When the Threats at Work Become Data

Turning uncomfortable moments into signals — and signals into better decisions

Over the course of my career, I’ve worn many hats.

My first was a safety hat, as a civil engineer. It was dirty work and the hours were brutal — 14-hour days, seven days a week. But construction sites have a way of teaching you things that classrooms and corporate training don’t: risk isn’t theoretical, small issues become big issues, and the real system is the people and incentives on the ground.

From there, I moved into a large MNC in the US and facilitated my own management rotation programme — inventory and demand planning, product development, finance (inventory accounting), Sarbanes-Oxley, and eventually supporting a major reorganisation and listing on the NYSE.

I then had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to corporatise CAAS and help birth Changi Airport Group — where reorganisation skills mattered, but had to be applied in a public-sector context, with a very different set of constraints and stakeholders.

After that came HR analytics and strategy: building the HR analytics practice for Towers Watson in Asia Pacific, then building the global HR Strategy and Analytics function at Abbott Laboratories. And finally, I set up FYT Consulting — and I’ve been doing this work for 13 years now.

That’s the “career story.”

But the story underneath it — the one many people recognise but rarely say out loud — is that along the way, I faced my fair share of threats at work. Some were harmless. Some were not.

• “If you don’t finish the work tonight, don’t bother coming back tomorrow.”

• “I’ll make sure you never work in Singapore again.”

• “Your job is not to ask questions. Your job is to make talent look good.”

• “Your asking rate is too high — we only offer this to Caucasians.”

• “We only pay you for teaching a class if we fill it. No guarantee. Also, you cannot work for another training provider.”

In today’s environment, some of these statements would likely violate multiple workplace standards and laws. Back then, some were treated as “normal.”

But here’s the most useful lens I’ve found — one that aligns with how we think about data and decision-making:

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Threats aren’t just threats. They’re data points.

A threat is rarely only about the work. It’s often a signal — about the manager, the client, the culture, the power dynamics, and the type of “deal” you are being offered.

And like any data point, it’s not useful by itself. It becomes useful when you interpret it, validate it against other signals, and decide what it means for your next move.

In the early years of my career, I didn’t have much leverage. I needed the job, and I didn’t yet have the experience or market credibility to exit easily. So I absorbed more than I should have.

That wasn’t because I didn’t know it was wrong.

It was because I didn’t yet have enough options.

Later, when I had built experience — and therefore optionality — the same kinds of signals led to different decisions.

One line I still remember clearly was:

“Your job is not to ask questions. Your job is to make specific talent look good.”

I resigned on the spot.

That resignation triggered a meeting with the CEO. I laid out my concerns plainly: that if the company’s expectation was compliance over integrity, then it had nothing to offer me, and I should leave. We negotiated a smooth exit. The manager was counselled.

But the important part wasn’t the counselling.

The important part was this: I chose the timing — not the company.

That’s one of the biggest shifts that happens when you start treating workplace behaviour as signals rather than noise: you stop waiting to be “acted upon,” and start acting with intent.

Another example came later as a business owner. A client told me my charge rate was “too high,” and then implied that the higher rates were typically “associated with Caucasian trainers.”

I understood the surface-level move: negotiation pressure.

But the deeper signal was more important than the rate:this was a client willing to use identity as leverage.

So I told them, calmly, that they should find another provider — because there was little we could do about our race.

Strangely, they met our price.

And that taught me another decision lesson:

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Not all decisions will be “right” — but they can still be informed.

If you’ve made enough career decisions, you know this truth: sometimes you do the best you can with the signals you have… and it still doesn’t turn out perfectly.

That doesn’t mean the decision was irrational. It means the system is complex, and you only ever see part of it at the time.

What matters is whether your decision-making improves over time.

And this is where the “threats as data” framing becomes powerful:

• You interpret the signal

• You make a decision

• The decision produces new outcomes

• The outcomes generate more signals

• You refine your judgement

• You make better decisions next time

In other words: you don’t just “survive” tough environments — you build a feedback loop that strengthens your ability to choose.

How to respond depends on your career stage

If you’re starting out

When you have limited leverage, you may not be able to challenge every threat directly. Sometimes you endure — but you do it strategically.

The key is to treat the situation as temporary, and build a plan:

• build skills

• build evidence of contribution

• build relationships

• build options

Then exit on your timeline.

In an era of constant reorganisations, drifting into comfort can be dangerous. Comfort is not the same as stability.

If you have experience (but not mastery)

Do market sensing regularly. Interview occasionally even when you’re not actively looking.

Not to job-hop — but to calibrate:

• your market value

• how your story lands

• what the market is starting to reward

And when you choose your next role, consider choosing for the boss — not just the brand or the pay.A great boss can make a difficult job workable.A high salary can come with hidden costs: golden handcuffs, poor health, and no time or energy left to plan your exit.

If you have mastery

Your value shifts from execution to judgement:

• knowing what matters

• framing the right questions

• navigating trade-offs

• coordinating across stakeholders

• and increasingly, coordinating across AI and systems

At that stage, your leverage is higher — and so is your responsibility to stay sharp.Because mastery today expires faster than it used to.The best professionals I know keep learning not because they’re insecure, but because they’re realistic.

The outdated mindset that’s most dangerous today

There’s one more signal I’ve noticed — not from managers, but from how some professionals think about work.

Some people assume they can cruise.Or do the minimum.Or aim to become “permanent staff” in a position where the company can’t afford to let them go.

That mindset may have felt workable in another era.

It is increasingly risky now.

Jobs exist because organisations bundle tasks into roles.And as AI becomes more capable at repeatable, digitised work, the question isn’t philosophical — it’s economic:

If a large portion of your tasks can be automated cheaply, what exactly is your role now?

This isn’t personal. It’s a system change.

The practical response is to build a business mindset — even as an employee:

• understand how you create value

• be able to explain it

• and keep evolving what you do as the system evolves

This helps employers and employees alike:

• employers can see what they’re paying for

• employees can see how they stay relevant

On a positive note: we’ve been here before

This is not the first time technology has triggered anxiety about jobs.

When PCs arrived, many people feared they would be replaced — and in some cases, they were. But something else also happened: entire categories of work emerged, and many roles became more valuable because people could do higher-level work faster.

The winners weren’t the ones who memorised the software.They were the ones who learned to rethink how work gets done.

The AI era is similar.

AI will reduce the value of some tasks — especially the repeatable ones.But it raises the value of what remains distinctly human:

• judgement

• context

• coordination

• ethics and trade-offs

• and the ability to decide what to do when the “answer” isn’t obvious

So if there’s a hopeful takeaway, it’s this:

The threats and pressures you encounter at work are not just obstacles. They are information.When you learn to read them as signals, you can make more deliberate choices.Not all choices will be “right.” But each one can generate better signals — and better decision-making — over time.

And that, in the end, is what career resilience actually looks like.