So long, CPFB!

My journey at CPFB has come to an end after 12 years of service. I am very grateful for having the opportunity to develop myself and work on many meaningful projects/products, and more importantly getting tremendous support and guidance from my team, management and many nice colleagues. 

I don’t want to turn the following as ‘Why I left CPFB or public service’ like many do for ‘Why I left FAANG’, but rather ‘Why have I stayed for 12 years at CPFB’.

The quick answer is PEOPLE, let me explain. 

It’s all about the PEOPLE I’ve met on different occasions on and off work, like many in-house training, seminars or workshops.

CPFB cares a lot about staff development and provides varies courses, be it OJT(on job training) for specific work-related or domain training for data analytic, lean 6 sigma and many more. Throughout the years I’ve attended several leadership and people courses such as leading innovation and crucial conversation which gained me many insights and actionable techniques to further enable collaboration. Each newcomer will go through a series of OJT under different schools of CPF academy. For IT, school of technology will prepare you with a dozen of virtual and in-person courses to help you understand our IT architecture, technology and processes. I happen to be one of our many experts as adjunct trainer and have conducted Overview of Mainframe orientation course for over 200 new staff. (Anyone needs entry-level mainframe course, I can offer free). So I have the privilege to meet almost every new face and feel the new blood and spirit and sell them the idea that mainframe is not outdated as Nokia to Apple but an ever-evolving platform like Boeing 777.

No matter training others or being trained, It’s always inspirational and fun to have open conversations with people from diverse backgrounds. Tip: Staff can also enroll courses outside and get certificates which can benefit both the individual and company. 

It’s all about the PEOPLE I’ve worked with on many impactful projects where people helped each other to achieve.

In the first 5 years with the Board, I mainly stood behind the spotlight and took care of the backend mainframe platform. I initiated and led full year long infra upgrade projects which I needed my users to test and QA several systems. Later on I shifted to application facing role where I stood one step forward to the stage - I designed and implemented the new infra to embark on API economy. CPF Retirement Planning and Silver Support were the pilot COBOL API consumers followed by a nationwide initiative MyInfo. Unlike many other pub agencies whose IT are outsourced to Govtech, CPFB is running relatively big IT force in-house with contractor support. The high level collaboration across IT groups and even agencies have demonstrated key traits of CPFB’s IT workforce: confident, effective and cost-optimized. These characteristics have helped us to accomplish projects with much larger scope like BEACON: IBM and AWS just launched cooperation on mainframe application modernization this year, CPFB launched mutil-year project named BEACON to modernize our applications in 2017. By the time I write, CPFB already refactored more than half (million lines of) COBOL code to Java. The Board also successfully migrated our on-prem front end to cloud native BFF(backend for front-end) last year, communicating to pure backend mainframe via composable API calls. It’s my privilege to get highly involved with the project teams through collective discussion, tireless troubleshooting and many memorable system go-lives.

No individual contributor is able to build such complex systems alone, every web form or action button is the crystallization of wisdom from our diligent developers/engineers. During my tenure, I have the honour to witness the setup and development of our pioneering Cybersecurity workforce from 0 to 99. So many groundbreaking initiatives like the modern application ecosystem and cyber defense we built up years ago not only enabled smooth digitalization for our citizen centric services but also safeguarded people’s basic living needs: housing, healthcare and retirement. I am very proud of leading my small team to be in the landscape. 

It’s all about the PEOPLE I’ve played with or against in many recreation games and events.

Before COVID, CPF used to have internal sports or recreation games almost every month such as badminton, table tennis, board game, FIFA, soccer and many more. We also hold our own Sports Day (in the hot afternoon) to encourage true sportsmanship. We team up without much practicing and enjoy the fun of the game, it’s not about win or loss because we win or fail as a team, each score is worth celebration because everybody puts sweat in it. Tips: Since today is Dragon Boat Festival, do find a company which can organize Dragon Boat match, very fun and engaging. 

Although not born in Singapore, after living here and serving its public service for one decade, Singapore has already become my 2nd hometown. Total CPFB balance has increased from $2xx bn to $5xx bn in the past 12 years. Joining or leaving public sector is a personal choice, there is no right or wrong, black or white. I am glad I’ve contributed in my way, with nothing to regret. 

At last, wish everyone I’ve met from CPFB fitter and happier.

天下没有不散的宴席，祝所有CPF的伙伴们工作顺利，健康如意！