In the movie Catch Me If You Can, the young con man Frank Abagnale (played by Leonardo Di Caprio) successfully impersonates a pilot, a spy and a doctor while evading the suspicion of his bosses and colleagues.
A 31-year-old Malaysian has managed to achieve something similar here in Singapore. While the engineering manager is allegedly raking in more than S$12k a month, he admits that he does not know how to do his job.
It turns out that his bosses are also none the wiser to the man’s acts of deception and his slacking off at his job.
Malaysian Pay Gap’s Instagram Page Receives Submission of the Man’s Strange Experience
Malaysian Pay Gap is an Instagram page that advocates for pay transparency and better working environments for Malaysians by encouraging them to share their working experiences and salary via the account.
The account also verifies the pay slips of the anonymous original poster (OP) before publishing their stories.
On 24 July, the 31-year-old made a submission to Malaysian Pay Gap’s Instagram Page detailing his weird journey as an engineering manager in a Singapore company.
View this post on Instagram
In the post, the OP claimed to have seen a massive pay raise from MYR 3,000
(S$870) to S$12,000 in his ten years of working experience.
At his current job, he manages a team of senior engineers and managers who are almost twice his age. He even mentions that he is roughly the same age as the daughter of one of his colleagues.
Ironically, while he may be the superior of individuals who are way more experienced than him in the field, the OP admits that he does not have any knowledge of the skills he is expected to possess. In the post, he mentions that he has no clue how to code and only has a basic grasp of the technical skills required for his job.
Despite this very concerning detail, the man has managed to find ways to stay afloat with his enviable salary—most of which involve deceiving his bosses.
“Engineering Manager” Relies on His Smooth-Talking and the Outsourcing of Difficult Tasks to Continue Climbing Corporate Ladder
While the saying “fake it until you make it” is considered sound advice by most self-help books and motivational coaches, the OP may have taken an extremely literal approach with the famous phrase.
The man explains that his “workflow” usually involves planning a seemingly complicated project and paying contractors 20% to 30% more of their usual cut to ensure that his ambitious plans are accomplished on his behalf.
Ultimately, he takes all the credit for the hard work while impressing his bosses enough to continue climbing the corporate ladder.
He does this all without lifting a single finger for his work.
While a good manager knows how to build rapport with his colleagues and bosses to achieve a common goal, the OP uses his uncanny skills of charming important people at work to lower their suspicions of him.
He claims that key management in his company is more concerned with the results than the process of attaining them; a little bit of sweet-talking is enough to allow him to carry out his deception scot-free.
To attain the “results” the company expects of him, the OP outsources most of the difficult work to countries with low labour costs, such as India and Sri Lanka.
Keeping up this charade is apparently an easy feat for the OP, as he only spends 10 hours a week at his job while pretending to be busy at work.
Malaysian Pay Gap’s Instagram Post Has Divided Netizens. However, OP’s Conduct May Not Be Against the Law
In response to OP’s questionable outsourcing practices at work, netizens have given responses that seem to fall into two camps: One that admonishes his work and another that praises him for it.
On the side that does not approve of OP’s conduct at work, many have complained about how his conduct has been unfair to actual hard-working employees. Some individuals have begun to doubt the integrity of their bosses at work.
On the other hand, some netizens see the merit and skill it takes to negotiate and outsource work to willing collaborators. They see OP’s approach as a way to “work smart, not hard”.
In actuality, it is technically not illegal for employees to outsource work to individuals outside of the company.
According to Thomson Reuters, a company that procures legal products for clients, “There are no specific laws or regulations (in Singapore) regulating the dismissal or termination of employees in connection with the implementation of outsourcing arrangements”.
Either way, all this masquerading seems to have taken a toll on the OP’s conscience.
In his post, he mentions that he does not know how long he can keep up with deceiving his company. He also does not feel much satisfaction from seeing others writing code while he can only pretend to do so.
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