Picard

As I sit here in the Singapore office, I talked to my good friend who did not make partner. This was the guy who sold that USD65M core banking replacement job, and yet did not get promoted.

His story was quite shocking too.

He, like me, used to be in Financial Services. Last year in November, after talking to the current SG FS partner, he decided to switch to the architecture group. That was because that partner said "got no hope making partner in SG in FS" (something like that lah). Wah.. if SG got no hope, with only 1 FS partner, in KL worse... with 5 FS partners!

He was telling me of how he met the ang moh partner (who i'm supposed to meet later) and how this partner told him that he had 6 slots to promote partners in FS...

So of course my friend jump ship lah.. from FS to this architecture group...

Now, the story was in the run up to the promotion, my friend, with USD 100M worth of sales (he nicely corrected me...) apparently was ranked No 2 in Asia Pacific. No 1 was my other friend, different race. This other friend was ranked No 1 because "FS supports, Government supports, and he has done a lot for technology". My friend thought "Niama, chase this USD65M job so hard, where got time to do things for technology?" But he also thought, never mind, ranked 2 out of 6, sure get promoted one...

Then last minute, like a bull being castrated, worldwide cuts their partner quota from 6 to 1. So my friend thought "chow chi bai!" (Actually, he said worst things, but I'm too lazy to type all that crap here.. and it'll probably be cencored.. so I went for the hokkien swear word instead to signify how he felt...)

So, this gives me damn a lot of food for thought even before my 1.30pm meeting. I'm like, if I switch over to this architecture group, surely my friend will still be ranked No 1. What hope in hell do I have to make No 2 in 12 months? Whatever sale I make in Malaysia will be divided by 3.7, will look so puny... and worst still, my friend was saying that there are other ang moh senior managers all being lined up... like this one Norwegian guy in Australia with a Norse god's name...

The hope just doesn't seem to be there...