This thread is rife with poly students (and some unhappy undergraduates from the top 300 world universities) who have yet to stepped into the workforce but hold grandeur ideas of their qualifications and how things work.
Here's how things actually work:
If you hold a diploma, you will join a company as a
support/admin staff. I repeat, suport/admin staff. Over the next two decades, you will move through the ranks of technical officer 1, 2, 3 (or it's equivalent) and your maximum pay will be pegged to whatever the company has negotiated with the trade union.
You will NEVER be promoted to an Executive scale unless you go complete your degree, and even if you saved the CEO's cat. The exceptions to this rule are your father's company, and jobs where qualifications don't matter at all. In which case, you can hold 'O' levels, no problem (ie. property agent, financial advisor).
If you actually did work in a company, you will know how laughable the stories are. Within the space of less than 2 yrs, an IT support staff became an IT engineer overnight.
If you are lucky, you might meet a nice chap like me, who encourages you to further your studies and allows you to go off early from work on certain days so that you can go attend your night class and get QUALIFIED.
If you are unlucky, you will find included in your job duties, buying breakfast in the morning for the executives which is oh so common.
I half-expect to see in the next post someone from
ITE being offered 2k starting pay and got 5k after one year.