Isn't that the point of the thread though? To share experiences? Appreciate you might not want to which is fair enough.
Plan a career in IT: goal - £100k PA.
- Thread starter Diddums
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Isn't that the point of the thread though? To share experiences? Appreciate you might not want to which is fair enough.
Soldato
After may years getting relatively nowhere as a technical lead in public service, I was asked to join a company as a full time developer in 2016. Although I'm pretty confident in my abilities, I've settled the past few years for relative mediocrity. 
Having kids changes your priorities a bit. A decent stable wage, good job security and the flexibility that working from home gives you becomes very valuable.
Growing up, I barely ever saw my dad. Perhaps that's influenced my choices. I've been really grateful to have been around for every stage of my kids growing up.
I know I could double my wage if I were to put all that aside, take more of a risk and bother to commute again. I certainly get enough offers from recruiters offering that. But doubt it would actually improve my life.
Having kids changes your priorities a bit. A decent stable wage, good job security and the flexibility that working from home gives you becomes very valuable.
Growing up, I barely ever saw my dad. Perhaps that's influenced my choices. I've been really grateful to have been around for every stage of my kids growing up.
I know I could double my wage if I were to put all that aside, take more of a risk and bother to commute again. I certainly get enough offers from recruiters offering that. But doubt it would actually improve my life.
Interesting thread, out of curiosity is anyone concerned about the proposed redundancies that big tech firms have announced recently? Have daily rates reduced?
Also what are the business opportunities like? For me if I was to change careers it would have to pay considerably more than my current salary (£50k+) and/or have the opportunity to work for myself. Unfortunately the latter isn't really a viable option within healthcare (unless you locum).
Also what are the business opportunities like? For me if I was to change careers it would have to pay considerably more than my current salary (£50k+) and/or have the opportunity to work for myself. Unfortunately the latter isn't really a viable option within healthcare (unless you locum).
The demand for decent engineers in IT, be that coders or architects is massive in the UK.
If I was to be made redundant in the next 6 months (I work for a bank) I could get a job paying the bills with some comfort almost instantly. Whether it was my current salary or an industry of interest? Maybe not.
But I probably could before my redundancy pay ran out.
Salesforce and AWS are just reacting to expected reduce demand of new projects. Makes sense. Looks like SF went a bit silly with their recruitment. Tbh I really dislike the platform, I'm surprised their bubble hasn't burst already a little. Lots of disconnected platforms from acquisition and a very poor platform to extend.
If I was to be made redundant in the next 6 months (I work for a bank) I could get a job paying the bills with some comfort almost instantly. Whether it was my current salary or an industry of interest? Maybe not.
But I probably could before my redundancy pay ran out.
Salesforce and AWS are just reacting to expected reduce demand of new projects. Makes sense. Looks like SF went a bit silly with their recruitment. Tbh I really dislike the platform, I'm surprised their bubble hasn't burst already a little. Lots of disconnected platforms from acquisition and a very poor platform to extend.
Hot area of IT at the moment is Data Engineering, can't see it cooling down any time soon as well, so if you're up for a bit of SQL, *********, ADF, Python, etc then you could be onto a nice little earner even as an entry level, data architects are on £££££ at the moment.
Agree I'm seeing a ton of demand for data warehouse projects. Clients usually end up selecting snow flake and trying to staff the projects is tough often have to outsource the technical side of the implementation.
As for getting 100k paying job go through snow flake, aws/azure training and have some decent SQL skills and you will almost certainly land a contract role over 500 a day even with little experience
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I really need to start to think about how I can progress my career....
I'm not a very (financially) ambitious person - I like to keep my life simple and luckily have a low cost of living, but after 10+ years in IT I'm on <£30k...I'm still barely moved on from service desk at this point (and still picking up a lot of service desk duties).
I'm also a bit limited as I have a minor disability meaning that I'm almost fully locked in to WFH roles. Starting to move in to Azure/MECM stuff so hopefully can improve soon.
From what I've seen in my career, one of the most likely routes to £100k would be database work, as even 5-7 years ago a good SQL DBA (contractor) in companies I've worked at has been £500/day.
Other than that I think a route would have to include some leadership aspect (which I know you're Ok with but is definitely not where I want to be at the moment), US based firms as tech seems very well compensated there, or anything highly specialised/rare (like COBOL, VHDL or something like that)
I'm not a very (financially) ambitious person - I like to keep my life simple and luckily have a low cost of living, but after 10+ years in IT I'm on <£30k...I'm still barely moved on from service desk at this point (and still picking up a lot of service desk duties).
I'm also a bit limited as I have a minor disability meaning that I'm almost fully locked in to WFH roles. Starting to move in to Azure/MECM stuff so hopefully can improve soon.
From what I've seen in my career, one of the most likely routes to £100k would be database work, as even 5-7 years ago a good SQL DBA (contractor) in companies I've worked at has been £500/day.
Other than that I think a route would have to include some leadership aspect (which I know you're Ok with but is definitely not where I want to be at the moment), US based firms as tech seems very well compensated there, or anything highly specialised/rare (like COBOL, VHDL or something like that)
Soldato
It's not just them though, the market in tech has definitely taken a downturn, all of the big FAANG companies are doing layoffs for the most part, 50-60k people now out of work, albeit not all devs/techs but still - as @Screeeech is seeing (who I believe is a pretty senior SE from AWS) it's not quite as simple as it was 6 months ago. Sustained growth seems to be plateauing. I know my place has pretty much had a hiring freeze for the last year despite us being massively understaffed. Lost 12 people in the network team alone and not replaced them. It'll be an interesting year I think.
100k is a decent target, but base line it's fairly difficult I would say. Working in tech with a decent RSU/Bonus scheme can get you there though. If we get bonuses this year I should hit about 90-95k. If not I'll see how the market is, been asked about plenty of contracts around NSX and vRA.
Soldato
Who cares about 100k......
www.linkedin.com
If only I lived closer.
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If only I lived closer.
Over 35 years in the IT sector, though these days in leadership rather than front line sales.
£100K easy to get to in IT sales once you prove yourself, but you need to be in the larger tech players really to get there quickly.
@Diddums if you want to discuss feel free to message me.
That's certainly useful, perhaps get yourself a junior developer role and don't worry too much initially about salary. Important thing is to find something you enjoy and excel at it, IF you excel at it then the key after that if you want to earn $$$ as a developer is to either get into finance or to grind leetcode problems and land yourself a job at a big tech firm.
Sorry but the answer to all of those questions is "it depends", not to be difficult for the sake of it but it really does depend on you and your interests and abilities, IT is a very broad area.
For example, you seem like you're a people person, in theory, you might be able to land some sort of IT sales role (probably not enterprise software though) akin to a sort of call center role, absolutely kill it and earn 100k+ over the course of the next year, of course, you might also land that type of IT sales role and have it destroy you and make you wish you'd stuck in your previous role. The enterprise software sales roles can pay several hundred thousand or even over a million in some cases but you won't walk into one of those and you don't necessarily get them from having killed it in the 100k OTE call centre type roles either, they can be more of a sideways move from being a senior consultant or product manager or account manager etc..
Likewise, you say you love coding, perhaps you've got a GitHub full of little side projects and could walk straight into a developer role, doing a few years as a developer (or indeed a BA or PM) can lead to contract roles and in general, they tend to pay over 100k. If you're really really good at coding then you might become a developer at say a prop trading firm and take home 500k+ but again most people won't ever be able to be at that level no matter how hard they try.
In finance you'd probably need to get in via a vendor or consultancy first, you don't generally get hired directly by a financial institution with no prior experience unless you join on a grad scheme. There are plenty of mediocre Java developers out there in banks but they also have a CV with relevant industry experience and they vaguely know what an interest rate swap is.
So it's totally possible to earn 100k+ in a junior or non-management IT role but there are obvious barriers either raw ability (whether that's a high EQ and a sales role or a high IQ and an elite dev role) or simply finding a way to get some relevant experience/domain knowledge or simply taking a risk with contracting... else everyone would be doing it!
If you're not in a tech firm that requires leetcode problems or killing it in sales or you're not in finance or you're not contracting then compensation can be very, very different and 100k would simply be unheard of unless you're managing people.
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LOL to be fair that's probably one way of doing it, the vendor I worked at would absolutely not have had an inexperienced person anywhere near a pre-sales role, I guess AWS and cloud computing, in general, is hot right now and this stuff isn't necessarily too complicated.
Pre-sales at a big enterprise software provider generally needs people with a few years of relevant experience, ideally working on that same product as a BA or consultant, a lot of damage can be done by someone clueless filling out RFPs/RFQs.
Soldato
Soldato
Working for an F1 team (or F1 itself) might seem like a fun idea, but it really isn't. Badly paid because people will queue up to work there, and usually terrible working conditions. The staff turnover at most F1 teams is crazy once people realise it's not a glamourous job.Who cares about 100k......
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If only I lived closer.
I'm sure it would be fun if you're a legit engineer working for one of the teams, especially if you travel with the team too and have some role monitoring and providing input to the decision makers etc.
But yeah, working for the main F1 organsation and as a web developer, I think any initial excitement would be rather misplaced and would wear off very rapidly.
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Soldato
AI specialist at a major tech company probably straight from uni you would get that. For other roles probably 5+ years depending on ability and company.
Soldato
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I like that your more ambitious than foxeye. Sorry I have nothing of value to add, I'm in the same boat, looked into coding and cloud certs to make a change, wish I had done something 10 years ago but its easy to just plod.
Soldato
Sales Engineer / Account Manager / Solutions Specialist - particularly if you make it into a major vendor / hyperscaler
110+ basic plus a 60/40 base to bonus split on your total comp will see you doing 180-200 without even having to over achieve… if you do you could be hitting accelerators getting you to the likes of 300% on the bonus portion having you at over 300k.
Solution sales is basically being a good translator between technology and business
110+ basic plus a 60/40 base to bonus split on your total comp will see you doing 180-200 without even having to over achieve… if you do you could be hitting accelerators getting you to the likes of 300% on the bonus portion having you at over 300k.
Solution sales is basically being a good translator between technology and business
I think a lot of what @dowie says is very true.
My background is a network engineer since around 2001, I've worked in the UK/US and Ireland most notably in the games industry (esports) and then for a FANNG (Amazon)
To be brutally honest, £100k as a techie (be it coder/engineer/whatever) is quite rare outside of big tech companies, vendors and finance - especially here in the UK. Traditionally the UK doesn't pay high salaries, previously I've been doing an identical role as a counterpart in LA - who has been on over $300k, when I've been on just over £100k, the same is true with Ireland - who in general pay a lot more, but then again Ireland is an absolutely hellishly expensive place to live and you pay like 48-52% tax and a frozen pizza from Eurospar costs like £900.
I've also found, (for me personally) that to make the really big salaries you start to drift away from craft and focus much more on leadership and experience. Most of the roles I go for now, are more about understanding the business, making difficult decisions and innovating new systems or ideas - where there's no 'turn-key' off the shelf thing you can buy to solve it.
As opposed to being an engineer who's focused on pure delivery and can just silo themselves in Pycharm or terminal or whatever, and just deliver stuff very well, day in day out without missing a beat.
Recently I looked at a really senior role for one of the biggest UK ISPs - literally a top-of-the-tree role, they wouldn't even make £80k, and their recruiter was complaining to me that they can't get anybody in for an interview, because everyone they talk to who could do the job (not that many), are already on 6 figures plus. They're trying to get someone in on a visa from overseas who will do it, which is sort of silly - because it would be far cheaper, simpler and easier to just pay £120-150k and get someone decent right off the bat, but the UK has this stupid, dogmatic way of having "salary bands" which cannot be broken, or changed.
Right now I'm at the end stages of an opportunity which will pay around £200k for a US based tech company as a remote worker in the UK. But a huge part of that role isn't really network engineering craft - it's technical leadership, making decisions and running things. With big tech companies it gets to a point where they expect you to go and find the problems, develop products and figure out new ways to do things, and that takes a lot of experience, a hell of a lot of experience.
I've worked with young engineers who are frankly terrifyingly good at the craft, but most of them don't really know how to even communicate with others very well, let alone understand the business, understand the customer or be able to talk to someone at VP level. It takes many years to get to that point (or it did for me) and that's where you start to really add value and can ask for more money.
There's also ladder grinding, a good friend and colleague of mine from the games industry who recently presented on the stage at AWS Reinvent, was always a good engineer - but he was very very good at going to meetings. He'd always be in the high-profile meetings, all the time - his name got around, and he did it for years - he's making around $400-500k now because of it, because he learnt how to play the game and he's very good at it.
For me personally, my route really will stay within big tech companies be it vendors, FANNGs, or stuff like CDN/games industry - that stuff is in my blood, I know how those companies work and I've got enough medals/stripes/whatever, to always be in that arena.
I did look at finance a long time ago, I have some friends who earn silly money at hedge funds (£300-500k) as regular engineers doing low-latency, they're nothing really special but they know finance, however - I barely even know what stocks or swaps are, it's an alien world to me, it just doesn't interest me and probably never will.
In a post-covid world where I ended up medicated for depression, I just want my dog and a cosy house to live in somewhere in the country, go fishing and just enjoy life, without a job requiring me to live in London or commute 3-4 hours a day.
Don't know if that helps you at all @Diddums ..
My personal advice, would be to go for it if you can make the time and you have the drive to learn, but don't let money motivate you - let the curiosity guide you and if you do that, the money will come naturally.
My background is a network engineer since around 2001, I've worked in the UK/US and Ireland most notably in the games industry (esports) and then for a FANNG (Amazon)
To be brutally honest, £100k as a techie (be it coder/engineer/whatever) is quite rare outside of big tech companies, vendors and finance - especially here in the UK. Traditionally the UK doesn't pay high salaries, previously I've been doing an identical role as a counterpart in LA - who has been on over $300k, when I've been on just over £100k, the same is true with Ireland - who in general pay a lot more, but then again Ireland is an absolutely hellishly expensive place to live and you pay like 48-52% tax and a frozen pizza from Eurospar costs like £900.
I've also found, (for me personally) that to make the really big salaries you start to drift away from craft and focus much more on leadership and experience. Most of the roles I go for now, are more about understanding the business, making difficult decisions and innovating new systems or ideas - where there's no 'turn-key' off the shelf thing you can buy to solve it.
As opposed to being an engineer who's focused on pure delivery and can just silo themselves in Pycharm or terminal or whatever, and just deliver stuff very well, day in day out without missing a beat.
Recently I looked at a really senior role for one of the biggest UK ISPs - literally a top-of-the-tree role, they wouldn't even make £80k, and their recruiter was complaining to me that they can't get anybody in for an interview, because everyone they talk to who could do the job (not that many), are already on 6 figures plus. They're trying to get someone in on a visa from overseas who will do it, which is sort of silly - because it would be far cheaper, simpler and easier to just pay £120-150k and get someone decent right off the bat, but the UK has this stupid, dogmatic way of having "salary bands" which cannot be broken, or changed.
Right now I'm at the end stages of an opportunity which will pay around £200k for a US based tech company as a remote worker in the UK. But a huge part of that role isn't really network engineering craft - it's technical leadership, making decisions and running things. With big tech companies it gets to a point where they expect you to go and find the problems, develop products and figure out new ways to do things, and that takes a lot of experience, a hell of a lot of experience.
I've worked with young engineers who are frankly terrifyingly good at the craft, but most of them don't really know how to even communicate with others very well, let alone understand the business, understand the customer or be able to talk to someone at VP level. It takes many years to get to that point (or it did for me) and that's where you start to really add value and can ask for more money.
There's also ladder grinding, a good friend and colleague of mine from the games industry who recently presented on the stage at AWS Reinvent, was always a good engineer - but he was very very good at going to meetings. He'd always be in the high-profile meetings, all the time - his name got around, and he did it for years - he's making around $400-500k now because of it, because he learnt how to play the game and he's very good at it.
For me personally, my route really will stay within big tech companies be it vendors, FANNGs, or stuff like CDN/games industry - that stuff is in my blood, I know how those companies work and I've got enough medals/stripes/whatever, to always be in that arena.
I did look at finance a long time ago, I have some friends who earn silly money at hedge funds (£300-500k) as regular engineers doing low-latency, they're nothing really special but they know finance, however - I barely even know what stocks or swaps are, it's an alien world to me, it just doesn't interest me and probably never will.
In a post-covid world where I ended up medicated for depression, I just want my dog and a cosy house to live in somewhere in the country, go fishing and just enjoy life, without a job requiring me to live in London or commute 3-4 hours a day.
Don't know if that helps you at all @Diddums ..
My personal advice, would be to go for it if you can make the time and you have the drive to learn, but don't let money motivate you - let the curiosity guide you and if you do that, the money will come naturally.
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