DD is relatively attainable for non-scholars provided you want it. Do remember though that CS basically guarantees you about 16 month salary every year (and you can check if your ministry gives special retention bonuses etc that you can aggregate. E.g. dxo gives 2 months every 4 yrs (12 year on starts dipping to 1.5 then 1) but that means you can add ~.5mths to your estimated annual package for the first 8 years of career..

Put another way, if ur goal is 120k salary annually, 8k salary more than enough, which you can hit by 11, 11A (ie being an AD/SAD, which becomes very attainable). If 120k is your goal for the long term, you could get there (depending on ur scheme) even being an individual contributor…(ie senior manager type, MX12)

In CS cannot compare base with pvt, its designed to look low. Some pvt sector ppl will push back say “aiya annual package bo bao” but thats only in pvt sector. The “everybody get” bonus (13m, mid and end year) are at least 2mths a year (less covid or GFC la), and PB u C- also got 1.5m to take, which means u chui (but not bad until get D which is..ppl want to fire u), you will get 15.5m salary/year… given most pvt sector (less IB, high finance), when comparing mthly salary u shld rem ur “real” salary is abt 15-20% more than what it is.