Originally Posted by Unregistered

Advice: Do it, if you're referring to at least: i) an equivalent position at MNCs or ii) a position with more responsibilities (not necessarily higher pay) at startups/SMEs. One year is fine, any shorter than that and it reflects badly as other HR may assume that you have character/personality issues (some people are great at studies but just can't work for whatever reason). You are young, don't worry about lack of job opportunities - as long as you secure a job before leaving your current job.

Public sector pay is relatively high at the start (to hook fresh grads) but the increase is moderate over working life. PSD/HR knows that it starts to get difficult for people around 35-40 years old to jump to private sector (culture-wise and pay-wise), having spent so long in the public sector and possibly being saddled with other family responsibilities (e.g. new family, aging parents). This is when both annual increment and promotion stagnation for the average performer sets in. When young, learning opportunities and a good career mentor (i.e. your immediate boss!) are far, far more important than salary - and working life does not matter as much unless you have other family responsibilities.

Having said this, there can be much to learn in the public sector too. I used to work under an average farmer, before switching agencies to work under a scholar from a top international university. Both were public sector, but what I learned from the latter in just one month was already more than my few years under the former. Where my former boss decided that the best strategy was to sit back and let me run the show, my current boss actively guided me on getting stakeholders' buy-in, strategising presentations for exposure to management (important!), etc. Being good in academics myself (top international university as well but farmer), I found that this was exactly what I was missing - many bosses overly focus on developing hard skills and neglect teaching soft skills, when it's actually the soft skills that are more important for success and more transferable for future career changes.