SINGAPORE: A woman recently opened up on social media about how much she regrets turning down what could have been a life-changing job offer from an overseas competitor company. 

She explained that at the time, she chose to stay in Singapore because her husband couldn’t leave his stable job and wanted to remain close to his family and friends. 

Unfortunately, she was laid off from her job a year later.

Since then, she has been struggling to find stable employment and has remained jobless for the past two years.

“I work in tech and am trying hard to get back into the job market, but so far it’s been sluggish,” she wrote on the r/askSingapore forum on Monday (Oct 6). “I kid you not – Workforce Singapore (WSG) is even telling me to lower my salary expectations because the job climate is challenging.”

The woman also shared that while having a child has kept her occupied and fulfilled, she still can’t help but think about the opportunity she gave up. 

She said that late at night, when things quiet down, she sometimes finds herself scrolling through her old emails and rereading the offer that could have taken her career abroad.

The woman added that it hasn’t helped that some people joke about her “tai tai life,” unaware that her CPF contributions have barely grown. 

“My mom says it’s the fate of being a woman. You give up so your family can thrive and be stable,” she wrote. 

“I just feel millennial females are fed so much ‘you can do anything! Be a mom and be a career woman and still get enough sleep!’ from a young age, and maybe the realisation that pivoting into another industry now and sucking up a S$3k salary is difficult to swallow.”

At the end of her post, the woman turned to Singaporean Redditors for guidance, writing, “I’d appreciate any advice to move forward. I feel like I’m sending my CV into a sinkhole sometimes. And it sometimes makes me feel I should’ve migrated when I had the chance.”

“When a door closes, another will open.”

In the discussion thread, many commenters encouraged the woman to stop torturing herself over the choices she made years ago and instead focus on rebuilding her life in the present...