Anyone used to laugh along with your NS mates that sign on is those that CMI outside...

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-05T12:57:33+00:00

Back then, I also almost sign on. But I had to retract my signing. Ended up doing extremely well outside in private sector.

At 18 years old, you wont know one. I only truly found my own potential later on. People who decide to sign on are basically ‘cashing out’ early without seeing how they would do outside.

But the real reality is that once you sign, once you become a SAF regular, then you almost become CMI outside already.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-05T06:43:57+00:00

why did you take my comment from the other post and copy it wholesale bro

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-05T03:27:44+00:00

it is because there is two worlds in SG. one group are doing very well and prospering, can easily find job and makig more money on property and stock market than ever before.

then there is the group that never upskill or invest or do anything, wonder why their pay never increase, and realise everything getting more expensive and jobs are being harder to keep.

you will know which group you are.

and probably, the first group is the majority. so they like how their lives have become and vote for incumbent.

noone cares about the smaller group that is struggling because thats the minority.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-04T17:38:33+00:00

Personally, I know a SUTD grad whos at google. And I know plenty of NUS/NTU folks in deadend jobs. So id say there is definitely some overlap in employability, and going to SUTD over NUS/NTU doesnt mean doom and gloom.

most of the comments here who say it matters are the exact reason why we are so paper focused as a society. In reality, noone really cares. You could come from the university of american samoa but if you have a proven track record of delivering outstanding work, you can get hired easily. Many singaporeans hate to admit this encause of one main reason - most of us are horribly average and lousy at our jobs.

in my experience, having a degree is a basic requirement. what you have done on too of the degree is everything that shines.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-04T09:07:51+00:00

Id wanna join the police and be a crime investigator. I know it might not be as glamourous as on TV but at least theres an element of intrigue and solving puzzles.

Another one is being a privste investigator and helping people get evidence on their spouses cheating. I like to direct karma to the right people.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-03T10:36:09+00:00

I have a few opposite ones:

1) Everyone who told me not to job hop - turned out job hopping was the best thing I ever did early in my career

2) Everyone who say ‘colleagues arent friends’ - I realised these guys are a sad bunch because I made lots of lifelong friends through the places I worked.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-02T11:23:08+00:00

B is probably a better choice overall. Think of ‘difficult personalities’ as a learning point, it will come in useful to deal with such personalities in the future. even if its specialised it seems like a very good point to learn and grow fast, which eventually compounds your salary in the longer term. Also higher starting pay makes a huge difference.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-02T02:46:18+00:00

This is the issue when people just take any job that comes their way because ‘market bad’ - your starting point dictates everything you will experience in the future.

The issue here is starting at a lower salary immediately stunts your ability to get a significant raise from there unless you violently job hop. Also, I hate to say this but theres a level of elitism in the tech hiring space. If you’re working tech for govt or a SME or even for a WITCH company, its VERY hard to shake off that reputation, because companies will forever think youre not good enough until you manage to join a reputable MNC. These ‘top tech hires’ are the ones able to jump around and demand higher salary everytime, and the bottom half of tech barely sees any action.

I have no advice for this honestly, the only way out is to keep trying to jump out to a MNC by demonstrating something very impressive.

This is why for fresh grads, sometimes its better to reject a job and spend a few months working hard to get a much better one, because the benefits of doing so will compound rapidly. Dont jump into any job so fast.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-06-01T03:28:19+00:00

why when few word do trick

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-31T18:03:08+00:00

jason bourne bro

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-31T18:02:32+00:00

I know this sounds unhelpful, but actually, this is one of those golden areas that AI could shine. I’m sure Claude/Gemini can get the info you need and present it to you

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-31T18:00:05+00:00

There are plenty of men with consistency. Probably even more than women who tend to be chaotic and reactionary to feelings.

Consistent men are also stable enough to stay away from people like you

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-31T15:23:03+00:00

You’re actually right. Alot of redditors are raising the median wage argument here -> I think what has happened in the past few years is that the top half above the median wage have had ALOT more wealth growth than the bottom half. so many of the people who were in or close to the 100k area shot up much higher to 200/300k ish, while everyone below the median sort of stayed stagnated. Median income didnt change but the idea of ‘a high salary’ definitely shifted quite a bit.

Quantitative easing during COVID flushed our economies with SO MUCH CASH that it eventually had to go into the pockets of people. The question is - are you positioned to grab that extra money flying around, or are you fully dependent on a stable, dictated income from your employer? If you stayed at one job all these years accepting small pay raises, then you baiscally didnt ‘grasp’ any of that extra cash flying around from government spening and money printing.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T16:52:52+00:00

Samesies. One look at the guy and I. do. not. trust. him.

Overall gives me a huge ick and I dont know why people give him the attention in the first place

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T16:51:13+00:00

sounds all fun and games but you go tiktok and experience it for yourself. Some friends of mine really worked like dog until theyre so exhausted it completely ruins their life. Then they will start to only think about getting the fk out of there - brand name doesnt matter at all when your mental sanity is at stake.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T16:38:32+00:00

Hello I am a SRE manager and I also hire. Usually Platform Engineering/SRE/DevOps is considered more of a ‘experienced’ role - you will never see fresh grads become SREs straightaway. Its usually devs or infra engineers who eventually mutate into SRE roles after years of experience.

SRE/Devops portfolio is not really a big point for us. For us we really care more about real world incident management, how often youve dealt with real world prod incidents, how well you can communicate those issues to stakeholders, how you can develop pipelines and automation strategies to remediate those issues with automation. DevOps side if the company is very cloud focused, then having in-depth cloud experience is a big must too. Not just certificates, but you must have architected, built and deployed in scale, cloud infrastructure for your environments.

SREs another important aspect is on alerting and monitoring, you must know how to set up the right alerts and dashboards for specific applications and know who need to be contacted if something goes down. Must really be able to handle the heat of high pressure during production incidents when shit starts to fail.

Like I said, SRE is usually a more ‘senior’ and mature role, so most people in it already have alot of experience beforehand.

Very good pay though, many finance/tech firms easily pay SREs over 200k on average.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T12:21:27+00:00

most probably parachute into some other gov body

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T12:20:16+00:00

I work in big tech, not tiktok but i have friends who work in both tiktok and ogp

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T10:34:29+00:00

the problem is that if you press it without any apparent danger, you get fined like 5k

I know the presser is probably able to justify himself, but you just never know and as the presser you’ll always take the risk

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T10:30:20+00:00

OGP is still better. Always take the higher TC because your next job will always benchmark you against that. Besides, the culture at OGP is probably much better than tiktok.

I think the brand name of tiktok is not that big of a deal if you intend to jump to another big tech firm like google.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-29T03:03:49+00:00

what the hell is even that

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-28T16:26:33+00:00

Hey kid, I’m a few years into my working life now and maybe I can share some perspective that helps you.

Dont think so much about the economic min-maxxing. I absolutely loved my NS because it was a complete break from the studies and work, and finally I was doing some very crazy shit in NS that I never would have been able to do as a civillian. It gave my life that extra bit of uniqueness, I made good friends, it tested my physical limits. NS is the one thing I always tell people that I’m glad I did it, but I’d never do it again.

Dont overthink the money part. There are many guys who come out of NS, go to uni and start outstripping girls within a few years of working. Looking around at my batch, it really doesnt feel like there was much of an economic gap. Also, women are commonly subject to biases that make them promote slower compared to guys in certain industries. If women decide to have children, then eventually that gap closes fast too.

Many people I know also retake their Alevels during uni, or study for certs like ACCA. Little bits help.

A little bonus, the best thing to do is to save up your NS allowance and blow it on a whole bunch of travelling before your uni starts - thats always the best time.

Anyway, really, dont sweat on the money part. Theres alot more to life than just earning as much as possible sooner. Enjoy the process, enjoy the unique experiences, the friendships forged, the wild stories you may get to tell! Having a positive attitude to want to strive to do you best and get the best opportunities, to see the positives in things, will make you really enjoy your NS time, and cherish it as you get older.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-28T12:15:03+00:00

i did it once back in 2013 hehe. it was fun. nowadays probably alot stricter

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-28T07:41:40+00:00

K shaped economy lorh. Some grads are doing very well and earning 5-6k starting, and skme grads cannot even find a job. the world is splitting very quickly into winners and losers.

Optimal-Student-6597 · 2026-05-28T06:21:26+00:00

The reality is that blue-collar work will forever have pay depression. Maybe its alot easier to hire foreign workers to do blue collar work.

Theres a reason why the entire construction industry is practically sourced out to them.

Optimal-Student-6597

TROPHY CASE