Singapore. Being as a offshore site, it faces quite similar challenges with other MNC companies not being the HQ. Although Singapore is the APAC HQ, there is very little benefit in my mind. Unless you have fluent German, somehow there is still the language barrier. Culturally, this company's traits are "no trust in what you do" until you have proven yourself in the 'what' and 'how'. So be prepared to start off establishing these for some years. In terms of benefits, it is quite poor. No profit sharing, No stock option or RSU, very basic health insurance for only the employee (family you have to pay $1k plus every year extra). Work wise, to be brutally honest, because of the strong workers union in Germany, a lot of the workload is thrown over to offshore sites. If you compare the workload of a similar job role, my experience is doing 2x the load and 1/2 the pay. In short, offshore sites get squeezed. Another downside of the culture here, is that majority of employees (at least 80%) do not have sense of ownership of what they do and no sense of urgency. They need to have many project managers to push them and a lot of these poor project managers have to fight with other project managers for resource of up to 0.1 man months ... The rootcause of this is the appraisal system. the rating here is A (exceed) to D (do not meet(. both A and D are EXTREMELY hard to achieve. So why will employees want to put in the extra? And the poor project managers are squeezed by management for not delivering while they do not have the empowerment to set appraisals for these people. Line managers on the other hand get away by pushing responsibilities to the project manager; being the 'nice' managers to the team and pushing the 'bad guy' role to the project manager. Oh by the way, promotions are seriously RELATIONSHIP first and then others like skillset, experience and competence. So long as you are NOT a German, forget about holding senior positions or high responsibilities. I saw a case where a new hire (with master degree) with couple of years of experience is put as a project manager who is a German. Instead of giving this other other more experienced project managers in the offshore. And as expected, this project manager who has no technical hands-on skills is calling the shots on microcontrollers that are going into your BMWs, Audis, Mercedes etc. ... even the basic companies have a pantry with drinks and biscuits. Here, you have to pay using vending machines. And biscuits come one in 2 weeks and if you don't take it, it's gone.
