Pros
- good work life balance but is steadily eroding due to emphasis on churning out CET programmes. - relatively stress free primary job responsibilities if you are used to handling tough assignments. - very good if you are an associate lecturer aka part time lecturer. As you teach, grade and go home. No concurrent responsibility for you. - extremely good if you go in as Senior lecturer as you are more or less in the CEP of most people. So you do not really need to perform so hard. - Govt job. So no worries about being retrenched as Long as you do not screw up badly.
Cons
- like a stereotype gov organisation, a lot of arrows and tai chi when it comes to doing a job. Senior staff can arrow junior staff to do their job and the RO agrees to it. Older folks can say do not feeling like doing during meetings and no repercussion. - career progression is non existent and is by age. If you go in young and in a junior grade. Good luck to you. They can give excuses like you are too young to be promoted or your qualifications are not recognised. - a lot of other con current responsibilities to do such as mentoring, outreach, new CET course proposals etc etc. - a lot of for-show activities like self appraisals and work plan meetings to make you feel like you are responsible for your career. You can grade your self appraisal but your RO will grade you based on the actual grading given to you way before meeting with him to discuss your appraisal. No point following the HR rubrics as it is up to how your RO thinks about you. - on the surface it looks like everybody is cooperative, but in the back there are a lot of gossips and back stabbing going on to retain their standing. - senior staff are generally protected by management. What this means is that they will input senior staff to head whatever projects or glory tasks but junior staff will do the bulk of the work while the senior staff will do the presentations to management. So they get the chunk of the credit. - you will be surprised by the amount of incompetent people in this organisation. Be prepared to work with such people as your seniors or superiors. The worst part is they think they are always right. - do not speak your mind here. For you can offend a person here no matter how true your remark is or what they preach about being open. Prepare to see your career affected. Just be a yes man. - be prepared to be thrown under the bus if you do something wrong even the activity is not your primary responsibility.