I'm beginnng to wonder if Singaporeans can really work. I deal with few of the largest telco providers here in Singapore and believe me when it comes to work people are as good as dead. It's a world of difference from my previous experience in startups and US-based companies.

For one project, I attended two meetings lasting 3-4 hours each where ten of us from four different companies and departments try to sort out a service provisioning process flow. While I do not disagree that a proper structure should be in place, half the time was spent simply just pushing responsibilities between groups simply because they have "never done it before", it's "too troublesome", or they are "only supposed to do [a defined list of responsibilities]" .

Too troublesome? Talk about calling department X, Y and Z just trying to get a simple thing resolved!

Then comes the product manager (PM) who insists that the vendor (us) provide 99.9% SLA for a service that does not really warrant the need for such a stringent SLA. The PM having worked with a telco enviroment for years was so familar with traditional fixed-line services that she applied the standard guidelines to a totally different product. I call this the brain-dead template driven work.

I was at a datacenter (D)C migration yesterday morning at 2AM to physically move servers to a new DC. We got the servers shifted and racked at the new DC by 4.30AM, but to our surprise the new DC had no network set up for us. We were sent a brand new IP subnet via e-mail about a month ago and nobody did anything about it - the cables weren't patched, the VLANs weren't set and the routes weren't added. The most amusing part was that the engineer onsite simply said he wasn't informed and that it wasn't planned and seemed ever so reluctant to help. My colleague dug up his e-mail that showed the new IP range assigned with the e-mail sender's name and only then he decided to act upon it with "somebody else to blame". Even then, it took them a whole 2 hours (from 5AM to 7AM) to get the link working.

A few weeks ago, my (personal) datecenter had a major power blackout. When they sent me the final report, I was surprised to find that the report set the blame on building electrical technicians who were simply carrying out their routine electrical maintenance jobs. Nobody related to the poor design of the DC's power supply system or NOC engineers was mentioned in the report. I wrote back saying the report was flawed, and that they (the NOC) failed to properly notify customers of a planned electrical maintenance. It's been three weeks and I have yet to get a reply.

There are many such incidents that I'm sure some of you may be so familiar with or even guilty of. This "responsibility push syndrome" is simply a killer of productivity. Many people are well educated and technically capable but unwilling to bear any form of responsibility. Some are worse - they don't want any responsibility AND are technically uncapable. These people just want to sit at a job with no responsibilities and no challenges where they spend half their life at. While I do not understand why, I have no respect for such people.

What troubles me is that we lack people who would stand up and take action during a situation and do what's required to resolve it without worrying having to "answer" for his/her actions. If a person stands up for what he thinks is right, then he/she shouldn't be worried about having to answer for making a positive decision. If he/she is reprimanded for taking such an action then I think it's only right that he/she seeks a new job.

While some people say you're trying to "act hero", think to yourself the next time you get robbed at gunpoint, you'll be hoping there was indeed a hero.