Originally Posted by Unregistered

Procurement is a toxic place to work in because of the high workload and uncooperative people (management, SAF, DSTA engineers).

Workload is extremely high. It is not equally distributed among teams but workload is high across all teams. OT is expected, just a matter of how much. Eventually you will realize that there is no way to re-prioritize because everything is urgent. When the user complains, you are required to come up with timeline to explain why it is not your fault. But end up still your fault and you are required to expedite as if it was your fault. Other projects will be affected and you are required to do the explanation all over again.

SAF is the biggest culprit for the additional workload. Most of them have absolutely no idea what the heck they are suppose to do and procurement is expected to 'help' (hidden meaning: do for them) them even if it is clearly not your responsibility.

Knowledge - You get some procurement knowledge but hardly get to apply them or think through. The workload is too high and the priority is to complete the procurement on the path least resistance. You do get a lot of government procurement knowledge which is useful when jumping to other public agencies. It's the center of excellence because of the amount of work on your plate that grows so fast that you get expose to a lot of procurement issues in a short time.

Salary - The salary is about the same as other public agencies and private sector. There are some differences but it is still a salary that other public agencies and private sector can afford to pay easily.

No harm joining if you can't find a job but keep a lookout for better jobs. You don't want to be in a situation when you feel burnout and there's no backup jobs.