Career change and pay cut

Marmot

Marmot

Marmot

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London
Hello, I'd like some advice from our resident developers and anyone who has opted for a significant pay cut in order to change industry and do something more fun.

I'm early thirties, 8 years out of University, and I work in the services sector in London. I'm an account director, which means I manage a team of ten at various levels from graduate through to account manager. My day to day involves a lot of calls and meetings, a lot of strategy, a lot of troubleshooting and putting out fires. Due to my level, I am very client facing but work on the technical side of things rather than the salesy side.

I am sick to death of talking for a living, sick of presenting the same data in new formats over and over, and I miss the hands-on technical work I used to do before I was promoted. It was only Excel and platform work but it had a real sense of accomplishment I haven't felt for a while.

I have also suffered from severe anxiety since my early twenties, which I have never been able to shift, despite CBT and various medications. It's a reoccurring theme at work where I stress and lose sleep in the days running up to an important presentation, and regularly face panic attacks on the day. I inevitably deliver an enthusiastic and well-structured presentation and am praised for the part I play, but then the cycle starts again.

My salary is £60K and I have a nice rented flat in London with a girlfriend of 4 years. She has just graduated from University and with the current climate likely won't be starting work before next year. I'm responsible with my money and have saved enough to be able to pay the bills for a year if I lost my current job.

I am thinking about a change in career direction, and am considering programming. Like all of us on here I have an interest in computers, but I do not have any real experience in coding. Why am I considering a career change into programming if I don't have any experience or knowledge about it? Well a big factor is that I think it could be just about the opposite of what I'm currently doing. It seems like an opportunity to be creative and analytical without having to spend my days faking enthusiasm to a brainless client team who can't decide on what they want.

I've started Harvard's CS50 Introduction to Computer Science and am on week three of eight. The lectures are fascinating so far and am looking forward to moving beyond C. I'm finding the problem sets difficult but I'm confident I'll get through them if I work hard. I don't know which programming direction I want to focus on. I was thinking about picking up a bunch of Udemy courses when I'm done with CS50 and seeing if anything clicks. I am prepared to dedicate a couple of hours every evening after work to educate myself on this. It's difficult to find more time than that.

If I do eventually go down this route - leaving services and starting work in development - I know I'll be taking a significant pay-cut. I'm trying to justify to myself whether it's worth it or not for a better quality of life. I guess it will be an initial drop of at least £35K PA. How temporary would this be? How quickly could I get back up to a similar level of pay? Is there a particular programming language which would offer faster progression than others? From a quick search on LinkedIn there seems to be a lot more jobs in Python than other languages.

I would love to hear from those in the industry, and I'd also love to hear from anyone here who had a similar change of heart early-mid career, and has taken a hit to their lifestyle to focus on something they thought would offer better long term mental-health prospects.

TLDR - Should I move from well-paid, client-facing services position to a entry-level development job and take a significant cut in pay for my mental health well being?
 
You can’t buy happiness, finding a job that leaves you wanting more and longing to get back to it is going to be better for your long term wellbeing than making more money (certainly in the short-term) whilst not being happy.

Perhaps look to make the change coincide with a move out of the big smoke, to somewhere your reduced salary will go further and thus not feel like as big of a step-change in lifestyle.

It shouldn’t take you too long to start to claw back some of the shortfall between your current salary and a developer with some experience behind him, couple that with a reduced cost of living and more property for your money and you might find yourself in a much better place quickly.
 
I also agree that its important to have a job you enjoy. However I would very much make sure you have a guarantee/signed contract for any new job before resigning from your current position. There are many thousands, and soon to be hundreds of thousands of people being made redundant at present and so the job market is going to be chaotic. I certainly wouldn't choose to have to find a job now. Good luck.
 
Entry level dev jobs in London can pay anything between £25-50k. Possibly more if you are some kind of CS savant and get in at a hedge fund or big US tech firm (I hear Palantir pay something crazy like 90k to their graduate engineers). If you progress well, interview well and are prepared to aggressively switch jobs then you could improve upon your currently salary within ~5-6 years.

Your biggest issue will be having no automatic foot in the door to get interviews (i.e. a degree). You'll need a portfolio or something to pique the interest of hiring managers. Once you've had a full time dev job for a couple of years you won't have any trouble getting interviews.

As for languages...honestly take your pick. Pretty much all areas are in high demand and the most important thing is aptitude because a good employer will understand that learning a new language/framework is relatively trivial. Maybe just decide if you want to focus more on frontend or backend to start. Being competent at both (full stack) is really advantageous.

...Don't do it unless you really like programming though. This profession requires constant learning and self improvement and you'll burnout in a few years if you don't have passion for it.

*Above assumes civilisation isn't about to collapse due to covid :P.
 
I recently took close to a £30k pay cut - and I don't miss it for the world. More time with my kids, more time at home, not leaving the house at 5am or earlier. Admittedly I'm quite far on in my career, so my salary is probably somewhat more elevated that the OP, but over 10 years ago I also took a pay cut moving from a large FTSE100 to a public sector role - a good £15k pay cut at the time, but the benefits out weighed the money.

You just have to learn to be a little less frivolous with your spending, and budget better, and learn to save a little more carefully. With those pay cuts over the years, I was still able to go on 2+ holidays a year, pay the mortgage / rent, feed the kids, do the odd tech upgrade from time to time. I did however, have to budget tightly, and forgo some luxuries or keep them as treats which actually allowed them to be more special.

I don't know what it's like in the software development world, but it seems to me that it could be quite resilient to the current market conditions, and if you have an array of languages and skills (I guess project management, testing etc...) that you could probably retain some good job security, whilst learning and diversifying your portfolio making you a more appealing candidate in future ventures.

As others have said, don't cut your nose to spite your face, if you have options and opportunities, explore them, but be sure they're a right fit for you. Ask yourself if it's really what you want to do.
 
Not many people would take a paycut for any reason, but I did just that about 10 years ago. Everyone thought I was mad at the time, but I was adamant I needed to do it to help me in the long term.
It was a tricky few years, but boy did it pay off.

Something to think about, if you are interested in programming, do that for a few years whilst studying cyber security/networking/monitoring/cloud as it will open up many doors ;-) You will probably end up in a job you love, earning more than you are now.
 
Have you held a similar role in another organisation? Just wondering if that is worth trying to see how much of your troubles relate to your current employer in terms of "faking enthusiasm to a brainless client team who can't decide on what they want" and how much is down to the nature of the role. I appreciate it sounds like you want something more hands-on regardless but maybe different organisations will have a different structure.

As for the change of career, you mention a salary drop of at least £35k, this would mean a starting salary of max £25k. You might find you are able to get more than that in London, even junior roles pay more.
 
You mention university but you don't mention what you studied and roughly what sort of university, those things count too and/or might mean some areas are perhaps easier to get into.

On the main point, yes taking a pay cut to do something you enjoy can certainly be worthwhile... I think that (doing something you enjoy) is a good thought/principle to apply when exploring this in general. Generally it is easier to excel at something if you enjoy doing it and if you want to do well and earn good money too then it's a much easier path to go down if you're enjoying what you're doing and putting the effort in to excel at it.

Marmot said:
If I do eventually go down this route - leaving services and starting work in development - I know I'll be taking a significant pay-cut. I'm trying to justify to myself whether it's worth it or not for a better quality of life. I guess it will be an initial drop of at least £35K PA. How temporary would this be? How quickly could I get back up to a similar level of pay? Is there a particular programming language which would offer faster progression than others? From a quick search on LinkedIn there seems to be a lot more jobs in Python than other languages.
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Depends really, some stuff obviously pays way more than others, some is niche, some goes with particular domains etc.. or perhaps other knowledge. Main thing is perhaps to just do what you'd enjoy.

How quickly you can get to a certain level of pay perhaps depends on the industry you work in etc... generally the pay in tech/IT in the UK is a bit low compared with say the US, basically if you want silicon valley type pay then move to Switzerland or... in London, you'd mostly have to work in finance for that sort of pay.

You could get up to and way beyond your current pay package quite rapidly, it depends on the domain, skill set, how good you are etc..

I mean there are 22 year olds in California who are earning double your current package as fresh graduate hires in some tech firms... likewise there are some in London, brand new grads, earning your salary or maybe slightly higher... pay is very variable.

Probs less likely you can do the same (immediately) as a career changer unless you were to throw in a masters degree too - so like 2 years staying in your current role or maybe in a new, relevant, but lower paid role and studying in the evening too... or just taking a year out with no pay.

Alternatively, if you just plod away in some random (non-finance, not-big tech or start up, not niche or in demand area) dev job, content to not necessarily push yourself too much etc.. then you might equally be quite happy taking a pay cut and perhaps not seeing your current pay package for several years, after working at places that hand out a like 3k or so for annual pay rises and/or bumping by say 10k at a time when changing jobs or getting promoted... you could spend the next decade working up slowly from 30k to 60k, especially if you stay in the same firm... or you could get it and more in the next year or two depending how you go about it.
 
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If you're unhappy and have experienced anxiety then, personally, I'd get out.

Although I'm 44 and have a child, I had the same issue last year and ended up on medication for depression.

For me, doing a job I didn't believe in, and like you maybe because I'd been promoted away from what I enjoyed doing, was not worth it.

My next role will be less senior, but hopefully more hands on and less meetings and conference calls.
 
C is a great starting point, but if you want plenty of opportunity look at Java and Python, thats where the big money is currently going.

If databases is your thing, then getting good at SQL is a huge advantage also.
 
Good thing about tech I guess is that you can carry on progressing while still doing what you enjoy - you don't have to go down the purely management route to gain pay/seniority. In some cases (granted not in banks or in big tech firms) there can be very flat hierarchies too.
 
Thanks for the advice chaps. Very thought-provoking indeed.

@dowie , my degree is Business from Durham - definitely more aligned with what I'm doing now rather than the route I'm considering taking. I haven't really thought about going back to University for a Masters. I did consider a developer bootcamp but it would absolutely mean leaving my current job or taking unpaid leave at the very least.

@HangTime , I've worked for three of the biggest names in my sector since graduating, and been at my current company for the last two years. The only real option staying put would be to move into a little independent or a startup.

@Blinkz you make an excellent point and I definitely won't be making any overnight decisions. I'd make sure I had a job waiting for me. Good luck with your own problems mate.

@paradigm @Freefaller @TheOracle @wesimmo thanks for sharing your advice and experiences.

@RobHu @kindai @dowie very interesting. I'm certainly no savant! Still, good to know that the high paying positions are out there. I'm sure that for every role I interview for, there will be a dozen 23 year olds who can write 3 pages of code in the time it takes me to write 1 :p. Maybe I can bring something else to the table in the form of project management experience or such.

I'm going to stick with my current job and spend my evenings learning. I'll try for 15 hours a week. Hopefully by Christmas I should have CS50 out the way and maybe a Udemy course or two. Maybe by this time next year I'll know enough of the fundamentals to consider a junior development position. Perhaps Python or Java @kindai , who knows!
 
To get to that kind of money programming these days you have to be good, really good - either have a level of ability that generally can't be obtained through learning alone as a career programmer or find a niche that you can learn to fill.

My brother went down that kind of path contracting and I believe topped out about 50K (I'm not sure exactly) - with the current situation has taken a permanent role on a bit of a pay cut (again I don't know exactly but ~10K down on what he was).

RobHu said:
...Don't do it unless you really like programming though. This profession requires constant learning and self improvement and you'll burnout in a few years if you don't have passion for it.
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Even if you like programming - I really enjoy programming [as a hobby] and pretty good at it but found the constant requirements to stay abreast of the latest standards and certified on the various new technologies for what I was doing to stay relevant I really didn't enjoy and burnt out fast.

TBH though I've found that with any IT role in general - it is something I really enjoy as a hobby doing it as a career was ruining the enjoyment of it for me.
 
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I recently applied for a job that would have been a 20k+ pay increase. I did not get the job but I benefited from the experience and process of applying and the interview. I have been studying for the past three years after taking more of a side ways career move into something that I really want to do and that hopefully actually pays me a bit more money as well.

During this process something that my father in law said stuck with me and I often think about it now, during the process of applying for the job I had spoken to some people who already worked for the place I had applied to try and understand what it would be like working for that company, I got the impression there would be a clear trade off, more money for a decrease in my work life balance. I was of course aware of this as currently I dont have a commute as I live local to my current place of work so was expecting to have to add time on to commute to my new place of work at least, the thing that my father in law said was that the more you get paid the more you have to pay as there is a price to pay for whatever job you do, the price you pay could be longer hours, on call, more expected of you in the hours you work, nights away from home but ultimately the more you get paid the more responsibility you then have.

One thing I would caution you over when you say you want to go into software engineering and programming, there is what is know as crunch time, if you have issues now with stressing about presentations and stuff you will really want to consider if programming is a good career choice because I know when it comes to crunch time it can be an extremely stressful working environment, obviously this is not true for all programming jobs, tends to be more video game production but I think you also probably need to be aware there are going to be times of heightened stress in any job you chose to move to and that sometimes less pay does not equal you being less stressed.

Given that you are in finance I do not think I need to go into to much detail over the financials but if you are earning 60k now, moving to a 30k a year job means its going to take you twice as long to earn the same amount of money. Why not just give yourself a goal now of retiring at say 55 and working towards that. The job market is going to be like quicksand fairly soon and I have heard people say that London is like a ghost town so doing something right now would be a bad move. I suspect we will see at least a leveling off of house prices in the larger inner city areas if not a slight decline as the number of people wanting more rural areas with enough space for a decent home office increases.

Interestingly I always wanted to be a computer programmer from an early age and went to uni to study software engineering, I quickly learned it was not the profession for me simply because my computer is my hobby and I was acutely aware that I would not enjoy my hobby as much as I do if I was forced to spend all day in front of a computer.
 
Just a note on the pay - perhaps it's rather location/domain dependent but getting to 50-60k in London is like average salary for an established, salaried developer outside of finance... inside a bank it's more like 80-100k or so base for a salaried employee. You don't have to be really good to earn this - some of them are very mediocre..

Contractor market - you start out at like 500 or so per day as a BA or Dev, assuming that's 240 working days per year then that's 120k a year... for a more experienced person with a bit of specific domain knowledge (doesn't have to be anything special as a developer mind) it's like 600-650-ish...

This is not necessarily programmers who could smash a google interview etc.. it's say just regular mundane java developers with a bit of enterprise software experience and who know the basics of fixed income markets/products etc.. or know FX and FX derivatives etc... and are perhaps familiar with some vendor's software in the relevant area.

Of course if you make yourself valuable then it can be more - again that doesn't necessarily mean you need to be a great developer or a great BA, you just need to be a useful one... for example you're the guy on some big project who also has some accountancy background and decided to bring home a load of docs and read up on EMIR reporting requirements... now you're the go to guy for that project as it's dull AF and no one else really knows it too well.... Well suddenly you decide you fancy moving somewhere else - alarm bells ring - some people whose job very much requires delivering this project on time realise you're a very useful part of that... now you're on 850 a day. (this happened a few years back at a bank my friend worked in, some not particularly good guy made himself useful and threatened to walk). That might not be a sustainable rate for a guy like that but then again, could be... either way, thats a guy now earning just over 200k a year for being an otherwise medicore IT employee who knows some boring stuff.
 
Just thorw this in as it's quite amusing - programming jobs have generally been quite well paid, if you're good at it then there has been demand for this sort of skillset for decades and in the right place then plenty of scope to earn $$$

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dowie said:
Just a note on the pay - perhaps it's rather location/domain dependent but getting to 50-60k in London is like average salary for an established, salaried developer outside of finance... inside a bank it's more like 80-100k or so base for a salaried employee. You don't have to be really good to earn this - some of them are very mediocre..

Contractor market - you start out at like 500 or so per day as a BA or Dev, assuming that's 240 working days per year then that's 120k a year... for a more experienced person with a bit of specific domain knowledge (doesn't have to be anything special as a developer mind) it's like 600-650-ish...

This is not necessarily programmers who could smash a google interview etc.. it's say just regular mundane java developers with a bit of enterprise software experience and who know the basics of fixed income markets/products etc.. or know FX and FX derivatives etc... and are perhaps familiar with some vendor's software in the relevant area.

Of course if you make yourself valuable then it can be more - again that doesn't necessarily mean you need to be a great developer or a great BA, you just need to be a useful one... for example you're the guy on some big project who also has some accountancy background and decided to bring home a load of docs and read up on EMIR reporting requirements... now you're the go to guy for that project as it's dull AF and no one else really knows it too well.... Well suddenly you decide you fancy moving somewhere else - alarm bells ring - some people whose job very much requires delivering this project on time realise you're a very useful part of that... now you're on 850 a day. (this happened a few years back at a bank my friend worked in, some not particularly good guy made himself useful and threatened to walk). That might not be a sustainable rate for a guy like that but then again, could be... either way, thats a guy now earning just over 200k a year for being an otherwise medicore IT employee who knows some boring stuff.
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Sure the potential is there but a lot of that will be senior roles, lots of experience or niche skill set/experience, etc. your average run of the mill programmer is going to be more like upper 30s to 50K. Unless you can rock up with solid COBOL experience, etc. hah.

The contractors I used to work alongside albeit they were doing a regular job at around 50K and doing contracting on the side were easily clearing 500 on an evening never mind a day but only doing that like 2-3 nights a week. Aside from the odd diehard who lived, breathed and sleeped the gig and were probably on mad money.

EDIT: I'm probably doing this wrong - with a bit of effort I could get back in the programming game and make enough to retire on in 5 years :(
 
Nope not referring to senior roles just what I said, experienced developers and similar. I’ve been specific about what I’m referring to.

If you’re talking senior roles then the pay goes up quite a bit - for example one guy I know of was on the leaked RBS list few years back earning circa 2 grand a day.

The people earning 500 - 600 a day in finance/IT are not in senior roles nor are they necessarily really good programmers or BAs or application support analysts, they’re just people with a few years experience and some domain knowledge, that’s literally it.
 
I took a pay cut to move to a support role where I'd do data fixes and small code changes on production environments. That was 2018 and this year I'll be starting as a junior developer to again increase my exposure to code and to push on from there.

I dont regret the move from services to this, even if I've missed out on about 15k in pay rises the past two years. I'm very happy where I am and can afford my house, food etc.

Like the OP i suffer from anxiety to the point where I need beta blockers to keep my heart rate in check. The step back for health reasons has been really positive for me in that regard as I now have panic attacks rarely and don't need as much medication.
 
I switched industries in my late 30s, I'd ended up in management roles in investment banking tech. It was soul-destroying, boring work with a toxic working culture.

I packed it in to get into the games industry. I was only out of work for a couple of months before I landed an intermediate level programming role. My pay went from 100k+ to ~30k.

I didn't miss the money at all, and have since got back up to management level roles so it's not such a big difference these days.

Having a job that is challenging, exciting, interesting, a pleasant working environment, good work/life balance.....is worth far more than a fat salary.
 
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