How does the work culture in Singapore work?
Hello, new to reddit here so apologies if I'm "doing" this wrong. I'm an Indonesian who's currently working for a Singaporean company remotely. Long story short is that I worked there for almost two years, had to resign due to unrelated personal matters, and rejoined months later for a freelance position rather than the previously full-time (founder contacted me directly).
For both freelance and full-time, the task remains within digital marketing. However, the role heavily focuses on only one platform (Meta), whereas I want to handle the other ones the company is using as well (e.g. Google). What I want is to basically say "why not just let me do Google and the others too and give me a slight raise? I know how to do Google anyways". Because other than me currently looking for a rise in my paycheck, doing the same platform over and over isn't as challenging as it was at the beginning, and is now also boring.
"Why not just look for a full-time while keeping the freelance status if it's about the money?" because the opportunity is right there. I already know how the company works, founder reached out personally (and have shown behaviours where he does find me at least dependable for the work), and the extra tasks are tasks I know how to do anyways (even if I don't, the founder is the "teaching" type and seems to enjoy doing it too). I can skip applying to 1000+ jobs and instead just ask the founder for this raise and extra responsibility. Win-win on both sides. But how does the unspoken work culture in Singapore, work?
In Indonesia, asking for a raise is basically not ideal. It's more of you either work harder, take extra tasks, and pray for a raise, or you max out your charm with your superior. Not just the regular office ass-licking, but hang out with your superior's family and occasionally play golf together kind of charm. Or both. Obviously (I assume) this is different with Singapore, but how?
I want to ask for the raise but I'd rather know about how to go about it first. Searching answers through TikTok slop is not that useful and I don't even need to get started with AI. I don't want to overstep but I also don't want to be dormant and passive. Do I get personal, or keep it strictly business? What's the do and don'ts? Is there something that yall know culturally that might not be well-known by foreigners? How do you guys do it?
Posted Aug 11, 2026, 11:23 AM UTC