for all the geeks

For the gamers out there (although i’m not a gamer anymore)…

Taken from goopymart’s flickr page (teh internets).

Also, do check out Kitana’s latest blog entry regarding the minimum wage situation here in Singapore. I do agree with many of her points and think they make pretty good sense.
Like i tell my friends, i think that singapore is at a crossroad at this point in time, and the next couple of years will be very interesting (or unsettling, or frightening, depending on one’s point of view). i’m counting (or rather optimistically hoping) for changes. Big changes hopefully in this sunny island of our’s. With the new generations coming into prominence, and the slow fading away of the old guard, things are probably going to change. Rock the boat i say. Rock it hard, and hopefully this will expose all the cracks and holes in the boat. Pasting band-aids over cracks and plugging up holes with blu-tack are just going to last for a while and keep the boat from sinking for the short term. The moment a storm comes… wham. Down goes the boat.

I think with the episodes and occurances in the last couple of months, our little dayung sampan has begun showing cracks and holes. Strains that have been building up over the years. Blutacks that have begun loosing their effectiveness, bandaids that have not been able to hold off the ensuing battering of the waves.

Well, back to the issue of the minimum wage.

I happen to view the world quite a bit through the lens of a marketer due to my training in school and my natural interests and inclinations. And as every marketer would probably say, it is not very sustainable to compete based on costs. Look at Kmart, look at the 99cents store. But of course for each failure, there are the Daisos, the Walmarts, etc. It is easy to be cheap. But to be the best at being cheap, ahh, that’s what sets a “cheap” retailer apart. Walmart is able to get everything at extremely low costs, and they are very very very very efficient at what they do, thus the ability to be the biggest and cheapest. Of course you have to add into that equation the alleged ill-treatment of workers, and the apparent hiring of predominantly foreign talent at very low wages… Tadaaah.

Singapore on the other hand, like Kitana said, cannot compete at being the cheapest. Just look at our living standards, cost of living, etc. We simply cannot afford to be the cheapest anymore, especially when we have made strides of progress in the last 20 years to go from 3rd world to 1st. Of course many of us would argue about our ability to claim 1st world status just yet. (especially with a press and media like our’s, the issue of democracy, and of course the more entertaining conspiracy theories about the benefits of not being officially labelled 1st-world) But given the rise of China and India, and the abundance of human capital in the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Latin America, and Eastern Europe…

how to fight?

How appropriate that picture above is on hindsight. haha
If we are not careful, we’ll just be pwned. *sigh*

I have some thoughts and opinions on this issue, but those are very lengthy posts i’ll save for another time when i do not have to wake up early for work the next day. For now, i’ll just post a list of keywords and random quick-jot kinda thoughts.

You pay peanuts you get monkeys.
(of course by peanuts here i don’t mean 200grand peanuts, but the 5 cents kind) =p

Seth Godin on “being cheap”:

“Here’s what I think: Cheaper is the last refuge of the person who’s
not a very good marketer. Cheaper is easy and cheaper is fast and
cheaper is linear and cheaper is easy to do properly, at least at
first. But cheaper doesn’t spread the word (unless you are much
cheaper, but to be much cheaper, you need to be organized from the
ground up, like Walmart or JetBlue, to be cheaper). They are, you’re
not.

Cheaper is a short term hit, not a long term advantage. Cheaper
doesn’t create loyalty, because the other guy can always figure out how
to be cheaper still, at least in the short run.

Even free isn’t cheap enough to win in the long run. Not if other people can figure out how to match what you’ve got.

So, if you can’t be cheaper, be better.”

Pay as a motivating factor.

Pay is an indication of one’s value. So by paying someone $7 an hour, you are in effect telling them that the work they are doing is just worth $7 an hour. Of course this would be different if it’s a brand name firm’s experience one is after, then the intrinsic value of the added value to one’s CV has to be taken into account. This is also one of the reasons i believe, that singapore’s service is all too often just atrocious. The salespeople are not paid enough to be proud of their jobs. Those who do a good job anyway just so happen to be very internally driven i think. How one is rewarded is also a key factor. Commissions are not the only or best way to reward salespeople. I’m sure there are more and better ways, that take into account the real value that a salesperson brings to the table.

The tyranny of the clever and capable…
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, as to the views of certain people up there.

If a country is run more like a corporate, and a ruthless corporate at that which does not really care that much about the welfare and happiness of its employees, and is ultimately concerned with its bottomline, its profit margin, its shareholders, and the rewards that the management gets… well… you get the picture. If a company’s philosophy is such, then don’t expect the workers in the production line to be treated very well or rewarded very well. As far as possible, management would want to keep every worker sufficiently contented and blinded from the realities of things, that they are in fact getting pathetic wages for the things that they do, and would pay management as much as possible at the expense of the workers. Now, doesn’t that sound a tad familiar?

Yup, those were just some thoughts…

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