are visitors of Salary.sg mostly affluent people?
 

I noticed that whenever someone post something like they earn $4-5k when they are in their late twenties or thirties, there would be someone who proclaimed that these earning are below average.

But I check the calculations at Salary.sg and Income IRAS, and noted that actually by earning $4-5k at about 30 yrs old are somewhat at the top 10% of their cohort! And I have not taken into account their bonuses and allowances.

So is it based on personal experience that the remarks are made?

And I see these posts quite common in Salary.sg.

These, in turn, pointed out that the people who commented are earning even higher, maybe top 5% of their cohort. Wow!

Actually, at age 30, the average income is somewhere at $3500 (including bonuses)

As such, am I right to say that most of the visitors in this forum are affluent in wealth, education? Or else, they got submarine cables that enable them to have networks in order to climb the corporate ladder.

That means if you visit this site more often, you'll be as affluent too! I learn this reasoning logic in school.

Ha, you have found the right and possibly only honest person here to tell you the truth! Those clowns here who keep posting messages like those telling you that you are below average in earning power are talking non-sense...they wanna talk up their own wealth and belittle others so that they can feel better.....miserable losers. Let me tell you: the real big time earners dont go around telling others about their incomes in this kind of forums.....

Btw, earning $4-5k/month at age 30 plus throw in 3 months bonuses would put you in the top 18.7% of income earners in your cohort....based on the tool.

I would say this is pretty decent data....of course there would be the odd man out earning more than $10k/month at age 30 which would put him in the top 1% of the cohort...but these are far and few in-between.....certainly not as common as the clowns here keep on trumpeting about.....I bet you he would not be in this forum.....he is too busy making money

https://forums.salary.sg/17208-post36.html

someone in that link state that getting $4700/mth is consider low after 4-5 years exp if staring working from fresh grad....

for me
grad in 2007 NTU engineering
Job: engineer with my 1st job, 29 age male
up to now is 4 years +
basic only 3.7k
annual(inclusive aws, bonus) = 60-62k

are you really sure that everyone reports ALL of their income to IRAS?

yo, most people are employees and most companies have auto-inclusion thing with Iras. you can't run away. at most you will have that extra $300 tuition fees per month. what else? rent out a room for $1k?

billionaire steve jobs claim to earn $1 per year. how much tax does he pay?

tax on bonuses, allowances, dividends, rental income, profits from non-sgd trading... the list goes on if u're creative enough

It is entirely possible (and quite common actually) for a graduate to earn 5k in early thirties, before bonus. I am one of them. Just another 2nd upper local grad engineer.

Still, I am a loser compared to the lawyers, traders and bankers. The earning curve gets steep beyond the top 10%.

Probably, people who are competitive and concerned about their income gravitate towards this forum. The visitor profile here is probably very skewed towards the higher earners. Of course, there may be some big talkers bluffing about their income as well, but who knows?

I use this forum to motivate myself to think of ways to earn more money.

then how old are you now?
how many years of working exp?
Is this your 1st job since grad from university?
In which line of engineering are you in (aviation/marine/electronic/oil n gas...?)
Private or government sector?

I do not think you are a loser in comparison. Its just that the salaries of the bankers and lawyers are so inflated that it makes the majority (90%) of others in the workforce look bad. As an absolute figure, you are doing pretty well based on the 'official' government figures. So let's ignore the ridiculously 'high' salaries of others which they simply pluck from the air.

Well. i earn $30K p/m, am only 32. lol...

goodness, how many steve jobs are there? the super rich can do creative tax reporting, but i'm saying the BULK of the people here, including you and me, are normal salarymen with almost zero room to be creative in taxation.

since the banking industry is sucking away all the talent from various industries, and obviously this industry is making such huge profits enough to reward its employees so well, governments around the world should consider imposing a heavier tax on this industry (on top of the banking licenses, etc).

if not, the world will sooner or later be full of bankers, traders, brokers and no more farmers to grow rice. heard of the story about a thriving island with 10 traders and 1 farmer?

May i know what is yr starting salary? Are you getting more than 20% increament each yr? Typically, if you work in a factory, the increament is only about 3 to 5% excluding time when in crisis with pay freeze, pay cut or retrenchment

https://forums.salary.sg/17208-post36.html

someone in that link state that getting $4700/mth is consider low after 4-5 years exp if staring working from fresh grad....
sg male grad from university at abt 25-26, mean by age 29-30, you must earn at least $4700/mth (exclusive all bonus)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for me
grad in 2007 NTU engineering
Job: engineer with my 1st job, 29 age male
up to now is 4 years + exp
basic only 3.7k
annual(inclusive aws, bonus) = 60-62k

even If I continue to work for my company for the next 6 years, which make me have a total of 10 years engineering exp with the same company, my basic salary would be only about $4900 (inclusive of 2 promotion factor in), well that is when I am age 35!!!

----------------------------------------------------

how old are you now?
how many years of working exp?
Is this your 1st job since grad from university?
In which line of engineering are you in (aviation/marine/electronic/oil n gas...?)
Private or government sector?
Starting pay?

I am in the very early thirties, working in the public sector. My pay doubled over six years. Had two promotions. Won't go into any more details here.

The bottom line is that engineers are not well paid in Singapore. I am lucky to have joined a decent place that bothers enough about staff retention to keep on increasing our pay.

public sector and yet there's staff retention? not common for that to happen as public sector is well... public sector! The pay is commonly below average.

I think you made a very correct statement, espeically to sales industry.

Even for self-employed personnels who make up a chunk of the market, I believe they under-report too.

Well, one thing is for sure, people will only under-report, and never over-report (unless they want to get credit card, maybe).

That would make the median and mean pay given by IRAS misleading to a small to large extent.

There's no need for creative accounting to take place. There are so many people who would just key the lesser amount thinking, "well, even if I got caught, it's only my first time and I can feign ignorance anyway."

then I suppose that you are 2-3 years older than me

so you are an Engineer with the public sector(government sector) with 6 years exp.

you either from DSTA/PUB/HDB/BCA/EMA/NEA....highly chance from statboard.

-----------------------------------
i m having 2nd lower degree
company is local GLC current stock price $2.8+/-, very good hint already

i can just estimate if I stay in my currently for 6 years(currently 4 years already, mean 2 more years later), my basic will be between 3.9k-4.2k only(with total 2 promotion in 6 years), not even double my starting salary!!!

3.9k-4.2k is only 42% more than my starting salary !!!

:(:(

Be contented. Not everyone is a banker or a minister.

Hi xtrasaver (your moniker is a good name for a supermarket or a mobile phone plan!).

I can think of a few reasons. Lower-paid earners might not want to post about their salaries. Sometimes typing it makes one more depressed than just reading about others. And yes, the ones who feel more confident to post would be the ones who think they have done fairly well in life. That is the way things are. Like going back to school reunions. Usually the successful ones and those with beautiful wives turn up. :D

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)???

i got a fren in keppel energy. starting 2.8k, basic not v high but considering the average bonus payout is abt 8-11 mths while normal coys are abt 3mths, if u normalize it to 15 mths (12+3) the package the pay becomes abt 3.9k ...

some firms have practice of paying low basic high bonus some high basic low bonus, i think its more accurate to compare annual package.

for info financial services sector ppl dont have really good work life balance...work till late into night everyday is common.
they r not paid OT pay but its all part of the package (basic+bonus)...

what talking you.

my current salary
 

hi, just sharing my current and recent salary info....how am i doing?

26yr doing sales. basic was around 2k+ (excluding commission)

next job: 28yr starting pay was around 4k, when i left last drawn was around 5.7k (due to recent promotion)

current job: 30yr pay is 6800

all in banking....

it's considered very good generally. but among your banking colleagues, i suppose you're just average?

i guess its dependent...and really which area you are involved in. if you are in sales and doing well, of course the sky's the limit. however, this income is subject to stress and more importantly high volatility bar the very good ones.

i would say tat comparing to my peers, even in banking at my age, im very contented. i feel that for my age, im doing farely well.....but still am trying to improve myself constantly (studies, etc)

Most importantly i feel that its important to know what you wanna do with your career, understanding what strengths you have and then grabbing whatever opp you...

in the financial sector, all I can say is well-done...keep it up!!

there is no such thing as you jump ship in the ENGINEERING sector, will give out 100% increment>>>wtf is 2000 to 4000

and from your 2nd job, i suppose u stay 2 years there, you got a total of +$1700 increment in just 2 years with 1 promotion, in the engineering sector you need to work for 10 consecutive years in the same company to get +$1700 in total increment.

thanks dude....i was lucky to get a pay revision last yr and also my promo. when i moved, got another adjustment...

but i find it important to fight for wat u want...whatever industry and salary, etc...its the same...if u want it badly u will have to fight for it.....be it change ur environment or whatever....

It is the same cycle repeat many times already.

1. Someone ask for info on pay
2. People respond, some are higher paid some are lower
3. All the lower paid people scold, sarcastic, jeer at the higher paid people and accuse them of lying
4. Prankster respond by posting outrageous pay like million dollar bonuses
5. TS confused and goes off
6. Another TS start same topic asking for pay info

isnt that the whole purpose of this forum? people wanna know how they are doing relatively, so that they can react. either be contented, or feel that you are behind the curve and act upon it.
asians dont normally talk bout pay matters among frenz, colleagues. i happen to be someone that feels that this info can be openly shared and discussed, esp in this difficult economic environment, the more relevant all this info is.

not too sure what your response means, and am not going to start another verbal war becoz i feel that is really time-wasting. but i strongly feel that everyone has a right to post whatever he wants to on this forum and has every right to know more. my addage is if you dont like what you are seeing, then dont see it.

cheers,