just my 2 cents worth.

I know we are all comparing salary scales for civil servants at different grades. However, I think we need to see the bigger picture and work on the strategy on where the different career paths will look like. For Civil Servants and even teachers, you pretty much can tell roughly how much you will make by the time you reach 40. You can even calculate how much net worth you have by then. At some point, all of us have to make a choice. Either you continue the trajectory (which is fine by the way) and stay in government service all the way till retirement or gain whatever experience and move on to the private sector.

A typical graduate civil servant at the age of 35 would have picked up another another masters degree, making about 7-10k/month. Transitioning to the private sector is hard. Looking at my batch, many don't make the successful transition, and quite a few end up retrenched or unemployed by the time they reach 40-45. There have been some great success stories as well. The successful ones tend to be those that plan ahead. The ones that don't tend to be those that drift along and suddenly 'force' to leave either they cannot stand their idiotic bosses (which happen a lot in the government service) or they have some mid-life crises and see their peers in the private sector doing better than them. Many of you will have to face the crossroad. Spend more time thinking about this.

all the best!