AsiaOne Reviews

1. To start off, you don’t get paid well. CEO says that you are not allowed to share your pay to others and that is because he pays everyone differently despite holding the same title. He claims that the salary is competitive, but I’m pretty sure you can get paid way more somewhere else. When it’s time for performance appraisal, he drags it and says whatever that fits his narrative. But have anyone ever heard of discussing pay raise directly with the CEO? They do it here at AsiaOne because what is the HR doing? Nobody knows, it’s a question even the staffs ask. Your performance appraisal, you can never get an A or it’s even hard to get a B. Why? They tell you ‘there is always room for improvement’ but they don’t appreciate your effort enough or the things you have done because to them, there is always something to improve. Don’t even bother asking about bonus, it’s pathetic. 2. CEO claims that there is no favouritism in the company but anyone with eyes can see it. Incompetent people are kept in the company which results in their team members needing to do their work for them. If you are a good bootlicker to the CEO, he will love you. He somehow shows favouritism to underperforming/ incompetent employees. You might even get a promotion if you want to change department. 3. There is literally no identity as to what AsiaOne is. Claims to be a news agency but expects employees to do lifestyle content, hop on any gossip news or just anything trending. However, once there is anything related to Singapore government, they expect you to drop everything and only focus on that. 4. The CEO constantly put down other publications and act as though AsiaOne is the best. Someone needs to bring him back to reality and show that literally not even half the population knows AsiaOne. All we do is suck up to the government. He openly ‘trashtalks’ media agencies and says how we are better. But in reality, they get better traction than AsiaOne. 5. Gossip in the company? The CEO does it himself but tells you he can’t tolerate anyone that does it. He puts down incompetent employees knowing that they are essentially causing burden to the team but does nothing to it and says ‘they are still doing the day to day’. That is because that is the bare minimum. But he expects other team members to pick up the slack of all these incompetent people. 6. ‘Work family’ , ‘home away from home’. If any organisation ever say this to you, RUN. Don’t even bother joining. The CEO always brings these in to tell employees that AsiaOne is the place to be (ew, we all know). Every soul in the company cringes at it but nobody calls him out because they can use this to their advantage to climb up the social ladder. 7. In conclusion, just don’t bother joining this company unless you are so desperate for a job and needs a stepping stone.

Respectfully, please come back down to planet earth. Management is way in over their heads about the company's place in our media landscape. A frankly embarrassing culture of thinking too highly of oneself when clearly they're nowhere near their counterparts. Higher-ups (especially the CEO) publicly and unabashedly 'trashtalk' competitors with such unprofessionalism depriving employees of any learning opportunities. It really is inferiority complex at its finest. Behind the CEO's cringeworthy 'work family', 'home away from home' preachings is a shocking lack (mayhaps absence) of self awareness. No employee actually buys into this ridiculous narrative though it hasn't once been called out. Most are probably quietly judging and others are using it to their advantage to work their way up. If he were anywhere 'on trend' (as the company's tagline would say), he would have known that calling the company a 'family' is the biggest red flag in any workplace. Unless he believes that he's 'off centre', of course. And that brings us to career progression. Again, the CEO micromanages all aspects of work down to pay increments. Where is HR you might ask? We're wondering the same. Incompetence is rewarded with unwarranted promotions. Competence and hard work are met with even higher expectations communicated as 'not doing enough', 'asking for too much', 'still needing to prove onself'. The CEO despises pay discussions amongst colleagues while blatantly revealing details of other employees' pay during individual apparaisals as a means of justifying increments that are less than the bare minimum; breeds a culture of unhealthy competition by pitting employees against each other, before swooping in as 'mediator' when tensions arise. (Almost like he secretly enjoys the drama.) He will not hesitate to put down teammates in private conversations as if to imply that he holds you in higher regard than said individual, or so he believes. In reality, all it does is reflect poorly on his leadership and the company culture. When management's done having their head in the clouds, maybe the company can get somewhere.