Originally Posted by Unregistered

If you think you are competent and competitive, private is a better choice with sky is your limit. There is a risk you may be far from sky if you are burn out halfway / unlucky choice etc
If you want to take a safe route to achieve 120k to 180k per annum (based on current value) with MX 11 or MX10.

Regarding the good pay, normally from year 1 to year 10, probably most PS/CS earns more and very hard to them to switch to private because as mentioned, the skillsets not so relevant for most as CS/PS focus more policy/management skill and private focus a lot on technical.

From 10th year onwards, in private, it depends on your own growth and knowledge base, you might start to earn more than PS/CS. However, I do feel generally most PS/CS still earn more than private
The bell curve for private is skewed to the left while CS/PS is more balanced.