View career planning as three 10-year stints

View career planning as three 10-year stints

By Wu Choy Peng, Group CTO, GIC

Planning a career in tech is a challenge. Rapid technology changes make it difficult to identify what specific jobs will be emerge in three to five years’ time.

For example, the job of a data scientist surfaced only five years ago while that of an AI engineer emerged in the last two years. Instead of being hung up on the specific tech job, ICT professionals ought to focus on honing skills and identifying what they like to do.

In a conversation on career development for women in tech, Wu Choy Peng, Group CIO of GIC, advices female tech professionals to discover their strengths and the topics that energise and motivate them.

A way to do this is to plan their career in three 10-year stints. The first 10 years should be about honing skills and gaining experience in different jobs. Developing mastery in a chosen tech area is the second 10-year stint.

With 20 years under their belt, the women tech executives can use the third 10-year stint to flourish professionally, combining their experiences and expertise to develop bigger projects, and devote time building ICT teams.

By the way, the same framework is equally applicable to male tech professionals too.

Wu is a noted women tech leader in Singapore’s ICT industry. Her vast experience spans the public and private sectors. In her first 19 years, she was with the public sector where she helmed many projects including building Singapore’s E-Government Action Plan in 2000 and supervising the Infocomm Security Division of IDA. As the Government’s CIO between 2000 and 2006, she advocated for a robust IT governance structure and framework that will put Singapore at the forefront as an effective ICT user.

When she joined the private sector at NOL, a shipping company and then Singtel, Singapore’s largest telco, she became their Group CIO. She drove the IT vision and policies and initiated and implemented strategic initiatives.

Looking at her own career, she said the technical skills required for managing the IT function are similar. However, the business and technologies were different. The inflection point in her career was her move to the private sector.

“Would I thrive in private sector? That was missing in my first 19 years. When I left the public service for NOL, it wasn’t because the job was higher paying or the title sounded better. It was a wonderful opportunity to get into the private sector to see how life was different or better.”

“At some point I realised my strengths are running and operating technology well, understanding the business, making the technology work for the business and then being able to articulate the value proposition to management,” she said.

NOL was a global B2B shipping business with staff from different countries and nationalities. Moving to Singtel was a big change because it was a B2C business.

“There was always something similar and something different from one role to the next. I learnt a new business and leveraged my ICT skills and experience to create new value.”

In her advice to her staff, she would remind them to remain agile and adaptable, to learn and do new things.