Plan a career in IT: goal - £100k PA.

Mr^B said:
It's been mentioned before - but if you can combine IT/Development skills with finance/business knowledge, your value (and you salary) will go up.

There's a lot of mis-information about hedge funds. Yes, some of them pay well - some of them don't pay so well when they have a bad year (which is more often than not since 2008).

I've been at a hedge fund (the same one, sort of) for nearly 15 years - started as a Senior Dev on £50k and about 20% bonus in 2008, now I'm a Managing Director.

Current starting salary for an associate or recent graduate is up to £40k + 30% bonus.
Engineer - £40-£70k + up to 40% bonus
Senior - £70-£120k + 45%
Staff - £120-£140k + 45%
Principal - £140-£150k + 120%
Managing Director - £150k and up + 120% bonus + 100-200% Equity (vests over 3 years)

It took me 15 years to get from Senior Eng. to Managing director, although grades above "Senior" were only introduced in the last 4 years or so, presumably to attract FAANG developers who didn't want to go from Principal to "Senior".

That's all at the same company. So it is possible to stay where you are and get more salary year on year - although it is often easier to change jobs, but you then run the risk of not building up enough knowledge to make you valuable.

Associate to Engineer usually takes about a year for a decent dev though. So £100k total comp. after 2 years isn't impossible.
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Nice post, thanks. Finding solid information on hedge fund bonuses is pretty difficult.

Out of interest, what sort of interview process do you hold for engineers? I've interviewed at a couple of hedge funds over the years and had wildly different experiences, from pretty soft question/answer sessions with maybe a short theoretical problem solving section to absolutely hardcore algorithm problems on a whiteboard. With the latter being one of the big technology driven firms.
 
With regards to bonuses, there are some who pay out more than that, but it will be wildly variable. ie. in a good year you'll easily get 100%+ but in a bad year you could end up with 0%. We try and smooth that out, as do a few other hedge fund and similar investment managers that I know of.

Interview process is:

Phone screen (make sure you're human, vaguely match the CV and can communicate without grunting)
"Homework" - extending some existing code about a shopping cart and discount vouchers, looking for good use of data structures, nicely organised code, unit tests, etc.
Face to Face - review of the homework - all the devs in the team comment on the code during "Homework" and here the candidate can explain design choices etc. Then more technical questions, but nothing algorithmy - there's just no need, there's libraries and packages to re-use, the value to us in a developer is different to the majority of tech firms. I don't care if you can do a reverse linked-list or a merge sort with parallel merging (that's what ChatGPT is for now anyway).
HR/Management/"Where do you see yourself in 5 years time".

You'd be staggered and amazed at how badly people can get in the homework, from non-compiling code, to horrendous factory classes, not knowing what types to use where, over-use of interfaces, terrible unit tests. About 1 in 10 pass the homework stage. If that. But we do get a lot of applicants.
 
sigma said:
Once you hit a certain point the only 'upwards' step is into management from what I can see.
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This is often the case - but it is very hard to have the impact and influence to progress further upwards without having some management responsibilities, rather than being an individual contributor.

We do *try* and have that path, you *can* get to Principal without running a team/project or leading/managing an area - but it's hard and your value is diminished as you, as an individual, are not scalable. Whereas you are scalable and more valuable if you run a team and delegate/coach/mentor other people.
 
RobHu said:
Nice post, thanks. Finding solid information on hedge fund bonuses is pretty difficult.

Out of interest, what sort of interview process do you hold for engineers? I've interviewed at a couple of hedge funds over the years and had wildly different experiences, from pretty soft question/answer sessions with maybe a short theoretical problem solving section to absolutely hardcore algorithm problems on a whiteboard. With the latter being one of the big technology driven firms.
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I was at a quant hedge fund for just over 3 years in their IT Engineering team. Our hiring process was fairly stringent with an online test (that we had written) being sent to applicants and before an interview stage, interviews were then a bit more open ended with the usual HR type questions but then some more open ended 'problem solving' questions.

I know the developer/quant roles were pretty intense with an expectation of live coding/whiteboarding sessions to take place during interview stage.

Bonus wise depended on position but it was pretty chunky (30% for me as a Tech Lead role) but again it was dependent on how the 'fund' performed, I have since left the company but have heard it's not been as performant and so bonuses are down (but I imagine it's still a decent amount compared to other companies).
 
sigma said:
In your case @Diddums I'd be looking at your transferable skills. Coding is something you can build more experience with on the side whilst gaining some industry experience at the same time. Therefore, two roles spring to mind:

Business Analyst (essentially being the interface between users and projects, gathering and documenting requirements - needs nous and good people skills)
Project Manager (managing projects ;) including managing the Business Analysts but much more - core skills: people skills, management, spotting stuff ahead of time, getting buy-in etc, look up the rest) - Scrum master is a specific role you may want to look into, concerned with Agile projects.

I'd say go for the PM role, you already manage people right? High pressure work? You manage projects? All transferable skills. PM more likely to earn £100k but BA could be a good stepping stone to PM -BAs always seem to be in demand and still pay reasonable. PM roles lead to Programme Management roles, so you can earn £1000s a day claiming all the wins as your efforts but the losses as the PM's fault :)

Regarding £100k, it'd be interesting to hear about people's experiences, especially:

@Django x2 who once said he couldn't afford to live on £100k so is presumably well north

@kindai earns more than £100 an hour

@ChrisD. suggests contracting (highly paid) isn't as lucrative so is presumably on good £££

@Screeeech I seem to recall is a pretty senior dev/architect?

Edit, anyone work in IT sales? @Housey?
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I second this, I am far from technical (but did a CS degree). As a Senior PM (Product Manager) and growing on my career I can see £100k in my future. Not quite there yet though.

PMs sit at the intersection between business, technical and user experience.
 
IT Sales here.

About 2 years in, but with previous 8 years experience in BD support.

OTE of ~£95k, but this year will hit around £110k. But my base is only £70k, so I do envy those with basics that are £100+, it's a shame I'm no good at development...
 
haz_pro said:
IT Sales here.

About 2 years in, but with previous 8 years experience in BD support.

OTE of ~£95k, but this year will hit around £110k. But my base is only £70k, so I do envy those with basics that are £100+, it's a shame I'm no good at development...
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You’ll get 100+ base in sales in not too long I’d have thought?
 
Josh said:
Pre-Sales, 80k base with OTE of 100+

Gift of the gab and most companies will train you on the platforms you're selling if you impress them.
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ChrisD. said:
Get some AWS certs, grow a pair of ****, get good at blagging, and you'll be on over £100k in no time doing pre-sales.
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Skynet5 said:
This is true. Getting some certs in AWS is a good thing.

I've got the associate solution architect. Not particularly bothered about professional, but want to do a security one.
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Any particular companies to look for for this?

I’d like to get into tech sales and this seems appealing!

I’m also looking into transitioning into a BA role, early days but seems to be a good fit for me. I’m doing lots of work with our BA team and it’s really interesting me. Just not sure how to find an opening if I can’t do it internally.

Sales for the money (and it’s what I know) and BA for the interest…
 
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haz_pro said:
IT Sales here.

About 2 years in, but with previous 8 years experience in BD support.

OTE of ~£95k, but this year will hit around £110k. But my base is only £70k, so I do envy those with basics that are £100+, it's a shame I'm no good at development...
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Why do you envy 100+ salaries out of interest? Seems you're getting there easily enough anyway!
 
Ev0 said:
Is there a particular technology field you’d want to do this in?
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Not really, just curious in looking to see what I'd need to do to get in there.

FWIW, I'm a Operations Manager in financial services working primarily within the automotive industry at the moment. It's a vague title, but it's more about account management and compliance.
 
Just popping in to say I'm still reading this and really appreciate all the input everyone's given, some seriously good insight here and it's made me think twice of where I am career wise and where I want to be.

I've just accepted a new role as the technical manager of one of the UK's most prestigious museums (think Ben Stiller ;)) so I've got my work cut out on that one for a bit, it's far off the £100k target but it's a step in the right direction, and I think with some focus on the more corporate side of my industry (contract management, P&L, etc) I could probably push for the £100k in the next few years.

As for why £100k?

I started in London in 2006 moving furniture for £50 a day. I've pushed myself and am currently on £60k and I want to continue pushing. I have very personal reasons for needing to show up certain people in my history, and to prove to myself that despite having an extremely difficult youth, I'm still able to achieve something, and the proof of that is continuously improving my success levels in life, despite my very challenging youth and lack of education.

It's hard to explain, lets just go with "personal reasons" :p
 
Diddums said:
I've just accepted a new role as the technical manager of one of the UK's most prestigious museums
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Congrats, less than 1 month to make the first step (quite a contrast to the other thread with a goal like this). Also, I guess if you're motivated then pursuing this sort of target is kinda good in itself, you'll get somewhere with it... even if you don't hit the target immediately. The museum thing might be nice as a way of getting some different experience/responsibilities even if they're likely not big on pay - the equivalent role in a profitable organisation which you might pivot to in a couple of years' time likely pays a lot more too.
 
dowie said:
Congrats, less than 1 month to make the first step (quite a contrast to the other thread with a goal like this). Also, I guess if you're motivated then pursuing this sort of target is kinda good in itself, you'll get somewhere with it... even if you don't hit the target immediately. The museum thing might be nice as a way of getting some different experience/responsibilities even if they're likely not big on pay - the equivalent role in a profitable organisation which you might pivot to in a couple of years' time likely pays a lot more too.
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It's weird, this time last year I was kicked off a site for unknowlingly exposing fraud within the client's own business, I was then kicked up a gear in to my current role (hard services manager at the National Physical Laboratory) which has taught me more in the last 11 months than any other role I've ever been in.

I've moved from a mindset of "take what you can get and be grateful" to "I know my value, I know what I can bring to a client and I know where I want to be and how to get there".

It's weird, it's hard to explain. I think that being an uneducated filthy job stealing immigrant affected my confidence a lot when I first started but slowly working my way up from unblocking toilets for crap clients that nobody wants to managing the entire engineering team for one of the most prestigious clients in the country has helped me gain the confidence I need.

Now it's just a case of ticking the educational boxes and applying for jobs that I'd consider "out of my reach" and seeing what happens. I know I can satisfy the needs of a £100k+ job easily, it's just a case of jumping through the necessary hoops.

Apologies for the rambling, but the old grey matter has kicked in to life and this is great stuff for me to read back at a later date. Yes, GD has become my notebook.

"Dear Diary..."
 
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