MAS for Mid Career Professionals

Originally Posted by Unregistered

To
Mind elaborating further? What about these MAS people that makes them vulnerable in private sector? Mismatch of skillset? Or mismatch in work mindset / culture?

Mindset plus culture. People in MAS to be too pampered and protected and live in a sheltered bubble. Bosses are non-confrontational and will just ask someone else to do the work if you can’t do the work. Staff are too used to leaving on time.

How do you think these guys will survive in the private sector where there is nowhere to hide performance wise?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Mindset plus culture. People in MAS to be too pampered and protected and live in a sheltered bubble. Bosses are non-confrontational and will just ask someone else to do the work if you can’t do the work. Staff are too used to leaving on time.

How do you think these guys will survive in the private sector where there is nowhere to hide performance wise?

Also add to that that you can forget about industry best practices, standards over here. Here is more of "what your bosses think or feel". He/She may be less knowledgeable/experienced than you, but you have to follow because here only got Yes. So whatever certification you got ISO, CISSP, CFA or whatever, you can forget about it, because what goes here is what your boss think or lagi worse, "feel" is right. Anyhowly frame one also they are right, cos they will tell you "here is not like that one".

Then over time you will start to work according to the way your boss want, and not because its the Industry skill. Then you who become less sharp, wonder why people outside dont want to employ you.

Moral of the story, if you want to be employable by private sector, you are responsible for ignoring all the political noise here and maintaining and sharpening your own "knife".

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Also add to that that you can forget about industry best practices, standards over here. Here is more of "what your bosses think or feel". He/She may be less knowledgeable/experienced than you, but you have to follow because here only got Yes. So whatever certification you got ISO, CISSP, CFA or whatever, you can forget about it, because what goes here is what your boss think or lagi worse, "feel" is right. Anyhowly frame one also they are right, cos they will tell you "here is not like that one".

Then over time you will start to work according to the way your boss want, and not because its the Industry skill. Then you who become less sharp, wonder why people outside dont want to employ you.

Moral of the story, if you want to be employable by private sector, you are responsible for ignoring all the political noise here and maintaining and sharpening your own "knife".

I can resonate with this. Sometimes I seriously wonder how many bosses in MAS actually worked a day in the real world.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I can resonate with this. Sometimes I seriously wonder how many bosses in MAS actually worked a day in the real world.

that hurts! why do ppl from the private side consider moving to mas then? so many downsides to being in mas, but surely there must be some upside/perks?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

that hurts! why do ppl from the private side consider moving to mas then? so many downsides to being in mas, but surely there must be some upside/perks?

I didnt mean it as a hurtful post but genuinely curious how many bosses have direct industry experience with regard to the specific function they are leading.

Coming from private sector, it is common for bosses to be much more relevantly experienced than his/her subordinates.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I can resonate with this. Sometimes I seriously wonder how many bosses in MAS actually worked a day in the real world.

Bosses in MAS are also too pampered. They get people to do up slides for their own presentation, write speech for them, every small thing just arrow some poor officer or create workgroups.

In Private sector the bosses do up their own slides if they want to present something to the department. You think MAS bosses can survive in Private sector where there is no longer people to do work for them?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

that hurts! why do ppl from the private side consider moving to mas then? so many downsides to being in mas, but surely there must be some upside/perks?

Work life balance is a big attraction. Plus some can’t handle the intensity of private sector after having experienced it. It’s nothing wrong, not everyone aspires to be or can be a director in Goldman. But tolong don’t say your work output in MAS is equal to banks and expect to be paid at that level.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

But tolong don’t say your work output in MAS is equal to banks and expect to be paid at that level.

Tolong la, you think the "output" from a bank is some groundbreaking work ah?

Most staff in MAS fit into a middle-office risk/compliance role at a bank. Don't compare investment banking or other Sales roles to the role of an MAS officer because it is simply not the same jobscope.

Most banks, similar to MAS, use the same standard metrics to measure the various types of risks. Carrying out ORSA, stress testing, and risk-monitoring is not some PhD-level work.

The software already does everything. The human simply performs a second layer of assessment for double-checking and for evaluating more complex issues.

In fact, it is not even uncommon to find senior risk employees in banks who have difficulty understanding the concept of VaR (and its derivatives).

Those in FSG already know firsthand that the level of skill between FIs can be extremely wide (and of course, proportionate to their size and to the complexity of their operations).

Not every bank is DBS pls.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Work life balance is a big attraction. Plus some can’t handle the intensity of private sector after having experienced it. It’s nothing wrong, not everyone aspires to be or can be a director in Goldman. But tolong don’t say your work output in MAS is equal to banks and expect to be paid at that level.

It is okay to comment about cultures and how different it could be between MAS and the banks. But it is unfair to say the quality of work output is lesser or poorer in MAS or MAS should deserve less. Dude, like it or not, to run a financial sector business in Singapore, your FI needs to applease MAS. You think MAS is stupid then you better exit Singapore financial sector because your bank might find this place so stupid to business with stupid rules and stupid returns to fill that it fires you and close down in SG. If that did not happen and everything seeems fine, is because your CEO in HQ decided that it is better deal to hire compliance and spend the resources to deal with MAS.

As a Singaporean, do you think MAS can offer to hire stupid and incompetent officers? This is the central bank that dictates the value of SGD, the regulator that make sure the banks and market do not got rogue and tmr your bank account do not simply become zero, it is also the agengy giving many grants funded by taxes behind the scenes to persuade the CEOs of high paying foreign banks, family offices and fund managers to please keep the jobs here and hire locals.

If MAS can be made up of incompetent people, then great because SGporeans can save some tax monies .

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It is okay to comment about cultures and how different it could be between MAS and the banks. But it is unfair to say the quality of work output is lesser or poorer in MAS or MAS should deserve less. Dude, like it or not, to run a financial sector business in Singapore, your FI needs to applease MAS. You think MAS is stupid then you better exit Singapore financial sector because your bank might find this place so stupid to business with stupid rules and stupid returns to fill that it fires you and close down in SG. If that did not happen and everything seeems fine, is because your CEO in HQ decided that it is better deal to hire compliance and spend the resources to deal with MAS.

As a Singaporean, do you think MAS can offer to hire stupid and incompetent officers? This is the central bank that dictates the value of SGD, the regulator that make sure the banks and market do not got rogue and tmr your bank account do not simply become zero, it is also the agengy giving many grants funded by taxes behind the scenes to persuade the CEOs of high paying foreign banks, family offices and fund managers to please keep the jobs here and hire locals.

If MAS can be made up of incompetent people, then great because SGporeans can save some tax monies .

I work in one of the FSG departments and I do not believe that all MAS officers are of good calibre.

Yes, I'm saying it out. There are some MAS officers that are simply not up to mark. Their brains are stuck in the old ways and they are incapable of handling new issues that occur.

A major problem with MAS officers is an extreme reluctance to use alternative sources of information to aid in decision-making. Apart from not knowing how to get such information, even if they do know how to, they are at risk of being called "extra" or even worse, get arrowed to do more work. The "psychological safety" that is important to success and that has been mentioned many times is not being implemented well.

Certain departments have become so ossified that it is nearly impossible to change any process there without the staff kicking up a fuss (and the bosses have to accommodate the incompetence of their staff).