A low cost R&D center(shop) without the 'R' but a sloppy 'D'
Pros
1) Flexible working time but this is an overstatement. You will be harassed if you leave too early or for no valid reason. 2) Training provided for newcomers. 3) A very diverse workplace. Plenty of non-locals in the department (Germans, Indians, Pakistanis, PRCs, naturalized Malaysian Chinese, Philipines, Indonesians, Vietnamese, you name it). But where are the Singaporean locals? 4) No punch-in and punch-out (I am not sure whether this is a pro because we are instead required to fill an online form with details of our daily activities). 5) Little competition in the little pond (automotive SW industry). Continental AG is the one of the leading market leaders. So your job is secure. But this could change in the coming years as tech giants like Google begin to enter the fray. 6) You might get to travel overseas to the German headquarters. 7) Job security. The company won't lay employees off like some US MNC did but cost cutting should still be expected. The Singapore office is still a low cost center no matter what they say. 8) Clean and spacious workplace.
Cons
[Employee benefits] 1) Below-average AWS bonuses that can barely keep up with the inflation rate, 2) Below-average number of day for leaves, 3) Overtime (OT) are NOT paid. Coming back on weekends could be a norm for some departments and they will not pay a single dime for your extra work. This is clearly stated in the employment agreement. 4) Poor HR support. They sugarcoat every detrimental managerial decision made against you. It is as if they don't care about your well-being and they call themselves your 'Business Partners'. 5) If you do not like the current situation you are welcome to leave, aka you are dispensable. SW development has truly become a commodity in this part of the world. [Meritocracy] 1) Reward long-standing loyalty and shoe-polishing, 2) Talents are undeservedly under-compensated. Graduates with postgrad degrees are paid the same as the undergraduates of similar experience i.e. the minimal salary to qualify for the Singapore working pass. 3) Poor career growth, guidance and diversification. Either you move up into the management or you become a team lead. That is IF you are deemed capable enough in the eyes of the management. [Working culture] 1) Working in silos with abysmal communication and guidance. 2) Tonnes of firefighting but no lesson learned. 3) Tight deadlines. The resources are overstretched but the company is still receiving incoming projects by outbidding the (weaker) competitors with irresitable price and faster delivery. 4) No usage of modern colllaboration tools such as Asana and Trello. So you always find your email inboxes flooded with exchanges, directives, announcements and newsletters. 5) Meeting, meeting, meeting. The meetings are held for the sake of meeting. Time and context switching are not cheap. 6) No questioning of the management and the established workflow. Do not rock the boat when it ain't broken. 7) Little employee empowerment. All the big decisions are made in Germany. They decide, we follow. The end. 8) The customer is king. The management will always yield to the customers' demands no matter how ridiculous they may be. I guess this is how Continental can remain as the top dog for so long as they have been but regular employees will suffer. [Location] 1) Pretty far from the nearest MRT. But a new MRT will be opened nearby. 2) No food court in the building. You have to walk under the scorching sun to the community food center nearby. [Technical] 1) The embedded OS does not fully adhere to UNIX philosophy with overly complex monolithic design. But it does its job well under embedded constraints. 2) No usage of free open source standard library glibc or even the BSD one. 3) The documentation is fragmented, lacking and out-of-date. You have to frequently bother someone for answers. And they will be too enthusiatic about it. 4) There are a lot of boilerplates but I guess this is a result of using C/C++. Modern languages (e.g. Python, Scala, Javascript ES6) are way leaner and feature abundant, ensuring a more productive experience. 5) There are a lot of engineers or computer science grads (Masters, PhDs) masquerading as software developers. Most of them do not know how to use git, how to use cmake, how to send a pull request and what open source is. That being said we don't use those toos here... 6) The dev teams are tied to Windows and proprietary tools. Real devs use Mac/Linux command line, SSH, Sublime Text/Vim/Emacs, continuous integration, distributed version control tools (git), gerrit, Asana/Basecamp/Trello, Doxygen and Github. NOT excessive GUI clicking, notepad++, MSVC 2005, obscure centralized version control tool, IE, manual documentating and an in-house issue tracker (accessed through a slow remote desktop connection to an ancient XP no less!) 7) The archaic V-model SDLC is still being used when we should be really using agile, since the requirements are evolving constantly. Big customers request a lot then change their minds. 8) The Windows laptop is bulky and it is excruciatingly slow despite the hefty price tag. Why not just buy a full-blown tower desktop with the i7, 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD at the same price range? 9) We need to restart the Windows laptop every so often, after every small update. Is this necessary? And the startup time is painfully slow with all the background syncing of IT policy. 10) No HDD backup provisioned by IT. If the HDD is faulty you are finished. I used Dropbox & Google Drive to backup important documents but it might be a violation of the IT policy... 11) IE, IE, IE. The in-house webapps will not render properly in modern browsers. 12) Installing a simple tools like Mercurial require admin rights to be granted by the IT. 13) No consistent coding styleguide enforced. 14) The UX/UI of in-house desktop tools is ugly. No one bit of aesthetics and barely usable. Crashes are expected. The reply from IT: You have to restart your PC once in a while. 15) Religious fanatism of software metrics and code coverage (to show off to the customers). 16) Difficult to improve the code as the management values stability. You can only silently refactor the code when shipping new features. 17) DRY (don't repeat yourself) principle violated at every turn. The tasks are mostly redundant with no value-add. With all that said the job security is top notch - perfect for an average Joe who needs to feed the family but definitely not for the young and adventurous.
