Job Title : Senior Software Engineer
Job Desciption : Writing programs / fixing bugs / system customization
Company : MNC
Industry : Telco
Tenur : Permanent
Employment Level : Senior Exec
Experience before joining : 4 years
salary ~ RM 5.5k (inclusive bonus)
Duration with current company : ~1 Year
Edu Level : Degree
Age : Mid 20s

My current recommendation for people who wants to climb up the ladder:

Don't neccesarily start with big company. Big companies have a more tight pay scale structure (but will definately give you a better starting salary), but it is usually harder to climb in the beginning due to high competition.

I started off in a small company as a junior exec, then later became a senior exec for a small company, before becoming a senior exec in a big company. My starting pay was initially 1.7k inclusive all allowances in a local company, whereas my friends was getting 2.4k for starting salary in MNC companies. Now they are getting around 3.5k-4k for same experience level as me.

Unfortunately, I don't think loyalty pays well. I jumped jobs several time to reach my current position and those who didn't jump that much were not that fortunate (usually).

I had almost the same career path as frequency and also started in a Chinaman small company for 2 years. The pay seems reasonable for 2 years, but it might not be very good to get a manager title so fast for a few reasons:

1. Are you a real manager? Will there be people reporting to you and how many?
2. Some companies like to give the term manager quite freely that it loses the meaning. Are you expecting for manager position in your next job? If you take a lesser job role.. it looks like your career path is going down. If you want a manager role, then the expectation would be quite different.
3. Some companies give the term manager to place more responsibility on the employee. Some like to throw the new "manager" to the customer firing line to take the heat from the company.

As I said, my career path was almost identical to yours up to this point. Here's what happened to me after my 2 years with the chinaman company:

1. I left the job and took a job in a larger organisation as normal software engineer.
2. Almost a year later, I took a role as a senior software engineer in a smaller company
3. After that, I moved to the same role in an MNC

Suggestion: Plan for your next move at the end of the year (or few months after your next increment). And don't take a counter offer again.

Correction: Moving at the end of the year is a no no. (I take my words back ) Best is still to move a few months after getting your increment/bonus as you know the next increase is probably quite a long way off.

I would definitely not leave a company if I have not secure another job. I didn't imply move irregardless if you have a job. Play safe and secure another job before you do anything. Leaving a job without securing another looks bad on your resume. Interviewers always like to look for gaps in your resume. If you spend a few months jobless, they might think that you either got fired, were forced to quit or just simply could not handle the pressure and chickened out.

Having $$$ reserves is definitely a plus point, and should be the way. No job in the world is safe. Large corporations have huge layoffs and you won't know when these things will happen. Government jobs are probably the least volatile compared to all the others in this sense.

Just curious.. why is finding a higher pay job based on your result so important? Isn't it nice to be able to get higher pay than your friends that did better than you in university? Your result is probably around the same as mine (which is not spectacular). I started off around 1.5k myself. Just having mysql knowledge is also not something very great actually. This is not valued very high in the IT market. Big companies that pay big money usually get a more propeitary database such as Oracle and so on. If you have another offer in hand, then you can be choosy. Otherwise, my advice is take the job first and start looking for another few months down the road. Experience is usually valued as much as qualifications in the job market unless you are going into the academic line. Exact CGPA doesn't really matter very much. Working and studying are 2 different worlds and it isn't always necessary that a good result = high paying job.