Thanks for the clarification. So is this roughly how it will work this year:

1. Mid year 0.5
2. End year 0.8
3. AWS 1
4. PB 1.5

So average performer this year is 15.8 months package? So seems like variable bonus exclude aws is 2.8 mths which is decent but not fantastic. Gov really should clear the air on how this whole thing works, a lot of confusion from the public as so many different types of bonus.

Honestly, 15.8 months for avg performer is nothing fantastic. In big MNCs an avg performer would easily hit 17 months (all in). Besides, basic pay at the bigger MNCs is also much higher on avg...

Why does the government need to clear the air on "how this whole thing works"? The government is just another employer in the context of the civil service, and civil servants (or public servants) are like all other private sector employees. Why should their pay schemes be made public to satisfy the public's curiosity. There's a case for making the pay of politicians or MPs transparent, since they are elected officers, but civil servants (and public servants) are not elected and owe nothing to the electorate.

Hope you are not a civil servant. You don't even know who the paymaster is for the CS. Civil servants are paid through taxes paid by the citizenry, and they are there to serve the public. I guess you didn't realize why they were also called public servants? They owe everything to the public.

If the people clamor loud enough, the gahmen will have to reveal the pay packages of the CS like they did in the good old days. On the other hand, private companies earn their income through product & services. If they don't do that well, customers will leave them and they will fold up.

I observed a lot of civil / public servants are forgetting this basic tenet and are very yaya papaya about their jobs. You can see so many of them posting on these kind of forums during office hours. I feel it's time to shake them up.

Civil service salary and bonuses are never meant to be fantastic. Instead, it is pegged at a relatively competitive rate so that it can still attract competent people. If u feel that the private sector offers a lot more, no one is stopping u to join them.

this is a fallacy that almost all civil servants i have come across have.

most civil servants are generalists with little relevant/transferable skills to the pte sector unless you are being parachuted in from the SAF. please don't compare yourselves to professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc), investment/private bankers, oil & gas who are the ones with fat bonus packages.

why don't you try joining an MNC and see if you can even smell 17 months?

The 0.8 months declared for the CS is already too much for the public servants wasting tax payers' money posting on this forum during office hours.

anyone knows how to identify them?

I keep hearing this about high bonus in pte sector, but honestly can someone tell me on average basis which industry beside oil & gas and banking FO actually pay >17 mth package?

I have been in the high tech industry and close to 12 years exp in 3 well known MNC and so far the average seems to be 14.5-15 mth package only.

Base on my experience and informal poll around friends, other than a few GLCs that are famous for paying dirt cheap basic salaries and try to make it up with bonuses, I don't really see many MNCs that can pay 17 mth package.

Many people forget that CS salaries are typically lower than pte. Assuming similiar role and responsibilities, If CS earns $750/mth then in pte this could well be $1,000/mth. Hence....

$750 x 15.8 months = $11,850

$1000 x 14.5 months = $14,500
$14,500 / $750 = 19 months

Its easy to see that 15.8 months may seem alot compared to pte 14.5 - 15 but at the end of the day CS still earn less. Perhaps thats what the prev poster mean, regardless of industry

another fallacy.. my CS peers are earning higher basic and annual packages than me. i know for a fact that agencies like IE Singapore hires experience professionals from O&G and other industries. why would these people make the jump if they are worse off?

Its not a fallacy. In your case your pte company is not paying u the market rate and you are grossly uderpaid. CS salaries are gd benchmark whether you are underpaid in pte....

this is the truth, whether you choose to believe it or not.

just to set it straight i'm not begrudging you for earning what you do but I just can't stand it when CS folks moan about people in pte sector earning more than them.

Erm i think it was the prev poster in pte that moaned that CS has nothing to shout abt their bonus as he/she said pte earn more overall. We in CS agreed but we didnt moan here. We may moan if we cant switch to pte but that moaning is on our skillset/luck. We dont moan abt ppl who r in pte.

The paymaster is the government, as elected by the people. Civil servants' paymaster is not the public per se. Anyway, your logic that salaries come from taxes means that the public is the paymaster is stupid to the extreme. I hope YOU are not a civil servant. By your logic anyone who doesn't pay taxes is not entitled to a civil servant's service. The police shouldn't protect tourists if they don't spend a single cent. What about revenue earned by the government that's not derived from taxing the public. The accountability of the civil service to the public is quite different from the notion that they owe their salaries to the public. If you can't grasp such a basic concept, I suggest you stop engaging in any discussion because it's unlikely to be very meaningful to anyone else. Good bye, and good luck in whatever path you choose in life. You will need plenty of it haha.

Hmm.... I think you're referring to this quote. I read this as if a CS were lamenting while you read it as a pte sector employee is showing off.

Very different interpretations. haha.

You childish piece of s***, still dare post during office hours. One letter to the forum page straits times and all of you will be sieved out. Then you tell us who is your paymaster !

from local GLC

C grader , 17.5mth in total inclusive all stock/bonus/aws..

but annual increment and promotion increment sux

eg if you start at 3k basic with a degree, for C grader, you will need 6 years to hit 4k salary, which inclusive of 2 promotions increment already.

for CS, starting pay is higher, increment is also more, most of them able to hit 5k/6k in 5-7years.


see the differences

The second post above is right. The citizenry is not the paymaster. By that logic, the police and the army should give extra protection to the rich since they pay the most taxes and leave the poor unguarded since they dont pay taxes at all. In fact, I believe that the revenues earned yearly by Temasek and GIC combined totally outweigh the amount collected through personal income taxes. So to say that the citizens pay for the salaries of public servants is not very true. Most of the taxes go to maintaining and building infrastructural costs instead of salaries. One F-16 could probably pay for an entire ministry's payroll for about 2-3 years. That's just in the military. In education, especially in universities, the electrical engineering dept has lab equipment that may is worth 500k each. And electrical engineering is one of the biggest schools in NTU and NUS. Not to mention the high-powered lasers in physics labs as well.

On top of that, if we go by the logic that citizens that pay taxes are the paymaster, we could well descend into a situation whereby only rich people can use public goods such as schools, hospitals, roads and the like. Because at the end of the day, they are the ones who pay the public service the most right? So think before you say such things.

1 mth aws, 1.3 mth avc, 1.5 mth pb

If you guys are really Civil / Public servants, I suggest you find out from your bosses where your pay is coming from before you disgrace the CS. If he is clueless, the whole department can close down.

Taxes are collected in many forms: Individual income, businesses, ERP, COE, GST, Maid and foreign workers Levy, stamp duties and many others.

Governments get their revenues from the above taxes, borrowing (government bonds) and from investment returns to fund their operations including paying the civil servants.

Why do you think the government has to explain why Mindef paid $20K+ of public money to hire a language tutor for a foreign soldier attending a course here? Why the government has to explain the Brompton bicycle purchase processes and remove the corrupt AD? And many more

I would like to request you provide the CS or PS departments where you work in so that we can weed out the ignorant, arrogant and public-money wasting staff who spent office hours posting and boasting about their bonuses which come from the public.

Lolz.. So fierce for what? He was just explaining his point, which is not all that rubbish what. Give you public money you can do better job meh, mr arm chair critic. Pls loh, we all pay taxes, including civil and public servants. Doesnt automatically give you any right to adopt such a mightier-than-thou attitude. It is a fact that our cs and ps are known to pay good salaries. It is also a fact that our cs and ps are more efficient, less corrupt etc than most other countries (including developed ones). Everyone should just complain less and be happy with what we have...

People jump for various reasons, like 1)Cannot progress in current coy due to politics, 2)Sick of the long hours and want a cushier job, etc so that's not a very strong indication of anything.

Fact is the civil service generally pays no more than above average at best. Why people have the perception that CS pays higher is because 1)they do pay fresh grads quite well at the start, 2)the increment and bonus differences between an avg and a good performer is small and 3)there are also below avg performers in the pte sector who get poor increments and bonuses.

Once you control for calibre, I think people will see that 1)poor - avg performers in the CS are paid better than counterparts in good MNCs and 2)Above avg and good performers in the pte sector tend to do better in the longer term.

Not true that "CS pays no more than above average at best". You sound like someone working in SMEs, who think u are better off than civil servants.

I am actually in the public service, also there are actually good people in SMEs. I have very capable colleagues who come from such background.

i just joined civil service in august. do i entitle to prorated pb given out next year mar/apr if there is?

I can only conclude the following:

1) those who think CS are highly paid are people in private sector who are simply underpaid. These are usually people who think they are doing well in private but are uneasy on learning that their CS counterparts are drawing almost the same or even more than them.

2) those who think CS are earning modest wages are people in private who are actually earning alot more.

3) above 2 points are people from private.

4) those who think people in private earns more are people in CS trying to justify why they should get out of CS. The successful ones usually never regret switching to private

5) those who think people in private aren't making much are people in CS with false sense of superiority.

In any case, please feel free to leave for greener pasture if you arent contented.

which ministry & department?

I am concerned and hugely disappointed because :

1. there are people in the CS who are not aware who their paymasters are. For those in the CS who are still ignorant, please refer to the IRAS website for the explanation on where government revenue come from and where tax payers money go to.

2. They take their comfortable pay for granted and spend their working time on unproductive work like boasting and whining on public forums.

3. By their lackadaisical attitude they do a great disservice to the CS and PS and their hard working colleagues and tax payers.

It is because of these devil-may-care staff that our Ministers are frequently put in a spot to answer for instances of mispending public monies.

can provide info on:

for average C performer in CS, how much will be the annual salary after 5 years of service since fresh grad?

this can be a good guide for us.

Thank you

lol. you really sound like some jobless monkey who is really pissed at either his low-income job or the fact that he cant get into civil service.

Im sorry, you still havent rebutted my argument yet. If the citizen is the paymaster due to the tax he pays, then the rich(the ones who pay the most taxes), task civil servants to do their bidding and ignore the poor(the ones who dont pay any taxes).

The public servants are responsible to the government and by extension to the general public. But the citizens are not in direct control of the public service to demand things. They can do so by demanding their MPs(part of the govt) and these MPs can demand something out of the public service. But by and large, the citizens do not own the public services JUST because they pay their taxes. If this is true, then the ones who DONT pay taxes like the poor would be left out into the wild and be left unprotected. The citizen cannot be the paymaster, because if we do go by that reasoning, then we should only serve and kowtow to the rich since they pay a higher percent of the public servant's salaries.

People have too high an expectation of public servants. Frankly, I think most of us simply look at it as a job, which is really no different from our peers in the private sector.

One thing the public service got right is that you get you pay for. I have never seen the pay in public service as being fantastic compared to top MNCs and I also don't think our public servants are anymore talented than their peers in the pte sector. Paying lesser wouldn't help.

One key thing when comparing salary of pte sector and public sector is that when working for the government, non-scholars generally have a much lower career ceiling compared to pte sector.

Sure you could get retrench and drive taxi when you reach your 40s in pte sector, but then you could also make executive level in a global MNC if you are good.

Contrast this to a civil servant, even if you are super fantastic in performance and CEP, you are at most going to reach senior director in your late 40s making 300k+ annual inclusive of everything. A similarly top performer in top MNC / bank would probably exceed 300k by late 20s or early 30s.

Pte sector is a winner take all high risk high return environment while public sector is a stable and steady job security place. The profile is quite different and hard to generalize which is better because a lot of times it really depends on your temperament.

My take is this: if you just want work life balance, stable job, not really that interested in money or have a realistic view that you are just average in capabilities, it is better to join the public sector. If you are young, willing to risk it all for the win, then go for the pte sector, but dun whine when you hit 40 and realise you are just another average Joe constantly under threat of being replaced by others.

nicely said

The government may not need to clear the air on how this whole thing works. But the way the variable bonuses are announced, some would think that these are the only bonuses that civil servants get, which is not the case, as performance bonuses form an important part of the total salary package.

The para in bold..... I'm not FT bashing but just presenting the hard truths.

It is no secret that every MNC (including Singaporean GLCs in overseas locations) want as many of their own kind in as executives and management in the regional offices. In most countries, governments protect their citizens by requiring MNCs to implement strict localization rules after wining multi million dollar contracts. Not so in Singapore, which is reflected in the World Bank's ranking of Singapore as #1 country in Ease of Doing Business.

Hence it is not that easy to rise to those executive positions in MNCs, especially as Singaporeans have to compete with 2nd tier Indian and Pinoy PMEs for limited management positions.

You don't have that problem in the civil service.

If you think that civil servants have it easy, quit your job and join.

It is very competitive in civil service. Only a few get to high positions and many are identified from the onset. The rest have to slog like hell to have a chance of reaching anywhere near.

Grass is always greener on the other side. Instead of complaining, take the leap of faith if you really think civil servants has it easy. I can tell you that this is not true.

Is time of the year again... so play a guessing game 2015 yr end bonus for civil servant.

in 2014, its 0.8. (election factored in)

My take is its 0.5. due to incoming recession.