normal degree in stat board vs ministry

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by miwashi

does this mean that the attrition rate is like 90%?
Because I think in most ministries there will be only around 50 directors?

DD + Dir + SD probably around 40 posts? In a typical ministry, I estimate there are probably around 250-300 senior officers? maybe slightly more. But not everyone is old enough to be a DD/ Director. what one should compare is this: amongst those age 40 and above (that is counting in those who are slower in progression) how many of them are in DD positions and above? due to attrition, those in this age group would be fewer, hence the probability of them holding DD/Dir and above is much higher than 10%. I reckon in a normal ministry it could be more than half.

This is empirical evidence but seriously when I look around my workplace and consider those who are past their mid 30s, I hardly see anyone who is NOT a DD. These days, people reach DD when they are 32-34, hardly surprising at all. I'm interviewing for a DD position myself (reaching 34) and I think I'm slow. There are people my age reaching DD 2-3 years before me (although by rank we are the same at that time, MX11).

[miwashi]

That is very enlightening.

I guess the typical situation then is that if you are in your mid-40s, you're either around director level, or condemned staff at junior level, while those at in-between levels are rarer. I also notice a typical recruitment pattern follows a similar trend. They like to recruit young and impressionable people, or old and more experienced director-level people. I don't see as many mid-career hires.

Anyway, if you're slow, i'm way behind. I'm 35 and in a junior executive position, graded mx12. It has the fancy exaggerated title of 'manager', but what I did as a junior executive in a ministry last time was of a way higher level (eg. drafting policies, national level investigation work, etc) than what I do now.

Originally Posted by miwashi

That is very enlightening.

I guess the typical situation then is that if you are in your mid-40s, you're either around director level, or condemned staff at junior level, while those at in-between levels are rarer. I also notice a typical recruitment pattern follows a similar trend. They like to recruit young and impressionable people, or old and more experienced director-level people. I don't see as many mid-career hires.

Anyway, if you're slow, i'm way behind. I'm 35 and in a junior executive position, graded mx12. It has the fancy exaggerated title of 'manager', but what I did as a junior executive in a ministry last time was of a way higher level (eg. drafting policies, national level investigation work, etc) than what I do now.

Actually if you guys just ignore the titles and think of it in terms of REAL title in a company that doesn’t exaggerate title then the whole career progression would all make sense.

Manager = Executive
Senior Manager = Senior Executive
Assistant Director = Assistant Manager
Deputy Director = Junior Manager
Director = Mid Manager

Like for eg. to reach DD (aka Junior Manager in a normal big company) in your early to mid 30s is perfectly normal anyway. To hit Director at mid or late 40s (aka Mid Manager) also quite normal in the private sector.

[miwashi]

unfortunately the whole practice of exaggeration of titles has played havoc across the country's hiring.

We have real managers supervising 10 staff and generating annual profit of tens of millions of dollars, who when thinking of having change of environment, come into 'manager' positions where fellow "manager's" can't even write meeting minutes. I've seen it before.

The position descriptors are no longer equal, and recruitment ads don't list the job grade associated with the position.

Originally Posted by miwashi

unfortunately the whole practice of exaggeration of titles has played havoc across the country's hiring.

We have real managers supervising 10 staff and generating annual profit of tens of millions of dollars, who when thinking of having change of environment, come into 'manager' positions where fellow "manager's" can't even write meeting minutes. I've seen it before.

The position descriptors are no longer equal, and recruitment ads don't list the job grade associated with the position.

The public sector is not that bad already. The chief culprits are the US finance companies who dish out VP and SVP positions like water when they are essentilly junior to mid managers.

That's why smart people will always look at the pay as the most realistic gauge. For eg., if you are drawing anything less than 8k & you get offered a "manager", then you more or less know it's afake title. My gut senses is that the true "Director" position probably starts at ~$18k

[Anonymous]

Originally Posted by miwashi

unfortunately the whole practice of exaggeration of titles has played havoc across the country's hiring.

We have real managers supervising 10 staff and generating annual profit of tens of millions of dollars, who when thinking of having change of environment, come into 'manager' positions where fellow "manager's" can't even write meeting minutes. I've seen it before.

The position descriptors are no longer equal, and recruitment ads don't list the job grade associated with the position.

There are is no such thing as a benchmark standard in terms of job titles to begin with. There never was, so there is no equality to speak of.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

There are is no such thing as a benchmark standard in terms of job titles to begin with. There never was, so there is no equality to speak of.

Before the 90s, there was a broad consensus on roughly what constitutes a manager or a director in a big company. While it isn’t very precise with clear guidelines and rules, the interpretation was much narrower in range than it is now.

Nowadays we have a lot of companies offering “managers” at $3k and even lower. If you discount that number 20 years back by wage inflation would be ~$1.3k in 1992 dollars. Try telling anyone that you are a manager in 1992 drawing $1.3k and you would be the joker of the year.

This title inflation all started in the early 90s when then US finance companies started to dish out AVP/VP/SVP at random. The rest of the non-finance companies in US and soon the world started following suit with managers, directors, vice presidents flying everywhere. Gradually even conservative Asian conglomerates (like Japan & Korean) were forced to inflate them in order to compete for younger talent by offering them these “career progressions”.

[miwashi]

that's a very interesting insight.
Are you an old timer?
I always like to hear from old timers about how different things were back then.

Originally Posted by miwashi

that's a very interesting insight.
Are you an old timer?
I always like to hear from old timers about how different things were back then.

Haha, still got people interested in uncle story in this forum har? I thought everyone just want to talk about banks & big bonus here.

Anyway there are 3 companies which I stayed the longest - 1 MNC in logistics industry, 1 MNC in high tech and 1 GLC the current job. On the topic at hand on jobs, titles and grades I would say the biggest difference is in the past organization structure is much simpler and titles less layers.

Back in those days, believe it or not, people do not join companies expecting to get promoted every few years. Many of my bosses then probably had no more than 2 or 3 promotions in their entire lives till retirement.

Take for eg the logistic MNC, the structure was very simple, anyone who is doing ops / corporate / admin work with no team management is called an officer, technician or administrator regardless of how long you have been there. Those who rise through the ranks and eventually get to lead a team or small department will be called supervisor or leader, even a degree grad (those days degree grads were considered very atas, like your ivy leaguer MBAs now) will take at least 4 years to move up to team lead.

Only people who eventually get promoted to lead a sizable department or in charge of a branch (now we like to call them Business Units) with P&L accountability are called Managers. Managers on one-man show or with a few kakias were virtually unheard of. Nowadays for a similar job they are probably called Directors or SVP or even MD for some banks.

The big boss of the entire Asia operations is quite simply called General Manager, Asian Operations. No other BS like President, CEO, EVP that we have now. As for the title Director, these were really the top dogs from US HQ who directly report to the #1 guy who is called Chief Executive. Like Finance Director means the biggest guy in Finance for the whole world like the CFO now and Operations Director is COO now. Some departments have 2 or 3 top henchman called Deputy Directors supporting the Director.

In those days not getting promoted for a decade was really no big deal and people generally did not demand for promotions after every annual review. If you can be a Manager before 40 in a big MNC, it’s something to be really proud of. Managers those days came with power and responsibilities to both the company and their subordinates, they really have things to manage besides themselves.

Now I see everyone in my co. including me seem to be getting promotion all the time. My current co. even for white collar has so many levels, Executive, Senior Executive, Assistant Manager, Senior Assistant Manager, Manager, Senior Manager, Assistant Director, Deputy Director, Director, Senior Director, Divisional Director, VP, SVP, CEO. Hell there are enough grades for even a mediocre fresh grad to promote every 2-3 years if he stays long enough. But most of the time there is not much change in job scope before & after promotion.

[miwashi]

This is very interesting, so people just worked for the sake of working.
But back then the pace of work was also not as fast as today, right?
Today people are forced to work harder, and they in turn expect something more.

i wonder if these fancy titles and rapid 'progression' have something to do with HR and all that equity theory stuff and things like that.