Opinions

The Unsinkable Ship: Navigating the Storm of an Unplanned Retirement

There is a quiet, tectonic shift happening in the world of work, a tremor just beneath the surface that many of us in our fifties are beginning to feel. It isn’t a sudden earthquake, but a slow, grinding pressure.

The ground we’ve stood on for thirty years, the reliable bedrock of experience, loyalty, and deep institutional knowledge is becoming unstable. We are being unceremoniously ushered towards an exit we did not choose, caught in a perfect storm of ageism, automation, and the relentless, short-term logic of the spreadsheet.

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By David Tong, ago

How My Rescue Cat Taught Me About Stoicism and Stress Survival

In the relentless, humid hum of Singapore, a city-state that rewards frantic motion and punishes pause, I had become a master of the urgent.

At nearly fifty, my life was a carefully constructed edifice of full Google calendars and anxieties. I navigated the currents of a high-stakes career with the weary expertise of a long-distance swimmer, convinced the only way forward was to never stop kicking.

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By David Tong, ago

Your Life is Getting More Expensive to Feed the AI Beast

Let me be perfectly clear from the start, I love technology. I believe in its power to solve big problems and make our lives better. I’ve been a tech nerd since I was a kid, since Commodore to Apple IIe days.

But true support doesn’t mean blindly cheering from the sidelines. It means asking hard questions, especially when the hype train is roaring ahead without any thought for the tracks it’s laying down, or who might get run over.

My loyalty isn’t to the tech giants, the investment firms, or the CEOs promising a shiny AI future. It’s to you and me, the everyday person who feels things getting more expensive and wonders why. It’s to the broader society that has to live with the consequences of these grand experiments.

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By David Tong, ago

Open Letter to Toxic Workplace Culture Incubators

My friends,

I’m writing to you today not as a consultant or a guru, but as a peer, heck even a virtual friend.

Someone who has sat in the same meetings, felt the same pressures, and wrestled with the immense responsibility of guiding a group of people toward a common goal. It’s a privilege, this work we do. But I’ve also seen the dark side of it and it’s getting worse with the pace of life and technology we’re facing.

I’ve watched brilliant, passionate people slowly dim under the weight of so-called “leadership” that fails to understand its own impact, not just in the workplace, but to people’s personal lives outside of work.

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By David Tong, ago

I Want My Internet Back!

It was 1995, I flick the power switch of my Compaq Presario desktop in my dorm room, the first time I heard that screeching modem tone just weeks before our campus upgraded to T1 connections. That free AOL CD from a PC Mag became my passport to something extraordinary.

Back in those days, the internet felt like exploring a strange new city where every alleyway held potential surprises. You’d stumble into chat rooms with names like “DragonSlayer42” or “BeavisOwnsButthead69” and actually have conversations with real people about ridiculous topics that somehow mattered in the moment. You argue, you laugh, you use weird ASCII combos to make a crude but complex reaction.

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By David Tong, ago
Photo by Marcus Aurelius

Did Hybrid and Remote Work Improve Corporate Culture or Gave Presenteeism and Bias a Boost?

I watched a segment on hybrid and remote work maturing in 2022 by The Economist triggered some interesting questions that many of us haven’t had much thought of.

The impact of remote and hybrid work shifted how we approached work over the past 20 months in massively positive ways but also raised some concerns that we may be moving in the wrong direction without seeing the warning signs.

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By David Tong, ago