The role of people manager in Singapore is ambiguous, as they are the person to appraise performance, yet they are not directly involved in product development or decision making, most of the time, they only have superficial impression rather than the actual insight, so they are easily influenced by all kinds of perceptions. The only benefit I see from this role is probably their representative bargaining power. But having such a manager for every team is considered expensive and ineffective if the company try to adopt agile and empower every employee. Having a traditional people manager is like adding extra wheels to the bicycle for stability, or trying to make all vehicles look alike.
Career advancement for software engineer stop at grade 12 (senior engineer) or grade 13 (principal engineer), while manager (grade 13) continue get promoted to snr manager (grade 14) and director (grade 15). Heavy lifting is done by people at the bottom while the management ripe all the credits.
Despite all the pro mentioned above, most engineers left within their first 3 years due to frequent reorg, frequent change in product direction, bad people management and lack of advancement.
