ST Electronics
 

Once worked for them long time ago as a fresh grad, then left after several months. Have since worked on 2 other jobs for several years with other companies.

Recently applied for an opening and received a call from its HR. But only offering a contract position, with possible conversion option in future, not perm position. Reason given by HR was that I am considered a returning ex-employee, and HR policy forbids granting immediate perm position for an ex-employee, even with suitable industry experience.

Wondering if the so-called HR policy for returning ex-staff is real or is the HR trying to bluff me when it can't offer me a better deal. Anyone knows if such a thing exists in HR or just a bluff?

I feel that I should be hired based on my merits and suitability for current position. If I'm suitable for the position that HR is willing to call me up for interview, yet still want to penalize me for having worked for them before? Really sending mixed signals about wanting to hire me.

Ask them give your perom or dun have walk off loh, what is the point about discussing whether STE really value you? I offer you D24 durian for $100, you don't like will just walk off right? Why waste time thinking about what is my motivation for selling you $100 durian?

It says a lot whether I should accept this compromised position or not.

Maybe I should phrase it this way.

Do most ST Electronics employees with average / satisfactory performance really get converted to permanent after their 1st or 2nd year?

Does it have a habit of not renewing contracts and releasing contract staff because there is no project?

Good cows dun eat return grass

is horse not cow. lol.

This is a very childish way of looking at things. If you dun want contract, go in and negotiate for a perm. If cannot walk off, its silly to ask around hoping to find out if STE will really value you as a person and somehow hope that they will give you a better deal a few years down the road. Things change all the time, it is silly to look for such hopes w/o black and white.

I assume you are now in a perm job. So why leave a perm job to a contract job?

Unless there is some sort of monetary compensation for the contract job, otherwise it does not look like a good deal at all.

By the way, I am not convinced on HR's explanation that returning employee can only get contract.

Now so many "engineers" unemployed, they can do watever they want!

Not a good place.

Does anyone know if I need to attach a cover letter when I apply for jobs at ST Electronics?

Hi, does anyone know how long would it take for ST Electronics HR to respond after I send a resume? Any information would be gladly appreciated. Thank you.

ST Elec has a policy to employ new staff (not only ex) on contract as exit policy for 2 scenario, if you are no good and there is no other jobs. This is a good HR practise (at least from the company point of view) as it gives them the easier and nicer way out other than sacking (which VERY seldom happens).
I have known of a very good engineer who was not renew due to lack of project, even though his peers highly recommended him. So now the decision is up to you.

good horse never eat back head grass

ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems)
 

Has anyone worked at ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) as software engineer before?

Being proficient in C++ programming seems to be important there. How much C++ and mathematics do I need to know to do my job there?

I have business IT degree background, enough to do web applications but not much knowledge in physics or maths.

I just left this company. pretty honest is a full of **** place. all these requirements are just on surface for show. when you are there you will know alot of ppl actually cannot make it or do not have relevant academic qualifications. it is a company that cares about quanity (money) than quality (product/ workmanship). the management know nuts.

Seriously?

I always see it advertising openings whole year round.

Is it difficult to cope with the work there (complex mathematics and codes as expected in simulation engines)?

How was your work life balance? Overtime a lot or burn weekend?

If you don't mind sharing details of how's life is there inside.

basically, the whole company (regardless which dept) is really a waste of time. the reason why it is advertising all year round because of its high turn over rate. to be honest with you, im not really from that dept, im from another dept but we do internal dealings for projects. the degrees are leaving in batches, people just keep leaving because of its low pay, low progession, low increment and unprofessionalism. it is not really hectic kind of job and people mostly leave on time. what i can advise you is that since you have some knowledge in programming, i would rather you go gain your exposure in companies like apple, fb, google, yahoo or other applications company (be it a sme or what). you wont gain much useful experience here and because this company have 70% ppl who just sit and take pay those, you wont be able to move up. it is hard to even work in a team because there is a lot of mismatch in the engineers over there. to be honest, alot are just technicians kind of level but given position like engineers and senior engineers so i can assure you that you wont be able to get much help over there. it is a GLC company that by right can be a very good and professional company due to having the assets but too bad, they had set their hiring policy wrong.

I think some of the commentators are being overly harsh on STE. Sure, they are pretty backward in culture and more into doing voluminous SOP work on time than really coming up with high quality and innovative solutions.

But then in reality the fact that someone needs to apply for a job in STE also means they didn't make the cut for the good jobs in SAP, google, IBM etc. Ideally we all want a good job in a good company, but sometimes reality is that we are just average and cannot make the cut to the top places.

STE offers decent salary, bonus and job security. It really isn't that bad compared to a lot of third party outsourcing outfits. Even another key competitor GLC NCS is much worse from all accounts.

NCS is worse? In term of working hours, compensation and career progression?

I heard local system integrators like STE and NCS are all sweatshops working crazy hours and weekends.

Yes it might sound oversly harsh, if you have see how they work and the quality they delivered for govt, to be honest if it is not a GLC, it would have been backslash long ago. It is so comfort that people dont bother to do upgrade and rather just slack there because they will get promoted eventually. technology and engineering is not like how it was last time, you cannot keep putting innovation away. even a small setup company doing applications is much more of a beneficial exposure. and Yes, they offers decent salary, bonus and job security because they simply exist to minimise the unemployment rate. if people just want a good time and slacking retirement, they can go there. but looking at how the world progress, i can assure that this culture wont last long.

if you still think of advancement, go somewhere else. a start-up company or some small company doing applications is good. if you want to have a peaceful retirement, go ste.

I don’t disagree with what you are saying about STE but that is not the main problem. Look at it in the context of an average caliber person. You cannot get into any of the top MNCs, so you are left with 3 choices - either join places like STE/NCS, join some small startup or local SME or go start you own business.

Go join a small SME might sound sexy as you get more autonomy to do supposedly innovative work, but from a personal financial perspective can it really be better that joining STE? Chances are the SME will fold up somewhere along the way, you get terminated whenever the times are tough, or you try to get somewhere but find out that you experience in SME isn’t worth anything.

Everyone has different needs, some people who are more ambitious, look to something beyond money and stability, look for individual fulfilment etc. is ok, I respect them for their drive. But what I am emphasizing is for most people (i.e the average man on the street), working in STE actually makes a lot of sense and it isn’t as bad or dumb as the way some people are putting across here.

Well, i always believe an avg person also can excel as long he/she do his/her part like going for upgrades or courses. What is unacceptable is that people use the word "avg" to label themselves and take advantage of the job that was given to them and also use it as a word to explain the poor job done but when it comes to promotion, suddenly they didn't see themselves as avg but the finest people.

Most glc are sinking**

This hypocrisy happens everywhere. When there is work to be done, everyone gets out of the way or do just enough to get by. When it comes to claiming credits, everyone jostles to get in front. :D

There are people to fill all market segments. People take the best option they can get.

• MNC/public sector - high end
• STE/NCS/GLC - mainstream
• SME - budget

average by definition is average. if it were that easy that anyone can excel as long as he/she do his/her part, there will not be an average and the average will become higher and most end up average again. haha sounds strange i know.

i think regardless of mnc or sme or glc ppl want to siam work and cheong for credit is normal human behaviour lah. but many things are inborn, there is no shortage of hardworking ppl in the world, but end of day only small minority can make it big. u can blame iq, bad luck, connection or whatever, but this is fact of life.

last time glc exist is to create more jobs and to take on non public sector jobs so to generate revenues. now glc exist barely just to minimise unemployment rate because there are quite a handful people who couldnt move in to mnc, psd or other better places. if glc is able to maintain their standard, im sure they will become one of the country's biggest asset but they prefer to take in alot who couldnt make it and end up those people change the company culture into quite a sloggy environment who exist just for the sake of existing and the glc simply dont care. there is nothing wrong to take in different academic background people but the problem is they are giving out position titles so freely until a technician level type of people become an engineer but totally have no knowledge of a real engineer work and they still get promoted upwards to SE, APE, PE etc which is quite a ridiculous thing. that in turn make them feel that they dont have the need to upgrades and eventually make them at the losing end when working or discussing work with grad engineer or even the engineer from the west because they dont have the fundermental. i experience alot of this which finally i understood why sometime the cs side enginner or engineer from the west look down at us. we make a supposed-to-be professional job to a unprofessional one.

Well, this seems like a problem inherited from years or decades ago. I suppose you mean there are some very senior engineers or managers without a university degree. They are likely to be those hired 20 or 30 years ago? During those days, university graduates were rare, so many engineering companies hired diploma graduates and they were sufficient for the job.

Nowadays if you look at STE job ads, there are very little openings for diploma graduates. I don't even recall seeing many positions for ITE graduates.

And being a Asian company where seniority is tied to age (or employment period), it tends to promote those like first-come-first-serve basis in a assembly line style. Agree that long employment may not automatically mean more experienced, knowledgeable or skillful.

hmmm. to clarify, those hired 20 - 30 years ago is one group, which comfortably won't upgrade and they are the reason why people left. i have colleagues who got promoted to SE in 5-6 years times by just holding a ITE/ dip cert without knowledge. This are the group that are quite dangerous in a sense that all don't wanna upgrade and finds no purpose of doing so and not knowing that they themselves are just performing a technician job and not an engineering job. Job ads are job ads that look nice, now they are opening engineers position to just dip cert with so-called "experiences" which referring to the ex forces people. those people have a certain knowledge but just on their own system and not a general engineering knowledge. Hence the groups here are spilted by their bosses to 2 different group - one with degree and one doesnt and both pay doesnt differ much. which is simply like when you need to form a team, you cannot just pull and pluck in, you have to search those with the relevant qualifications and often they had difficulty doing so. I dont mean you dont have a degree then you are not good, what i mean is the old ones and those keep promoted (despite w/o qualifications) had built an environment letting the newcomers to think that upgrading is not needed and engineering job aren't hard and i can still keep promoted despite i lack the fundermental. Also, by doing so, they pulled down the pay for the those degree engineers , pulled down the quality of the company and pulled down the "engineer" title. Often, this is the reason why those engineer from the west are laughing at singaporean engineer because those people make a fool of themselves, using their so-called "experiences" to argue fundermental with engineers holding a phd. Furthermore, the west didnt know that not all engineers hold a degree.

im another one joined a year ago after graduation, despite reading and hearing alot of comments abt the company but i still join hoping it is not that worst. Now, im doing my best to find job back to cs.

In the west, some countries have strict laws and conditions who's an engineer, and who's not qualified to call themselves an engineer. So the moment someone identifies themselves as engineer, they probably understand (or assume) that that person is a professional engineer who been through a 4 year engineering course in university.

In Singapore, the title been overused by all sort of people with all sort of qualification.

Then the whole problem is about appraisal, meritocracy and talent recognition. The first thing to fix should be the HR system for not having a proper appraisal system in place. In many organisations, appraisal can be unfair, and is more of one's social network within the company. The top management likes you, every year get A, promotions and more bonuses. :D

And the issues and problems you are facing are? Don't mind sharing?

Lack of prospect?
Lack of guidance by seniors/reporting officer?
Lack of training opportunities?
Lack of work life balance i.e overtime and long working hours?
Lack of job satisfaction?
Unfair treatment?
Bypassed for promotion?
Not given a chance to convert to perm from contract?
Nasty environment, client, colleagues or superiors?
Office politics?

What are you unhappy with in general?

1) Lack of prospect
2) seniors and reporting officer have very limited knowledge hence couldn't provide me much guidance. However, this is not the main issue as im used to research/google the ans and solutions myself.
3) my work time is generally ok just lack of job satisfaction.
4) despite me able to perform better and do much more for the company, i felt kind of wasted because you also hardly get the chance to be promoted.
5) environment wise still ok. i just felt like what the above poster is saying, superiors and incompetent colleagues are the main reason that pulled down the professional title. like doctors, lawyers without license those but still able to practice in their field. often when doing projects with stat board engineer, they tend to look down on our people because those blacksheeps keep making a fool of themselves thinking their experiences is fundermental and we are known as engineers without standard despite me holding a degree and know my stuff. you will felt like mismatch in it when discussing projects, the cs people wont respect you.

6) also, not getting the salary of a degree engineer and you are grouped as executive so you get a normal executive pay like what those BA gets. HR dont know the differences in certs and they simply dont bother because HR holds the rights. engineers all grouped the same as office executive? hellooooo? HR management basically can go eat ****

Is there any future for a person in his company if one does not wish to take on project management role but be a technical specialist/consultant of sort?

Why many people say system integrators are sweatshops working a lot of OT like 80 hours per week, but the ST engineers here say they usually have normal 9-6 working hours? :confused:

Hahaha obviously looking at the above comments you will know the standard of a ST engineers? Do you think they are really a system integrators? Maybe have la but definitely not all system integrators are integrators. The REAL system integrators really work OT and that's what i encountered when i was working with foreign engineers and they are people who are really motivated and fast.

BTW anyone have worked for ST Info comm under agency contract from Jobline before? So how is the benefits and likes?

My colleague was under jobline agency, if i didn't remember wrongly the benefits are up to 60bucks HP bill (claims), then PB bonus + 13month. which will only be given after you completed one year. Example you came in feb then next year feb then will get the PB + 13 month. It is paid from the agency to you instead of directly from the company. I think not everyone has the 60hp bills. Need to see dept i guess.

Is there any career path in ST Engineering / ST Electronics if one does not aspire to be a project manager?

On average, how much does it pay for a local Singaporean software engineer with 7 years relevant experience?