Just be honest to yourself. Take a look at your career trajectory and office politic skills so far, give an estimate probability of you ever reaching a senior managerial level, i.e. above 300k basic salary level.

My rule of thumb is if your assessment is probability below 20%, then going to public sector is more sensible. At least if you dont screw up and just go through motion minimal performance, a AD/SAD level is more or less guaranteed before 50. That means you can at least get 100-120k to cruise till retirement. More if you are a good performer.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it much God bless :)

This is exactly what I am comparing, that is to compare long term (for another 10-20 yrs) to see if it's actually worthwhile to just stay in Private and get increments, thorough promotions/job hop..

Out of curiosity : Are you in the Private or CS ? If in CS, means that it is possible to climb even with Basic Degree ?

Hate to break this to you, if five HR departments give you the same range of pay, that is because that is what you are worth.

Used to be from private sector before switching to public now. Civil service / stat board offers quite decent career progression even for basic degree w/o honours. Like I said, if you are in a ministry, as long as you are not too screwed up you will still get your AD rank sonner or later.

The high performer/CEP people will get it earlier, but I have seen some people who just cruise through and openly declare they have no interest in career (esp. family oriented ladies), they still get it usually early 40s. AD pay is good enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle.

Staying in private sector is 2 main attraction: 1) The possibility of reaching senior managerial (300k+) or even executive (>$1mil) and 2) More flexible and dynamic culture compared to CS which is constrain by bureaucracy, paper writing, SOP etc.

If you look at the way MNCs operate, in order to get a shot at reaching senior managerial level, you ought to be at least:1) professional level 130-150k by before 35; 2) junior managerial level ~200k basic by 40, otherwise its more or less game over. Sales/Entrepreneur more unpredictable so hard to give rule of thumb.

Use these guidelines to gauge your probability I mentioned earlier and it will help in your decision.

Hello.. I have to say this again.. Thank you very much for giving a very good explanation and forecast. And since you have switched from Private to Public, i can definitely take these pointers into good consideration.

I fully agree and understand the forecast you have mentioned. It makes total sense :)

Thank you very much ! and Have a good day ahead ! :)

Hi guys, don't mind me going off in a tangent. I'm in private sector.

Everyone seems to equate progression with a managerial position. I presume here managerial position means actually managing people.

My question is what do you call it, progression of not, if you advance in salary and responsibilities but not managerial. Okay, I disclose a bit. But how would you describe software developer, 200k annual by 33 in a team of three developers.

The thing is, I don't think I see my career path as commanding a department of 100 people. I'm perfectly find working in a small team of three people, getting 200k by working on some state of the art technologies in quantitative analysis.

Have I progressed?

Just to clarify, notice I used the term "managerial level", not having a manager as a job title. One is usually an internal leveling in most sizable companies, the other is just a job title. Job titles mean nothing - even a 4k floor manager in a restaurant can have 20 people under him

Based on your description, does that mean by 35 yrs old, on average, CS will be to achieve 130k to 200k and by 40 yrs old, reach 200k mark.

AD pay in CS is ard 6-8k pm. Including bonuses most likely an AD will get around 120k pa. If you just chill most likely you will reach this level by 40. But that also likely means you will spend the next 25 years being stuck at AD level with very small yearly increments because you are reaching the salary ceiling and you can't be promoted to the next level.

120k pa is not bad, but nothing to shout about. Those who can reach 200k by 40 yrs old are probably at the DD level, which means they are likely to be high performers aka top 5-10% of the dept and may have a shot at superscale (aka big bosses level).

Not at all, I think you are misunderstanding what I'm trying to say here. I am saying that the real upside for staying in private sector comes from the potential to hit senior managerial levels. These numbers are just provided based on my observation of a typical career trajectory of someone who reaches senior managerial level somewhere in his 50s. If you can't get them, it is highly unlikely you are going to reach that level in the future.

It would be unrealistic to expect an average CS person to meet the sort of pay trajectory experienced by a corporate high flyer destined to be senior managerial. Generally to have that sort of trajectory you will need to be a good performer with a CEP of at least MX8 which is beyond the reach of most public servants.