expectation due to how high we’re offering fresh grads. The most Inspirational case I came across was this one candidate who asked for a 70% jump from his previous salary because a particular ecommerce was listing high salary for fresh grads and he feels that he should get 20% on top of that, he barely pass our coding test with his 4 years xp. I do not blame him, the market is broken because there is just not enough talent.

To put my point across, in my company we track the progress and output of every SWE. Last year, 53% of the productivity is created by 16% of the team. All of them are in the senior or lead position, all of them are overwork and burned out. Those <5yrs xp represent 58 % of the team but only accounts for 27% productivity with one unicorn responsible for ~3% productivity. To be fair, about half of them were hired last years, they account for 7% productivity.

I don’t know what’s wrong with our education system, but we aren’t creating talents or hard workers.

I am a nus alumni who graduated 10 years ago. I am earning $20k per month now in some MNC and moonlighting with some side business.

Therefore, i managed to own a condominium and have close to 1 million savings.

Due to my needs, I recently hired a sugarbaby who is currently studying in NUS. She is pretty, but she is very seductive to an extent that she can make me lose control of myself in decision making.

She made me transferred the ownership of the condominium worth 1.5mil to her and also almost all my savings to her as well.

I was stupid enough comply with her. Furthermore, every month I continued to give her 10k allowances.

I started to regret as i am left with almost nothing now. But i am really addicted to her and cant stop myself from giving everything to her.

I am also scared if i stop giving her 10k per month, she will kick me out of the condo which is under her name now.

Can anyone advice me?? How should i seek help to stop my addiction to her?

Netizens’ comments

• You’re effectively paying 10k/month for rental in your ex-condo and some partner benefits. It’s probably cheaper elsewhere.
• You are definitely not someone I have in mind who earns 20k monthly. If I knew my boss did all these silly things, I would have changed to another company because he would run the company to the ground for his lack of judgement and intellect.
• I think you are under a love spell. Which you have mentioned that she just made you transferred all your assets to her and providing her $10k as her monthly allowance. You can’t stop even you knew something is not right.

Am I wrong for giving my late husband’s brother and his kids 3 days to move out?

My late husband “Adam” (M36) passed away a month ago. He had lung cancer and was terminal.

New employer cancels contract on first day

Well one of my ex-colleague who I’m in contact with, he had resigned from the company & was supposed to join a new company this wk.

It’s a new crypto startup from Australia & has a small office here. He went for several rounds of interview & they offered him attractive benefits plus salary & hence he decided to make a move to the company.

Contract signed & everything. He served his 30 day notice & left without any issues. Was supposed to join this wk.

But on the day he’s supposed to start his first day, the company calls him & tells him that they found someone else last min for the role & they apologize for not informing earlier. No further contact from that company

The dude is now at a loss on what to do & he called me up to tell me he’s in deep shit, he doesn’t know what to do. Is there any solutions for him? Like what can he do?

Netizens’ comments

• No compensation or what so ever? This sounds more like rescinding their offer instead.
• Name and Shame on glassdoor.
• What does his signed contract say?
  Usually, if the employer terminates, they either have to give 1 month notice or pay salary-in-lieu. If his contract says this and the company is not complying with this, he can escalate the dispute to MOM since the company is being unresponsive.

Is there any cons if I want to work for money and benefits only?

I am in a contract role in the science sector doing routine testing and I don’t know why but I find myself no longer wanting to put in effort in my job and wanted to coast around.

The thing is, there is quite limited things to learn as my colleagues are all busy with work and couldn’t take time off from their daily tasks and routine work to train me in newer stuff, resulting in me doing the same old tasks everyday, which I am quite sick of. The only good thing of this would be because I am not trained in a lot of stuff, I can’t perform the more important tasks which means that I can get a bit of time to slack.

In the meantime, I am job hunting for something that is better than my current role, preferably something that pays more and have more benefits than my measly contract position. Compared to my previous position as a trainee in the same company and department, I have lesser benefits now and took a slight pay cut in my current contract role. Somehow I don’t know why but I think I am too fixated with salary and other benefits that I think I would be happier with more salary and benefits? I can’t think of anything else that would made me more happy than more salary and benefits.

Currently, I am required to help out in my previous team when I was a trainee when they are having manpower issues and also do my routine work in my current role and I am wondering is it worth to do so much work when my pay is not so much?

Recently, with colleagues clearing leave and taking MC, sometimes I regret coming to work because there is so much work to do, and I don’t want to help my colleagues who are on site to do the routine work because I want to slack. I know that I sound selfish but I am quite sick of helping the team to fight fire on all grounds.

I want to have a 1 to 1 session with my boss but I don’t know what to tell her. Would she be angry that I am actually a slacker who just wants be paid well only?

I’m envious of the relationship my child has with my husband and I wish my husband still treated me the same.

I love my child but I can’t help but feel a twinge of envy whenever I see him interact with my husband. I’d never fault him for it. He has the dad that every kid should have. The dad that lights up at the sight of you and will show up to every sports match and will schedule dad and son outings on the weekend.

The trouble I’m having is that it used to be me. I used to be the one that lit up my husband’s face. I used to be the one he’d make time to do things with. But I’m not anymore.

Before having kids I never was worried about being pushed to the sidelines. The love a parent has for their kids is a different type of love than they have for their spouse. And it is, but I didn’t realize there would be a cap on the quantity. There is no love left for me. I get the tidbits, the scraps, the leftovers.

We’ve been married for 16 years at this point. Didn’t even have our child until 10 years in. We had a strong marriage. We made time for one another. Went on dates. Had exciting, passionate, mind-mush inducing conjugal relations 3-5 times a week. Would greet each other with a smile, hug, and a kiss when the other got home.

Then around age 3, poof it was gone. Now when my husband arrives home, I get a placating pat on the back or kiss on top of my head while our child gets an excited open arms hug spin around while happily screeching “daddy!” If I try to give my husband a real kiss, he’ll turn his check and say he just got home and is stressed.

There’s no more date nights. We don’t live near family who could babysit and he isn’t comfortable having someone we don’t know super well watch the kiddo until they’re older.

And our bedroom activities are now 3 or 4 times a month. If I try to initiate, it’s a turnoff for him because I’m too forward and eager. I come across as desperate. So I wait. And wait. And wait, for whenever my husband remembers that I happen to be around and he should throw me a bone(r) every once in a while.

It’s not like we haven’t talked about it. There are no secrets. I try to be more understanding of his work stress and he says he’ll be more receptive towards my needs. That’ll last a week until going back to the status quo.

This morning I wake up and roll over to kiss my husband good morning and he puts a hand out to stop me, saying he’s busy on his phone with a work text. And he was, I read the text. But not one minute later our son ran into our room and jumped up. My husband immediately put down that oh so important work text to hug and snuggle.

So this is my life. Where I set a daily timer to allow myself to cry for 15 minutes when no one else is around. And every time I see my child’s face light up at the sight of his dad, I feel so much joy but also deep down I wonder why we both can’t be loved. I don’t have a cap on how much love I can feel or give.

My love language is physical touch and I feel duped. The epitome of the late-30s housewife cliche, whose husband is sick of her. I never knew a person could feel such vast loneliness while sitting less than three feet away from someone who vowed to spend the rest of their lives together.

This freaking sucks.