and a lot of it depends on luck, like a more senior person retiring to free up the position! Not to mention how a lot of senior people are only there in that position because they outlasted the competition who quit before them.

isn't that the same for any organisation. I can't imagine any company with more directors than executives or junior managers

The main difference is private sector has healthy attrition @15% -30% depending on industry. This allows people who know how to play politics to survive and narrow the odds as the people who lost usually resign.

Civil service and stat board attrition is at low single digits resulting in traffic jam. For eg, in pte sector someone get stuck at DD will leave after 6-8 years when he see no chance of going up, but in government the bugger will just hang on there for 20 years until retirement so the people below no chance to go up.

Yup.. Got a lot of old spiderman inside the civil service.. Climb until cannot climb already.. they can tahan to stick on the wall for the next 20years until they retire!!! Amazing!!! *applause*

I worked for a European Telecom manufacturer MNC based in singapore.

In private sector, an engineer can choose to progress his career in 2 ways. If he thinks that his core competency is in engineering and thinks that this is his interest, he can continue to grow and progress his career to become a "experts". (here I mean real specialist who associate with the R&D of the comapnies ....and not referrring to half-past-six "specialist" like those you see in SAF).

If he wants to develop his management skill somewhere along his career path, he can do so and move into technical managerial roles to progress his career as managers.

In either ways, your job grades and salary can grow if you perform and excel in your roles well. Hence, in my company, you might have a situation in which you are the manager and manage a team of specialist who earns so much than you, simply for the reason that his skill in his chosen area is highly valued by the company.

Upgrade of CEP
 

Anyone ever got this before? I assume you would know if your Dir/CEO intends to upgrade your CEP.

I assume they usually upgrade one grade? E.g. if you are MX10 CEP currently, they will upgrade to an MX9? Is that the norm?

How would you know if your upgrade is successful?

Change of CEP when switching jobs across ministries
 

If a civil servant decides to switch jobs across ministries, will his new boss have access to his previous job's CEP and just use it from there? Or will there be a clean slate assessment of his CEP for his new job?

Bumping up this thread! Anyone has an idea? Quite interested to know too

what is the normal CEP for non-scholar graduates in civil service?

grade 10? i heard grade 9 CEP is also very common

For those in the civil service and still interested the CEP game, a phrase that i heard from bosses for sharing (edited).

"
If you think you should be of a CEP grade of XYZ, then you must show some evidence that you can carry the CEP grade of XYZ today "

If you can do some aspects of the work that is delegated downwards by higher ranking officers competently, it shows evidence that you can hold the higher rank.

Naturally scholars who are being groomed gets more exposure and opportunities to prove that they should have higher CEPs than non-scholars.