Wish there is a mental shift: Entitlement to Pragmatic, and realstic

What makes people from some other countries like Singapore or Korea to Indians. Very simple, I saw majority of these people questioning their government for their rights, and going with the real world. In India, we tend to demand others for our 'stuff'. We pay taxes through our nose, but we do not question the bad quality in public schools, but send our kids to private schools. Then strike for pay hike; same with health care. Thanks to political parties who just treat public money as their own money, the vicious cycle is going on forever.

I saw this news from sakshi, where a school teacher is complaining that the current CM is not doing his job, and not increasing the pay. The expenditure is

• Rent: 4,500
• Daily necessities : 4,000
• Milk: 1,500
• Rice: 2,000
• Education: 10,000
• Medical: 2,000
• Clothes: 2,000
• Gas: 400
• Utilities: 450
• Travel: 1,000
• Entertainment: 600
• Cable: 150
• Mobile: 500
• Vegetables: 1,500
• Others: 3,000
• Total: 33,600

First of all this is a totally made up story IMHO. Anyway, still one question on why on earth a school teacher who is getting paid by the tax payers want to send his/her kids to private schools and spend 10,000 every month? 

If the justification is that the quality is bad, then why can't we close down all these schools and remove the teachers? That would save pretty good amount for the tax payers. 

The expenditure is equal to $550 per month which makes it on par with many other asian nations monthly expenditure. 

Average Malaysia school teacher makes $ 1,124 month. Are we trying to say that our cost of living, or living standards are higher than Malaysia which warrant such salaries ?

Top paying jobs in Singapore - CIO/CTO Wages

Source: http://www.salary.sg/2014/top-100-jobs-in-singapore-2014/

The info might give a wrong info as this is almost 2-3 years old. The report was based on MOM Occupational Wages table. The MOM table was released in June 2013, but the data is based on info from 2012.

Anyway based on the "new info" the top dollar is obviously paid to Financial professionals, and Specialists (e.g. Surgeon, Lawyers etc). One thing caught my eye is the supposedly low compensation to CTO/CIO. The position is @ 19th rank with a third quartile pay of $10,648. By the way this is gross wage.

Either the number is skewed by too many "false" designations in small companies or the 'value' offered is too low compared to a Trader or Sales manager or Marketing manager.

If I compare the CTO pay with average/median worker pay in other countries,

* USA median salary is USD 195,450 (Source - Payscale)
* USA median salary is USD 310, 200 (Source - Glassdoor)
* Australia median salary is AUD 280,700 (Source - Glassdoor)
* HongKong median salary is HKD 1,500,000 (Soruce - Michalpage)

So I guess my assumption is correct and the 'designation hype' is causing the number to skew to lower ranges.

World pay scale or salaries PPP adjusted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17543356

Check it out and compare.. We hear grouses from IT engineers in India. For example, the most recent one from Economictimes here says India stood at 24th position but that's really a faulty method of checking. It says, that the data is PPP adjusted but I don't believe it is.

When checked with PPP (BBC tool /2012) India ranks at much higer place on an average. If I take 50,000 INR it puts in 10th position. This may be again faulty given this is across industries, and one may argue 50K is too high. But the fact is 50K per month CTC is quite a norm these days unless in call centers or some support functions.

India - Higher education faculty pay, one of the highest in world

Source: insidehighered

As you can see the faculty of higher ed paid approx $6,070 / month in PPP $ in India. Still why only we've a bunch of IIT & IIM as worldclass institutes ?

I bet our primary school teachers (Public sector) are paid outrageously high salaries in comparison with their world wide peers and the value they offer. 

Singapore Average Salary - Check where do you stand @ world

Source: BBC

According to BBC this is where Singapore stands with it's "average" salary of $ 2,616. Ok, now before we jump to conclusions and start saying that it's 'average' and not 'median' let me point some facts.

According to recent graduate employment survey results, it's 2,700 - 3,500 (NTU) & 2,700 - 5000(NUS). This is excluding Employer CPF contributions & bonus/etc. If I take the lower value + 15% CPF and convert to US it stands at $ 2,464 which is still not far behind the BBC number.

Looks like we are doing a wonderful job here..

Singapore CEO Compensation

This post has been pending for quite some time as I've not enough time to go through the annual reports. I wanted to do this to see how our top management getting compensated.

Here goes the table showing the SGX-30 listed companies CEO's compensation. I've provided the page numbers in annual reports as references. An important point to note is almost all the companies are giving stock options and the award criteria is quite complex, so I've decided to exclude the stock options. If including the stock option price the total compensation can be quite a lot. For example Singapore Airlines CEO could receive up to 1 million stocks which makes his total package increase by another 15 millions. Same goes for the banks, and the commodities firms. So the CEO Salary looks low in absolute cash terms but the overall package may be few times more than the cash portion and it's certainly not low :)

By the way, the usual disclaimer. This is my best effort data but I cannot guarantee that this is 100% accurate as there may be errors when I copy or type. So caveat emptor and use at your own risk.

Singapore salary benchmark 2009

Source: Salary.sg

Here is a link to benchmark your 2009 salary. Please note the title suggests 2010, but the information is based on 2009 data. So it's essentially 2009. You just need to enter your monthly gross (your total income before cpf, tax divided by 12).


This is not 100% accurate as the data is compiled based on CPF submissions. So the Employment Pass holders, businessman who doesnt contribute to CPF are not captured here. Still, this is by far the best available tool to benchmark the pay as well as to get an idea.

Attached a result.

top singapore salaries / pay scale

Below is a screenshot(copied from www.glassdoor.com) of the reported salaries from Singapore . Reported means, this list is compiled by those who voluntarely shared their pay.

So don't take the list as an exhaustive list of singapore salary summary.

It can be a good way to know the expected pay for potential applicants or to know just how much companies are paying for the talent :)

No surprises and most of the firms are from Financials arena.
* IT in Financial sector seems to be the 'in' thing now
* 11 out of the 40 are from non financial sector.
* singtel is in the list and the only telecom firm (salaries from nokia, ericsson, starhub, m1 not available )
* Consultancy firms have a fair share in the list
Wish there is a comprehensive list available so the employees are in a better position to negotiate :)

For more details, have a look at www.salary.sg. This is a great website to benchmark as well as to see the top professions etc.