Originally Posted by Unregistered

There are two types of civil servants with PhDs. Those who got their PhD before joining the service and those who got theirs after (usually academic or research positions). Either way they're checkmating themselves, it's just a question of before or after.

The reason, for want of a better description, is what you have written: "A PhD does limit the range of jobs and the number of companies that would even look at your CV".

Even academia is not an easy option, especially for our local universities. The number of PhD holders hoping to land an academic position every year far exceeds the number of tenure positions available at NUS, NTU and SMU combined. In fact recently NTU has followed in the footsteps of NUS in spring cleaning its academic positions.