It is very difficult to move from operations to front office. Also, the job scope for operations adds very little to your own career development and enrichment. For the higher starting pay it is not worth going into operations route.

Perhaps I give another example, more closer to my own real life experience:

I graduated top 5% of my cohort in accountancy 4+ years ago. Upon graduation, I had the following job offers

1. Audit - $2,400 (in general)
- One of Big4 audit firms had offered me $300 more in lieu of my honors. However, I ended up signing up with another that offered me $2,500. If I was purely looking at start pay shouldn't I have taken the firm that offered me the few hundred dollars more? I didnt, because that firm was known as a slave driver. Also, I had interned in that firm before and was working alot with non-singaporeans. I'll stop at that.

2. Investment Banking Operations - $4,000+

3. Investment Bank, finance trainee program - $4,000+

4. MA program - $3,750

I ended up picking option 4. Not the highest starting pay but a path that I felt would give me the best development prospects.

4+ years later, I am earning considerably more than friends who pursued the ops path.

What if I had gone for the few hundred dollars more pay? $300 or even $500 may seem a big deal when you graduate. When I was drawing $3,750, $4000+ seems like a big deal to me.

Now looking back, I am glad I adopted a longer term outlook rather than focussing on maximising starting pay.