Wow... reading from this thread, you guys are a bunch of toxic people.
Be it experience or fresh grad. Im beginning to worry about the culture of tech in SG.

Be it experience or fresh grad, there are competent and incompetent people. Why cant everyone just be humble.

imo 5k for fresh grad is too high, I suppose company should impose some probation period to access the fresh grad before giving such high pay. TBH alot of services and modules are developed, so u dont have to "reinvent-the-wheel" which makes implementing features easier than in the past. Much of the basic technical skills required is how u piece and find the right modules for your use case. But there are somethings that come with experience when implementing software architecture, i.e. SOLID principals, infra architectures, cloud security, etc.

As for experienced engineers, why not just highlight the issue to ur HR about the salary issue and reevaluated long-term engineers salary pay. If u have concrete proof to prove for salary incremental I don't see why the fight with HR is a lose. But if HR is too stingy to increase ur pay. You better off be looking for another company, and if ur competent enough ur highly sought after by other companies.

So I take no pity in either party, only working smart and social engineering in work place is the key to survive be it in engineering or else where.