If you value yourself, don't. Not even if you're desperate.
Pros
- Shift work (Though you can negotiate a little bit on your off days, you probably can kiss having weekends goodbye. This does mean that you no longer have to 'fight' to take Annual Leaves to make your Public Holiday a long weekend though.) But this introduces the headache of exchanging working days/days off with your colleagues to get what you want. - They attempt to hold frequent activities/celebrations and give out free (very cheap) gifts to employees. However, because of how much work there is to do, you most likely won't be able to attend (provided it falls on your working days, again, shift work). - As most of the companies in this industry are located in Tuas, the current location of Genscript is considered accessible and convenient. There's at least three coffeeshops nearby as well, at reasonable price points, something that Tuas severely lacks. Majority of the stores don't open on weekends though (Shift work problems).
Cons
Cons: - Shift work (See the pros) - No work-life balance. They may ask you to come back on your day offs, or reject your requests for certain days you want to take off (because of the severe lack of staff due to extremely high turnover rates). - Non inclusive. Their attempt to translate their system/documents into English is very poor and half hearted. Anyone important/high up ONLY speaks and write in Chinese and fully expects you to do so, so if you intend to climb the ladder (provided you have that resilience) you'd need to be good at Chinese. This also means anything important is, by default, in Chinese. --> As above, communication between colleagues are usually in Chinese. - From speaking to other colleagues, career progression here requires you to be inhumanely perfect, or have insane resilience to endure being treated like you don't have a personal life outside of work. - Their performance evaluation targets are extremely unrealistic and punishing. Should you make a mistake, they focus on blaming you and punishing your performance evaluation. - The culture here seems to be quite toxic. They expect perfection (and beyond) from you, any less and they treat you like you deserve to be thrown in the trash. They will make you question your self worth and overwork you, and it still won't be good enough. The problem will always be *you*, because you're not devoting your entire soul and life to this company. - Based on the fresh grad employment survey, the pay they've offered (to me at least) is below average. Expected from a first job, but be prepared. For reference: It was a few hundred dollars below the 25th percentile. - HR will entice you to join this company with sweet half truths. Don't fall for it. The turnover rate in this company is high for a good reason. 80% of the employees here (at this time of writing) have been employed for less than 1 year. The remaining 20% are mostly non-locals who've dedicated themselves like sentinels and would likely never leave or change their ways. - It was never communicated or put into our contract that we weren't allowed to claim OT pay. However this rule is enforced, and you're only allowed to claim OT leave (leave-in-lieu). BUT the thing that makes no sense... is that you can only claim that if you OT for 2 hours minimum. So if you have to stay behind for an additional hour, that doesn't count as OT no matter how many days you're forced to do it. TLDR: High workload for very little pay and compensation.
