I gave my hellos to an ex-colleague of mine over MSN. After serving years at our former workplace, my friend moved to greener pastures. Never regretted it. And for me, leaving that !@#!@$ place was the best thing to ever happen to me.

I learnt that they had employed 15 sales staff, and none of them are producing results. I chuckled learning about such terrible management decisions. If they were actually large enough, 15 sales reps would have been an appropriate headcount. But employing so many staff, without fixing the holes in their sinking ship, is just too much weight to carry, exercabating their decline.

They had never worked on creating their own product line and getting that right from the beginning. When I first joined them, there weren’t a lot of clients who got our web development services. They didn’t even have a content management solution. Because quite simply, their staff come and go.

I was probably the longest serving Systems Development staff after my manager in that time, and they decided to let me go. Just because I frequently clashed with the incredibly young HR manager (barely legal 21), with no degree nor human resource experience. I had an education, and I have experience. But my pay, and my benefits was peanuts. If you don’t treat your employees well, and I mean monetarily well. Then quite simply, they will leave.

Money isn’t everything. But everything is money. I agree with Adam Khoo there. But why am I, a Diploma holder, and who was pursuing a top University degree, getting less than someone who is 5 years my junior, and with no experience in her field nor does she have the qualifications in that line?

Yes, the boss was playing favourites. She was his girlfriend. And while I tried my best to respect her “senior” position, I just could not respect her as a person, just because she sucked the right dick (Please pardon my French).

I produced quality work. Perhaps some people don’t like my laid back style. But I produced enough to win me a damn Top Employee Award. And I wanted to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. So the following month, I worked extra hard and stayed back daily to achieve my targets.

Guess what. I lost it to my colleague who produced much less than I did. And then I realised that the carrot program, instituted by my untrained HR, was just a game of musical chairs. Later into the year, it became a predictable game of “Who hasn’t got it yet will win it”.

And so, quite simply, I decided not to work so hard for obvious reasons.

If you can’t reward your employees fairly, then quite simply, they will leave. Singaporeans don’t take favours. We earn rewards, not gift them.

They had 2 potential source of revenues, but it was never fully utilised. I failed to understand why they did not attempt to create content or security solutions. There was enough Undergraduate knowledge in the company that could produce tons of ideas. But nothing was ever produced.

Instead, the company continually focussed on Outsourcing and Staffing. It seemed that while we had branded themselves as an end-to-end solutions company, it became more and more of an IT job search firm.

The company needed to take a step in the right direction. We needed to create small, nifty tools that did just one thing, and that one thing right. We needed to innovate. But no one listened to me. Instead, they despised me. I was not the only person to be given the boot. A week later, a colleague of mine was sacked immediately. No notice was given. Like me, she stayed back often to achieve her goals. So how could someone, who had won the Best Employee Award, just the month before, get sacked so quickly? It just didn’t make sense.

If they only realised the amount of ideas and knowledge that I had, they wouldn’t have let me go. But then again, as long as that little girl, in that little short skirt, holds the rank of HR, I certainly do not want to work there.

I can even dare say that even though the company I’m working at now is small, even though we don’t have any sales staff, we sure make more than they do. Why? Quite simply, we spend minimally. And we continuously innovate. At least here, we have our own products. We don’t stop innovating. Once we’re done prototyping, we improve. And we keep doing it until innovation saturates, and we start over with a new product and repeat that same pathway to success.