Employer slammed for complaining about Gen Z's lack of ambition after hiring 'cheap foreigner' - Singapore News

SINGAPORE: A Singapore entrepreneur has sparked backlash online after criticising the work ethic of a young employee in a LinkedIn post that blamed what she described as growing reliability and ethics issues among Gen Z workers.

Some critics are pointing out that the issue is not with the age of her employee, but due to the fact that he is a foreign freelancer who does not need to be paid as much as a local. Others are accusing the entrepreneur of attempting to generate publicity for her startup by cashing in on the controversy over whether young Singaporeans are less “hungry” than their foreign counterparts.

Juliet Low, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Maid Without Borders Singapore, made a lengthy LinkedIn post over the weekend detailing her frustrations with a staff member who allegedly informed the company at the last minute that he would be absent for two weeks to attend a Buddhist pilgrimage.

Maid Without Borders Singapore describes itself as a global employer-maid matching AI platform aiming to build the “largest database of maids in the world by 2026”. Ms Low has been working on the project since 2024.

In her post, Ms Low said the company was in the final stages before launch and that the team was handling “final debugging,” “final checks,” and “final tutorial videos” with “all hands on deck” when the employee sent a message on Sunday night saying he would not be coming in for two weeks and would have no phone access.

“Having a Master’s Degree didn’t equate to any competence for this guy,” she wrote, adding that the employee “needed so much handholding, it was faster to do anything myself”.

She said she had initially accepted responsibility for the situation and decided to continue training him until he became competent. Ms Low also claimed that she had to work through her holiday in Japan because of the employee.

According to the post, the employee later explained that his father had informed him of the pilgrimage plans at the last minute and that attending the pilgrimage was considered a rite of passage for men in Myanmar. Ms Low said she checked the claim and found that such rites typically applied to boys aged 15 to 18.

“He had a choice. He made his choice,” she wrote.

Ms Low accused the employee of leaving “the entire team scrambling OT to cover his deadline,” describing him as “unprofessional,” “untrustworthy,” and displaying an “utter lack of decency.”

She also pushed back against narratives that employers are failing younger workers.

“Employers aren’t failing Gen Z. I don’t want to hear this nonsense anymore,” she wrote, “It seems to always be the ‘employer’s fault’ that ‘we can’t keep up’ with the ‘needs of young staff’.”

While she clarified in a postscript that she did not want to condemn an entire generation and said she had hired “5 AMAZING Gen Z hires who are pure raw talents”, she added that many young workers were demonstrating “unreliability & serious ethics issues”.

The post quickly drew criticism online, with several commenters accusing Ms Low of unfairly stereotyping Gen Z workers while overlooking the realities of hiring low-cost foreign freelancers.

One commenter said: “Hire cheap FT, get cheap quality.”

Another netizen added, “Trying to add to the Gen Z not hungry narrative or what. When she ownself want to hire FT.”

One eagle-eyed observer also pointed out that Ms Low had said, “cheaper Singapore salary is still not comparative to Indonesia or Myanmar,” in reply to a question about hiring a more experienced worker.

Some critics scrutinised the startup founder’s motive for making the post and suggested that the post was deliberately crafted to attract attention by leaning into the trending controversy over whether younger Singaporeans are less driven or less willing to work hard compared to foreign workers.

Others alleged that the controversy itself appeared designed to generate engagement and publicity for Maid Without Borders ahead of its launch.

Detractors also pointed out that the post was clearly written by an AI language model, pointing to its formatting, emojis and tone, and calling the post “AI slop.”

“That was written by AI,” one commenter alleged, while another pointed out, “Come on. It even has the emojis intact, copied direct from the AI output.”

The controversy intensified after software engineer Brice Carpentier weighed in with a pointed critique of Ms Low’s account. He wrote in a comment on LinkedIn, “So, you’re weeks from launch as a post-exit entrepreneur, and your team is all hands on deck to the point that one person not being available is a nightmare… but you were on holidays? And the kid is the problem?”

Mr Carpentier questioned inconsistencies in Ms Low’s account regarding the employee’s age and the traditional rite of passage she referenced and mocked the writing style of the LinkedIn post, saying: “You should probably read what ChatGPT gives you when you’re telling it to write some bullcrap story.”

Ms Low appears to have taken offence at the software engineer’s insinuations. She replied to him, saying, “I think you need to have an understanding of the life of an entrepreneur before you make comments like this.

“Launch means all hands on deck. It means everybody operating at full capacity to the finish line. One man down means everybody up to 120%. This is breakneck for 4-6 weeks until I can find a replacement.”

Defending her choice to go on holiday herself, she added, “Japan was a short trip last month to step away for a few days before the madness began. It was everybody’s last chance for a break…So yes, kid is the clear problem. Cos he gave zero notice. The plan was going well, headcount was exact. He decided he didn’t care about deadlines.”

Mr Carpentier, however, didn’t take the local entrepreneur’s explanations lying down.

Sharing that he has founded three companies himself and questioning the inconsistencies in Ms Low’s account, he shot back, “Now I’ve certainly made mistakes as an entrepreneur. One I didn’t do was complain on LinkedIn how “it’s really hard finding good help these days.”

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