In this blog, we are going to share a blog about the seminar we have hosted with the topic “What's it like working as an IT Manager at Samsung” by May Thu Kyaw.
Since 2020 when openfor.co/fellowship has started, we started to hold knowledge exchange sessions for our openfor.co/fellowship community members and also for the outside of the community. We did the following experience sharing seminar on September 20th, 2020, 6:00-7:00 PM JST time. We have summarized the questions and answers from the seminar in this blog.
This blog covers the following topics:
Please check out more details in the following video or in the following blog.
1. Speaker, May Thu Kyaw Profile
Our guest speaker, May Thu Kyaw, graduated an Honor degree from UCSY, University of Computer Studies, Yangon. After she has finished her degree from UCSY, she continued her master's degree at NUS, National University of Singapore, School of Computing Department in 2010.
Since she has finished her master's degree, she has worked in the Singapore IT industry for many years, in different companies. And SAMSUNG is the fourth company she has been working with. She has been working as an IT Manager in the SAMSUNG SDSAP Singapore office for over six years.
2. Working Experiences at SAMSUNG as an IT Manager
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the speaker mentioned that the working environment in SAMSUNG is great, the workload at SAMSUNG is manageable, and working at SAMSUNG can have a work-life balance for all the employees. The employee has to come to the office five days a week from 8:30 AM to 5:30 PM (Monday to Friday). And as the major flagship electronic products of SAMSUNG are released two times once a year, that time of promotion period is the busiest time for employees.
And as the pandemic started, to follow the rules and restrictions of the Singapore government, the employees from SAMSUNG started to change the online working environment. Before that, security at SAMSUNG was so high that employees were not allowed to bring laptops, and computers from work to their home, but because of the work from home situation, the security of the company has been compliant according to the situation.
3. The working environment at SAMSUNG as a foreign worker
Even though May Thu works at SAMSUNG Singapore regional office, the main directions come from the head office which is located and managed in South Korea. The top-level management is handled by the head office, during the board meetings or the very important meetings with the higher person in the company, the communications go in the Korean language which is very challenging for May Thu as a foreign worker, who is not a Korean nationality.
Apart from the communications challenges, working at Samsung is great and May Thu has enjoyed her work-life balance at her company, the people she works together with, and the clients she has been working with.
4. Academic experiences at NUS
Our guest speaker, May Thu Kyaw studied for her master's degree at NUS in 2010. At that time, NUS had different majors and departments - the Department of Engineering, School of Computing, Institute of System Sciences ISS, etc. May Thu has continued her study at the School of Computing, NUS. In the school of computing, for the master’s degree, there are two options, one is a Master's degree in computing, and the other is a Master's degree in Information systems.
Depending on her experiences at that time, the admission criteria for the master's degree mainly depend on the grades and exam marks of the bachelor's degree; English proficiency marks are not required. For more detailed information on the academic criteria and the available majors, the speaker recommends looking through their website, https://www.nus.edu.sg/ .
5. Advice for choosing majors as a master's degree student at NUS
If you are planning to attend the master’s degree at NUS, you have to choose 10 modules (subjects) out of 100 modules. When choosing your modules, it is a good thing if you attend the trial class to know which subject you are interested in and want to study, the modules are free to choose after the trial classes, so take your time and join the trial class before choosing the right modules which would be suitable with your interest.
From the speaker's experiences, she has made the wrong decision in choosing the majors. At that time, she focused on only passing the exam and working after the master’s degree. She chose the modules that can easily pass the exam, not the ones she is interested in. So the speaker has advised choosing the modules carefully when you have a plan to continue your master’s degree.
6. Working experiences in Singapore as A System/Business Analyst
After May Thu finished her master’s degree, she started to work as a programmer and she felt that she was not interested in working as a programmer so she switched her career from programmer to business analyst. May Thu has come from an IT background so actually, she does not have any business certifications or degree, but when she has worked as a programmer, she has to work together with the system analyst, and business analyst and she has got a chance to learn from her co-workers and based on that learning and working experiences, she can easily take over her career role into the business analyst.
If you are planning to work in Singapore as a business analyst, certifications or degrees are needed basically but if you have strong efficiency and knowledge in the business analyst role without holding any certifications, you can still try for the job, but it depends on the companies that you are applying to. Most of the business analysts from Singapore have business education backgrounds, so if you want to establish in obtaining certifications, you can try PMP for project management certifications - https://www.pmi.org/certifications/project-management-pmp and for business analyst certifications, you can also try the certifications from Microsoft - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/ which are famous in Singapore.
7. Other questions from Attendees
🔰What kind of skills and requirements are necessary to work at SAMSUNG?
🔰What are the biggest challenges and how to overcome them?
🔰Why did the guest speaker choose SAMSUNG over other companies?
🔰How does the guest speaker notice and find out which career field is suitable the most?
If you want to explore the answers to the above questions, our guest speaker has explained all the detailed information in the video so make sure to watch it.
Feel Free to Comment if you have any questions!
If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. We will try to reply to your questions by asking as many as possible. If you have any webinar titles you like to hear from, comment below too.
We hold this knowledge exchange session for the public for their interest titles by inviting relevant speakers. If you like to join our openfor.co/fellowship community, please check out our Openfor.co/fellowship social media pages Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.