[ArielCasper]

Many of our problems lie with ourselves, or rather, on how our perspectives of things are shaped by the govt. I have seen many tech people in other countries moving from industry to industry with very little barrier and very little discrimination.

In Singapore, people seem to develop a mentality that when you're trained in one specialization, you've got to remain in this area, and if you moved around then it's because you're a reject, or that you got no choice.

In my opinion, people should be trained in the technical fields, because it developed their logical thinking and then they can move on to do other things. An engineer can be transited to do business and marketing but the other way is usually not possible. But now, engineering has become a dirty word, and has become an occupation even less desirable than those of the business and marketing streams. AI and data analytics jobs that are so hot now could be easily filled by engineers, since in truth, these areas actually involved a lot less mathematics and complexity than engineering. Instead, no, employers tend to look for 'IT trained personnel', and thus restrict their choice and they had to look for overseas talents.

In order to have less dependency on foreigners, Singaporeans must first be prepared to accept the mobility of our own people across different domains. The education system cannot predict trends, and never can, because the future is unpredictable. Only by having our people develop immense curiosity and trained esp. in the core technical skills can they have more options in the job market.

Agreed.. But if you look deeper, what you have described could also be due to our manpower policy..

What you have described may be still applicable for internal transfer in big organization, but as a job application, no way.. Even civil sector or GLC will not be willing to do that.

If import of manpower is difficult, biz will be more receptive (no choice) to fill AI and data analytics jobs that are so hot now by engineers..

But since import is easy, of course you go for import.. Remember, as the hiring manager, if you hired a 'IT trained personnel' and he/she screwed up, as the hiring manager you at most say the person got go interview skills. But if you hired 'IT trained personnel' and he/she screwed up, the hiring manager needs to answer why did you hire a non 'IT trained personnel' in the first place?