Why young talent is losing faith in the civil service

[SINGAPORE] When a 26-year-old Singaporean civil servant shared her story on Reddit about being passed over for a promotion despite strong performance and stretch assignments, the post quickly struck a chord. Buried beneath the relatable frustration was a deeper signal: the public sector’s rigid promotion mechanics and slow feedback loops are losing credibility with a generation that prizes merit-based progression. This isn’t just a one-off career dilemma—it’s a strategic HR vulnerability in a knowledge economy where the private sector can poach top performers with speed and incentives. If the government wants to retain its best young minds, it may need to rethink how it rewards them.

The Public Sector Ladder: Safe, Stable, and Inflexible

Singapore’s civil service is often held up as a global benchmark: clean, competent, and relatively well-paid. But when it comes to career progression, it remains highly structured, deeply hierarchical, and, at times, rigid to the point of stagnation. For fresh graduates entering government roles, the average time to their first major grade promotion can stretch three to five years, unless they are on fast-track “scholar” schemes. Performance reviews are standardized, with bell-curve distributions and peer comparisons that can create bottlenecks even for high performers.

In the Reddit post, the civil servant explained how her former boss had advocated for a higher grade based on stretch assignments and strong senior feedback—but institutional norms intervened. A colleague who was "due" for promotion received the bump instead. Her new supervisor appears less invested in her growth, and in the system’s design, that one opinion overrides even positive feedback from others. It’s a familiar story in hierarchical organizations: accountability is siloed, and progression depends more on context than performance.

These mechanisms are designed to ensure fairness and order across thousands of employees, but they carry a cost: personal ambition becomes detached from institutional outcomes. "Want to climb fast and high, go private sector to chiong... Gov’t is slow and steady unless you’re a scholar," one Reddit commenter wrote—a blunt but accurate encapsulation.

Private Sector Lessons: Velocity as a Retention Strategy

In startups and multinational corporations, advancement isn't always fair either—but the feedback loop tends to be faster and the incentives more immediate. In high-growth firms, standout performers can rise within a year or two, sometimes even skipping formal titles. While this creates risks of burnout and instability, it also generates a sense of velocity and agency—qualities that many ambitious young professionals crave.

Compare that with the "rotation" system in Singapore’s civil service, where officers are moved every two to three years, often restarting reputational capital with each new boss. While this is meant to build broad-based capability, it can leave high-performers like u/chicky-mcnuggys stuck in a cycle of proving themselves again from scratch, with no institutional memory of past contributions.

There’s a strategic gap here: in the name of grooming generalists, the system under-rewards specialists or those who consistently overperform without institutional “fast-track” status. Worse, slow progression may quietly push some of the most capable workers to exit. As a 2022 Civil Service College report noted, “high-performing officers who perceive stagnation in recognition are more likely to disengage or leave, despite deep commitment to public mission.”

This is not a uniquely Singaporean problem. Bureaucracies around the world face a similar tension: fairness vs flexibility. But in fast-changing economies—especially ones where talent is the primary input—lagging retention systems can become a strategic liability.

The Risk of Quiet Attrition in a Competitive Talent Market

The issue isn’t just morale. There’s a long-term risk that the public sector will increasingly lose the very people it wants to retain—motivated, capable, non-scholar-track officers with demonstrated initiative. These individuals may not vocalize their intent to leave, but they begin mentally checking out. The rise of platforms like Reddit as semi-anonymous sounding boards is a clue: the discontent is real, even if it’s whispered.

The private sector is ready to capitalize. In industries like fintech, consulting, and tech, firms are actively recruiting mid-level public sector professionals who come with operational experience, process discipline, and public policy exposure. They offer not just better pay but faster impact and clearer recognition.

If government agencies continue to base promotions heavily on tenure and internal politics rather than output and adaptability, they risk perpetuating a two-tier system: one track for scholars and “chosen ones,” and another for the rest—regardless of ability.

As labor market competition intensifies, the question isn’t whether young professionals should wait five years for recognition. It’s whether they will.

Our Viewpoint

The career frustration voiced in this viral post isn’t an isolated story—it’s a warning flare. Singapore’s civil service is globally admired for its integrity and effectiveness, but talent retention is increasingly about speed, feedback, and perceived fairness. If the system continues to rely on opaque grading and rotational resets, it risks alienating its best non-scholar talent. In a competitive global economy, trust in the process is no longer enough. To keep the next generation of changemakers, the public sector must move faster—or lose quietly.