The 5 year plan to £50k

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badgeruk said:
That's good going. I thought I was doing alright at 27 earning just over 30k with a masters but then I know I could earn more I just love my job too much. Which is worth its weight in gold to me.
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Thanks, I enjoy my job too, has it's good and bad days tho :) but I think every job has that. I aim to have a decent life/work balance so getting home by 6pm and working 35hr weeks + free weekends I'm quite happy.

I can't say I was chasing money only, all about balance in my opinion. Right now the money is important because I want/need to save up for a house deposit but further down the line we'll see.. I'll probably be aiming to get my mortgage out of the way asap.
 
Funnily enough I was thinking about this this morning as I walked back to my block, in the last year my salary has doubled and is now up to £36k (age 25) important to bear in mind the fact that it costs me peanuts to live/eat too :) Unfortunately there's no chance of it doubling again over the next year:P Although in say anywhere between 5 and 15 years (realistically) I'd hopefully be able to jump in to a (almost identical) job which would earn me six figures; after a year of £14000 a year while training :eek:

Anywho, went to college, waste of time; hated it and my grades reflected that. never went to uni, nor ever had any interest in going :)
 
Would people mind also posting what it is they do, if they post their salaries in this thread? Unless it's super secret.
 
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My salary isn't super secret, but I don't want to "show off".

I lead (Head of / Director level) an innovation and change management programme for a large multi national multidisciplinary engineering firm.
 
Freefaller said:
My salary isn't super secret, but I don't want to "show off".

I lead (Head of / Director level) an innovation and change management programme for a large multi national multidisciplinary engineering firm.
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Sounds really interesting. How does innovation and change management cross over? I'm curious as I know the change management space, so interested how it works in a MD Engineering place!
 
Sorry I phrased that question really badly. What I meant was, "Could people also post what it is they do, when they post their salaries."
 
Interesting thread to read. I remember when I was in 6th Form 10 years ago my tutor turned around and said, "If you don't go to university, you'll never have a successful life". This was in the prime of "you need a degree to get any form of work" time but I flatly refused, much to his annoyance. Fast forward, now 28, I'm on approx £48k, with 10 year salary forecast well into 6 figures. It sounds good but it cost me nearly £60k of privately funded training to get to this stage and my job works me approximately 300 hours a month, so I feel like I've earned every penny I get in my pay cheque!

To get here I started on a job of £12.5k, then moved up to £18k, then I had a really bad year in 2014-15 where I earned £5.5k. I got my break last year at 27 and haven't looked back.

If I'm honest, I would happily sacrifice a good wage for quality of life. Quality is undefinable, for some it's home time, for some it's doing something they love. Tailor your life to seek quality and then think about pay. I'd much rather be happy on £25k than miserable on £100k. With that said I'm very lucky to count myself in the bracket of loving every second of my job, even if they do work me like a dog and sometimes I need to wake up at 4am.

Best of luck OP, don't give up hope, just aim for something you want to do in life and everything else will slot in.
 
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randomshenans said:
Sounds really interesting. How does innovation and change management cross over? I'm curious as I know the change management space, so interested how it works in a MD Engineering place!
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Well our firm is going through a massive and ambitious growth plan, to move up the ranks in the industry capitalising on our expertise and multidisciplinary skills. Owing to this massive change in business strategy, we need to manage a few workstreams, such as:

  • idea management (ideas lead to solutions/innovation and opportunities)
  • knowledge and knowledge management
  • integration of a common data environment (our industry is awful at sharing information, and single source of truth)
  • achieving BIM level 2
Those are some of the main ones, clearly there is a commercial transformation project ongoing, improving our CRM and integrating that into our CDE, financial transformation and there is even an IT transformation project on going. All of this ties in together to be part of our transformational journey.

Innovations come from ideas, ideas provide potentially solutions to problems, opportunities to try new things, new processes/procedures/materials/ways of working etc.... Ideas can be disruptive, and we have to be agile enough to change how we work to take on board these opportunities without them turning into blockers or halting how we work.

We consider innovation to be the process of translating an idea, invention or process into a product or service that creates value or for which customers will pay - for that we need to have our bid teams, work winning teams, business development teams, design teams, engineering teams, commercial teams, PR teams, comms teams, operations teams, plant teams, basically everyone... on board to be part of these new processes/products/services as they are rolled out, or trialled, or developed. Quite a task!

If we're not all aligned with one another, and considering we are multi-national, if the arse doesn't know what the elbow is doing, and we offer different pricing models, different solutions, or promise to deliver things we have no capability in delivering, we end up not making any profit in what is already a very low yield industry. Engineering firms consider anything between 1.5-3% fantastic. We're aiming to get as close to 10% as possible, something which is not common in our industry at all. The design houses, and consultants can achieve this, but their roles are specialist, we have a clear opportunity to improve our business, by reducing inefficiencies, bring ideas to life, and work collaboratively to achieve this. Sounds simple, but tying all these disciplines together in a very silo'ed industry is a massive challenge.

Hence the change management piece - so I'm doing a lot of work with our cultural development team, our organisational effectiveness team, as well as spending a fair amount of time, with my peers in the senior leadership team making them understand that change, innovation, culture is nurtured from the top and grown from the bottom - and we need to meet them halfway. Often middle management is where a lot of the blockers to change/innovation happens.

So this is where I try and transcend the business, and fortunately I have a strong comms team on my side, as well as a group of like minded individuals who are all bought into our change programme and business growth plan. We're still a family business and not a PLC, so it does give us a bit of freedom to explore opportunities more quickly.

For example, the company didn't exploit it's R&D tax relief - it didn't realise it could. Engineers solve problems every day, and don't talk about it, and that leads to a huge loss of opportunity across the business. I've retrospectively secured nearly £1m of R&D relief for 2015... We just need to make that sort of behaviour organic, encourage safe risk taking, encourage openness, and we are building the tools (CDE, knowledge management, BIM level 2, etc..) to allow us to better do it. The tools are just enablers, they don't magically create a culture of collaboration and innovation - but they make information easier to handle and help people help themselves as well as hopefully working together more effectively! There is a lot of human interaction and comms still required to keep this thing alive, and to continue to add value.

This is just a very short overview - happy to chat more in depth off-line :)

FoxEye said:
Sorry I phrased that question really badly. What I meant was, "Could people also post what it is they do, when they post their salaries."
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That makes more sense!! :)
 
Uther said:
Was it this thread that got you moving? :p
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Ha, I have always been a competitive type. Doing well within my peers, probably out earning all the university goers bar one, but tbh they did just go for the 3 year **** up... even back then I wasn't doing too bad in comparison.

I wanted to move out so that motivated me, then I acquired a taste for finer things. I like my watches, looking into a new car currently. Enjoy my gin and getting quite the collection, me and my partner enjoy a good meal (food snobs :P). I wouldn't say we are materialistic, but we want a life with no financial constraints.

This thread created some hunger, and highlighted what is achievable with some graft. Helped re-light the fire. Plan on doing some exams once I pass my probation.

It's not the route for everyone, but you got to do what works I guess. Now my partner is close to me salary wise again I best work harder :P
 
It is tough, but I've worked in a much more toxic large FTS100 company! And they're making and have made a huge amount of senior management changes (of which I am one!) to enable this to go ahead.

We'll get there - and I'd rather do this incrementally and get some good solid foundations (excuse the pun) in place that we can build on. Once we have a stable strategy that everyone has bought into , and everyone can see is functioning, it makes future changes that little bit easier. Theoretically... :D :D
 
Freefaller said:
Well our firm is going through a massive and ambitious growth plan, to move up the ranks in the industry capitalising on our expertise and multidisciplinary skills. Owing to this massive change in business strategy, we need to manage a few workstreams, such as:

  • idea management (ideas lead to solutions/innovation and opportunities)
  • knowledge and knowledge management
  • integration of a common data environment (our industry is awful at sharing information, and single source of truth)
  • achieving BIM level 2
Those are some of the main ones, clearly there is a commercial transformation project ongoing, improving our CRM and integrating that into our CDE, financial transformation and there is even an IT transformation project on going. All of this ties in together to be part of our transformational journey.

Innovations come from ideas, ideas provide potentially solutions to problems, opportunities to try new things, new processes/procedures/materials/ways of working etc.... Ideas can be disruptive, and we have to be agile enough to change how we work to take on board these opportunities without them turning into blockers or halting how we work.

We consider innovation to be the process of translating an idea, invention or process into a product or service that creates value or for which customers will pay - for that we need to have our bid teams, work winning teams, business development teams, design teams, engineering teams, commercial teams, PR teams, comms teams, operations teams, plant teams, basically everyone... on board to be part of these new processes/products/services as they are rolled out, or trialled, or developed. Quite a task!

If we're not all aligned with one another, and considering we are multi-national, if the arse doesn't know what the elbow is doing, and we offer different pricing models, different solutions, or promise to deliver things we have no capability in delivering, we end up not making any profit in what is already a very low yield industry. Engineering firms consider anything between 1.5-3% fantastic. We're aiming to get as close to 10% as possible, something which is not common in our industry at all. The design houses, and consultants can achieve this, but their roles are specialist, we have a clear opportunity to improve our business, by reducing inefficiencies, bring ideas to life, and work collaboratively to achieve this. Sounds simple, but tying all these disciplines together in a very silo'ed industry is a massive challenge.

Hence the change management piece - so I'm doing a lot of work with our cultural development team, our organisational effectiveness team, as well as spending a fair amount of time, with my peers in the senior leadership team making them understand that change, innovation, culture is nurtured from the top and grown from the bottom - and we need to meet them halfway. Often middle management is where a lot of the blockers to change/innovation happens.

So this is where I try and transcend the business, and fortunately I have a strong comms team on my side, as well as a group of like minded individuals who are all bought into our change programme and business growth plan. We're still a family business and not a PLC, so it does give us a bit of freedom to explore opportunities more quickly.

For example, the company didn't exploit it's R&D tax relief - it didn't realise it could. Engineers solve problems every day, and don't talk about it, and that leads to a huge loss of opportunity across the business. I've retrospectively secured nearly £1m of R&D relief for 2015... We just need to make that sort of behaviour organic, encourage safe risk taking, encourage openness, and we are building the tools (CDE, knowledge management, BIM level 2, etc..) to allow us to better do it. The tools are just enablers, they don't magically create a culture of collaboration and innovation - but they make information easier to handle and help people help themselves as well as hopefully working together more effectively! There is a lot of human interaction and comms still required to keep this thing alive, and to continue to add value.

This is just a very short overview - happy to chat more in depth off-line :)



That makes more sense!! :)
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Business lingo bingo right there.

You got a full house :p
 
FoxEye said:
Sorry I phrased that question really badly. What I meant was, "Could people also post what it is they do, when they post their salaries."
Click to expand...

I am an Insurance claims adjuster specialising in Marine (Hull & Machinery, Cargo, Fine Art & Specie), Energy and Aviation. However have experience in Property (1st and 3rd Party).

Trying to get some Cyber experience under my belt, but I am not sure anyone in the Market actually knows what they are doing :D Underwriters and Claims alike.
 
FoxEye said:
Would people mind also posting what it is they do, if they post their salaries in this thread? Unless it's super secret.
Click to expand...


My slong is this Long:
Machine Learning for a US startup. I earn around £85K base, variable bonus but decent stock options. Recent talk that we are underpaid so looking for an extra 10% bump, fingers crossed. 5 years experience + PhD. Could get paid a lot more elsewhere but it is a fun job, work from home with zero commute, flexible hours. There is a lot more to life than salary. I would happily get a job paying 25% less if I could work a 4 day week but the overheads for a company make this infeasible which is a shame.
 
One of the most important things when trying to advance in your career (and achieve higher salary) is to always aim to equip yourself with skills which are:
a) In demand
b) Scarce

Specialisation is one way of achieving this, but has its limitations. It is difficult to stay at the leading-edge in your chosen specialism (particularly if this requires constant re-training/certification) - and if shifts in markets or technology renders your specialism or training/certification irrelevant or unnecessary then you have a big problem as you don't have a broader skill-set to fall back on.

Much better to have a decent level of specialisation, but also have a broad generalist knowledge and skill-set as well (so-called 'T-shape' skills). If you are able to have skills and knowledge which spans across both business domains and IT then so much the better.

https://agileleanlife.com/t-shaped-skills-every-area-life/

I left school in the late 80s with decent A levels but for various reasons did not go to university. Like others I was told I'd never have a successful career without a degree. I went straight into a job in banking and worked my way up to a mid-assistant management level after about 6 years. However during this time I did everything possible to move around different departments and get a broad knowledge across the whole business (marketing, finance, risk etc.).

I also started to get involved in IT developments from the business side (e.g. specifying requirements for reporting, databases etc.). Did lots of self-study and taught myself programming (Visual Basic, VBA, SQL) and managed to get a low-management role leading a small team on a data warehouse/BI development in the bank. Spent this time further developing specialist skills (e.g. business analysis, finance/profitability analytics, software engineering).

Got head-hunted by a big data warehouse/analytics company a few years later (with around 50% rise in package vs. my job at the bank :eek:) and have spent the last 17 years doing business/IT consultancy at that same company working with various clients around the world.

I have received pretty much zero formal training during the last 20 years. I have no formal post A-level qualifications of any type. However I have developed a good reputation for successful implementations and delivering value to clients - and that is pretty much all that matters in this industry.

Salary-wise, I've not quite made it into the 'top 1%' of UK earners but I'm comfortably in the top 2% so happy with that. (go look up the numbers in the Office of National Statistics tables if you're that interested in actual figures :p )
 
Selekt0r said:
I also started to get involved in IT developments from the business side (e.g. specifying requirements for reporting, databases etc.). Did lots of self-study and taught myself programming (Visual Basic, VBA, SQL) and managed to get a low-management role leading a small team on a data warehouse/BI development in the bank. Spent this time further developing specialist skills (e.g. business analysis, finance/profitability analytics, software engineering).
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Hi :)

Just want to focus down on this paragraph for a moment.

Did your self-taught programming skills help you land this job? I notice it was a management job rather than strictly a dev job. Did you have to demonstrate those programming skills to get the job? Or was the job more about managing a team rather than doing development yourself?

Curious to know, as most jobs involving programming in any capacity expect you to have a portfolio of work you can demonstrate, and normally years of experience in a similar role.
 
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