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Old 01-03-2018, 03:15 PM
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Let's take things into perspective a bit - you been working for 9/10 years in the Civil Service, started with 3.3k and now earn slightly over 8k monthly. That would peg you around MX11A band currently. (assuming 8k is your monthly salary, excluding bonuses)

Now, the problem is that you are comparing yourself against scholars, maybe because your unit has more scholars on average. Ideally, you should be judged on your work and not paper qualifications, but being in the service this long you should know the reality. However, what you should be doing is comparing yourself against non-scholars as well. In that category, you seem to well ahead of the curve (I would say top 5-10% of non-scholars in terms of progression within your cohort). You have effectively tripled your salary in 9 years. It seems you got promoted relatively quickly earlier (Made manager in less than 6 years) i.e. that when you became MX11A. That, my friend, for a non-scholar with an overseas degree, is quite impressive.

The reason you are being looked over may be related to scholars getting first dibs, but also perhaps may be due to the estab in your office. Maybe they do not have a senior position available to justify promoting you (don’t forget scholars are transient, they come, they do, they go – their promo estab comes from their respective ministry/agency). Or perhaps you could be in a situation where your CEP hasn’t been pushed up (maybe ask your boss when you for drinks), so that could be stalling your promotion as well. It is possible to score good PB grade consistently and yet not get promoted because of low CEP.

If you have been performing well and have a good CEP, then ask your boss to recommend you for the PSLP programme – that’s a good way to showcase your leadership qualities and be put on a faster track for promotion/progression.

Your pay increment has probably slowed down because you are coming closer to your pay ceiling of MX11A (around 8.5k). Don’t worry, once you get next promotion, you will see a decent jump. Though, you are around 34-45, taking home 130k annually currently – go input this into Salary.sg income bracket calculator, and see what percentile you are amongst SG taxpayers (those who earn above 20k annually). You will easily be in the top 10-15% of earners.

Plus, you say you like your work – this means you either have good colleagues, or have passion for what you do, or both. That is an often underappreciated aspect of a job – moving to a new job might be better financially, but you might end up with bad colleagues/bosses. You said you have been overlooked for 2-3 years now, which means you are closer to getting another promotion (usually non-scholars get promoted every 4-5 yrs). More reason to wait another year out and see how it goes.

Lastly, the best advice I can give you is to not make work the central focus of your life. There are better things outside work that can be done and bring much greater joy and meaning. Once you let non-work stuff define you, you learn to be more chill about working in civil service.

In summary, to answer your initial question, based on how you are doing, yes you should consider staying in CS since you are doing relatively well for a non-scholar. Seems like you have a good work environment as well, and like what you do. Just derive a little less meaning from work and more from outside work.

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