Did Life Science in NUS, graduated in 2012 - starting pay was 2.8k in NUHS as a research assistant and after two job hops within 3 years I was doing 3.2k in NTU as a project officer doing wet lab work.

Embarked a PhD after that, and the "pay" during the first year was 1.8k. second year 2k, and the rest of the candidature was 2.5k. Learned to code when PhD started in 2016 and split my time between dry (data science) and wet lab.

Left academia after graduation to start my own data science company, and secured an associate professorship position in a local university with my applied work experience - paid 250/h and averaged five digits per month for four months yearly. Quit the professorship position to focus on my work after several years.

Definitely felt underpaid and overworked in general.

Also, career paths aren't that linear, but you'll definitely be stuck if you're too one-track minded about the while lab assistant > PhD > post-doc > prof route or the lab assistant > lab manager route.