When I read stuff like this, makes me humji and hide in civil service

LOL, what is the pay for civil servant ? i am planning to join ... as civil servant after getting PE.

It’s no different to any of the main stream construction industry professions. If you want to make good money in C&S you need a niche specialisation.

Shouldnt you stay in private sector where you can be rewarded for your PE?

Pay depends...for me i getting more than 5K as fresh grad engineer, not really doing engineering work tho

Engineers Pay
 

I am 38 this year, been an engineer in the engineering and construction industry for the past 12 years.

Just got my PE in mechanical branch recently - now earning 6.5 k a month, annual around 85k including bonus.

Started at 2.8 k in a local M&E consultancy, took me 12 slogging years to reach a somewhat decent salary.

I already can see the highest I can earn around 12-15 k and be a head of department level when I grow older and go into my forties and fifties, that is more or less my endgame trajectory if I do not change my path and continue assuming a technical role.

These are my opinions, the pros and cons of an engineering career. The pro will be engineering in Singapore is quite recession resilient and you can work to an old ripe age without being considered as "redundant", good times, bad times, there are always jobs. The con is low salary and progression, especially when you compare to your friends in IT, law, finance, sometimes its demoralising to compare especially with friends of the same age but in different professional trade. I have friends who started same time as me and left the engineering industry after 5-6 years, started anew in another trade and making the same or more than me now.

So hopefully I can bring across the right message to potential future engineers, to come in with the right mindset. Come in if you like to solve problems, and do real life engineering stuff, you can still make a decent salary. Don't come in thinking you are going to be able to make tons of money in a short amount of time, because it is hardly going to happen.

was O&G badly hit for engineers this year?

Working in C&S in a MNC (consulting)

Graduated with first class honours (civil) from NUS in 2010. Changed company every 3-4 years since and just got my PE last year. Bonus for MNC (Aecom, Black and Veatch, Parson, Wsp) is generally 1month of AWS and 0.5 month in a good year.

MNC 1: Left after 4 years exp with 5k

MNC 2: Left after 3 years years exp with 6.5k (RE in a site role)

MNC 3: Currently on 8k basic salary after 3 years.

It’s not easy being a civil engineer with the long hours and comparatively low salary to peers. I know of peers still on 6k even after getting their PE. So for those out there who thinks PE earns a lot, it is true but only after you reach late 40s and 50s.

Graduated without hon (mechanical engineering) - shortage of 0.03 GPA in 2019. Already in my 6th job.

1st Job - SME: Left less than 2 years with basic pay 2.5k
2nd Job - MNC: Left after 3 years with basic pay 5k
3rd Job - MNC: Left less than 1 year with basic pay 5.3k
4th Job - MNC: Left after 1 year with basic pay 6.7k
5th Job - MNC: Left after 2 years with basic pay 8.3k
6th Job - MNC: Slightly more than one year with basic pay 10.3k

There are some turning points in my career especially on the job change.

Completely agree with you, I also previously used to think after get PE can earn big money until reality sink in really hard when u apply job as PE people still offer u 6 k only. The exams and interview are so difficult to pass and even after becoming a PE u get a ton of public and legal liabilities when u perform your duties just to earn that 6 k and when u look at the friend of yours in another industry making that 6 k so much easier without so much liabilities u start to wonder if u have selected the right path.

Copied from another thread which copied from NUS Whispers:

I am 33 years old and earn around S$ 500k a year (in total compensation) through my job. I manage a small (less than 10 person) software engineering team for a FAANG co in Singapore.

I post my career story here not to brag, but to offer a data point for what is possible to achieve through persistence and some luck.
Some background: I am self taught in computer science - I never had a single course in formal CS while in university. I am an immigrant here (I come from a poor south asian country).

I came to Singapore to work after finishing my university studies in engineering. I was an average student throughout school - I never won any awards for academic prowess (or any awards for that matter). I did not qualify for any of the better known universities in my country, and graduated from a very average school.

- Years 1-6:
Worked for one of the local research institutes (think of Astar) as a research associate. The work was hard and there were many late nights, but here is where I "grew up" as an engineer. Sometime in year 4/5, I decided to teach myself CS and software engineering. I even crashed Prof. Ben Leong's lectures once.
My salary was a measly S$ 30k a year! At first I was happy and proud for landing a job like this after school (I was finishing university in my home country, and landing a job in Singapore was an exceptional achievement for me). But as the years went by, I grew sad and frustrated at my pay, and decided to pivot to a software engineering career even though I had earned a Masters degree in engineering from one of the local universities along the way.

- Year 7:
Finally left my research job! Did some startup experiments that all failed. Average pay: S$ 150k a year (though I didn't work the full year).
At one point, a startup I was working for fired me and as a direct consequence of that I lost rights to live in Singapore. I had to move back to my country in a hurry, and hunting for jobs from there was exceptionally hard.

- Years 8 - 10:
I finally land a corporate job and start making some real money! It was a software engineering role at an international finance firm (think of something like Nomura / AIG / Prudential). Salary: S$ 200k - 240k.

- Year 11:
Landed a tech-lead type of role at another finance firm. I was responsible for leading small (5 - 10) teams of engineers on the technical parts of a product. Salary: S$ 300k - 330k.

- Year 12:
I land my current gig at a big tech co. I have formal management responsibilities for my team, and am responsible for both the people on my team + the tech produced by our team. All-in total compensation is somewhere between S$ 500k - 550k, depending on how bonuses payout and how the company's stock performs.
Along the way, I interviewed with and rejected (and got rejected by) many, many different firms. Here is a sampling of companies that I turned down (there are many more which turned *me* down as well):
- Other local research institutes.
- "hot" local startups, such as Gojek, Grab etc.
- International finance firms, such as Prudential, Nomura, etc.
- Local finance firms, such as DBS, UOB, etc.
- Local non-tech companies, such as Singtel, Sembcorp, etc.

It was an emotional roller coaster to interview with so many different companies, and even more so to turn down job offers given that I didn't have such abundant employment prospects in the first few years of my career. But along the way, I got really good at prospecting, interviewing, negotiating and evaluating opportunities.
On a side note, many of the local companies have proved to be absolutely terrible to negotiate with - they tend to be extremely fixated on my previous salary and almost always try to lowball by framing their offer as a percentage of current pay.

I am happy to answer questions or offer my perspective on carving a career for yourself in a follow-up post. Feel free to post on the comments. You can also email me with career questions on [email protected] (this is a temp throwaway email address).

For Prof. Ben Leong and Jordan Dea Mattson: thank you so much for interacting with the community here and for your valuable advise. What factors / skills will prove critical in getting to the next level of the corporate ladder and compensation? Do you have any advise I must consider while I try to grow my career?
Thank you for reading!
-
#83938: s://.nuswhispers.com/confession/83938