This is known as "survivorship bias".

imo.. by age 29-30, one should make roughly 5k/mth inclusive of bonuses/allowance etc..

Not say u cant survive in SG lesser than that. i would just say, you cant really live comfortably especially if you are married.

btw, the top 10%/5% earner u mentioned in IRAS or watever, the problem is.. the salary difference within this grp is very very steep.

ppl who make few mil a yr is also same grp as ppl who are make few hundred k

my china classmate that just graduated in local uni already working in foreign bank for 4.8k, and she is just 22 !

is she pretty?

Your post is basically baiting others to come out and say BS, cannot be true, talk nonsense etc. so as to justify to yourself you are not doing too bad.

To use the salary.sg tool to benchmark your salary is a joke. The data they use is from MOM and it just compile everyone’s salary and then come out with the percentile. That means a vast number of factory operators, cleaners, manual laborers, and other blue collar and clerical people are included.

If you look at the people who come to this forum, most are uni degree (some diploma) and from Finance, Consultancy, Engineering, Oil & Gas MNCs. Obviously when they ask for market salary, they are not comparing themselves with these low level jobs.

To say that $3500 at age 30 is average for most people here is a joke. A lot of them would have easily gotten at least $2.8k - $3k on their first jobs, guys will have at least 5 years of work before they are 30 and girls got 7 years due to no NS. You really think the average person can only get $500 increment in 7 years? An accountant in a big4 will already get $500 increment each year. Don’t even need to mention the banks who pay fresh grads >$4k as starting pay.

The important thing for negative people like you is to ask yourself whether you want to admit you are no good and treat this as a way to motivate yourself better in future or just want to hear what you want to hear and when people share their experience which is higher than what you want to hear then denounce and make sarcastic comments like "submarine cable to climb corporate ladder" :rolleyes:

I have been working in the engineering field for the past 4 years since fresh grad in the same company, my starting pay is of $2.8k - $3k range, and now I am getting only $3.7k with 1 promotion included. Annual increment and promotion increment sux like between 3-4% respectively. And I will be age 30 in 2012, and esitmate my pay would be only $38XX next year.

reach almost 5 years exp in engineering field and haven't hit 4k is damn sux..

only people in the financial sector have good annual increment as you have mention, but not the engineering sector!!!!

Oil and gas sector are highly paid.

Semiconductor if u add in the OT pays is even higher, my fren less than 1 yr exp sometimes can hit 6.2k per mth due to OT but gotta work 8-9pm everyday or sometimes come back on sundays. High stress n high chance of retrenchment though.

To be fair, there are some obviously rubbish post like few million bonus, $50k monthly salary, $10k allowance etc that are obvious trolling.

But a lot of the other discussion on banking, energy, consumer industry jobs sound reasonable to me. Anything less than $5k is really very low for a university educated person at 30 years old. I read some research from the various HR reports out there and honestly most manager jobs seem to be around $8k - $15k, not only banker jobs.

Other than oil and gas engineer, there is not much other engineering sector that can have high annual increment

my mean focus is herehigh annual increment

I am only talking about basic salary and how much of the annual increment in engineering industries, other than the oil and gas, mean there are no other engineering industry that give you good annual increment like +500/year???


OT is out of the question, of course those who exchange their personal time for $$ will get paid, my uncle a vocation cert sch leaver at his time(similar of today ITE cert) work in the construction industry in his early 40s, with basic 2.6k/mth, but he work OT every day till his annual salary hit 62K....but is no life one.

TECH semicon pay OT for degree holder.

so you also think that a male by age 30 should earn at least $5k/mth(exclusive bonus) assuming he grad from university at age 25, after 5 years of working exp?

but in engineering sector(beside oil and gas), OT not counted, only consider basic salary, how many of us (degree holder), can hit $5000/mth(exclusive bonus) after 5 years of working exp, in the engineering sector(beside oil and gas)???