If you're sure you will be working over those contracted hours anyway, it's no big deal sure. But I do get why expectation vs reality regarding hours would slightly annoy you. I guess in hindsight the focus on the additional 2k detracted you from focusing on smaller details.
The 5 year plan to £50k
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If you're sure you will be working over those contracted hours anyway, it's no big deal sure. But I do get why expectation vs reality regarding hours would slightly annoy you. I guess in hindsight the focus on the additional 2k detracted you from focusing on smaller details.
I don't know about accountancy but I'd have expected to see 37.5 hours, 7.5 hours a day with an hour for lunch seems pretty standard - not worth quibbling over, as you say the contracted hours are meaningless in a professional environment - you're paid an annual salary (and bonus) which you had the chance to negotiate, not an hourly wage.
If I gave you a simple answer, it would be the wrong answer.
I guess like just about everybody else, my reasons are complex; a mixture of fears, hopes, conflicting desires, insecurity. It would be easy to point and say, "He's too lazy to..." or something along those lines. The trouble is I'm internally conflicted about just about everything. Nothing is every simple.
I don't even understand myself a lot of the time. Some of my ideas are only half-formed and fleeting. These rarely amount to anything.
Why does anyone do what they do? For the most trivial of actions you could probably give a simple, accurate answer. "I ate that doughnut because I saw it and it looked good." "But I didn't eat the second because I'm going to a party tonight and I want to watch my figure." "But actually I nearly did eat it because my willpower let me down." "But then I remembered a promise I made to my Dad and..."
What I'm trying to get at in a very roundabout kind of way is that there is no simple answer for why I'm not sitting on £50k or shooting up the wealth ladder.
Maybe I'm not capable? Maybe I'm not clever enough. Maybe I'm not driven enough. Maybe I'm too soft.
Maybe I'm not the kind of person I thought I was?
Maybe my priorities aren't even set in stone. Maybe my priorities aren't concrete because I have so few responsibilities that I can go whichever way the wind blows. Or maybe that's because I'm too stupid/apathetic.
I can't give you a simple answer. I don't have a clear picture myself.
That probably wasn't the answer you wanted
Did you even try? I think it would be pretty disrespectful to everyone who offered you great advice if you didn't at least try.
If the only outcome to this is that you got a cat then you should feel ashamed.
That probably wasn't the answer you wanted
Do you still want to hit that target though?
Yes, but not at any cost.
For example, a lot of suggestions naturally involved moving to the capital (or in fact anywhere other than Cornwall). I know from the experiences of others that there is good money to be earned elsewhere. But for family reasons I have chosen to stay down here.
That's not to say people down here are not making £50K... of course they are, but it's less common. And mostly they all have degrees, too.
But it highlights how I'm not prepared to make certain sacrifices that maybe I would need to to increase my earnings.
One of the biggest obstacles to getting ahead that I currently face is a total lack of self-belief. I've got old, fat and stupid - although I was never all that smart to begin with
When I look at people earning good sums my first thought tends to be, "I could never do that." With that kind of attitude towards myself nothing good is ever going to happen. But getting rid of that negative voice and negative perception of myself is something I've always struggled with my whole life, with little to no success.Or maybe I'm just making excuses. At this point there's no value in self-delusion, so I'm prepared to accept that maybe the only issue is that I'm a pretty weak-willed, lazy, ignorant fool. I wouldn't hire me for any role.
Soldato
I don't mean to be disrespectful, and I've not really participated in this thread beyond reading what has been said by others, but is this not just a massive copout?
In the last couple of posts you've made in this thread you've highlighted areas of yourself and your life that you're clearly not happy with, you would like to earn more, you feel you're fat, weak willed, lazy, ignorant. You've pointed to aspects of your circumstances and character and taken the position that you cannot succeed because x. Why not fix x? You feel you're ignorant? Take a class. Overweight? Take up running or another form of exercise. You're lazy? Take some responsibility and try, once you get through the first stage it gets easier. Fix some of that stuff and maybe your sense of self worth improves, maybe you start to see your potential, then maybe you can start to see how you can achieve your financial aspirations by taking the advice of those in this thread.
A couple of anecdotes, I graduated right at the start of the 2008 crash. I took a few temp gigs doing menial labour (and one in a debt recovery call centre, oh the horror!) to make ends meet. I looked for permanent work for 12 months and eventually managed to get a £15k p/a job with a County Council, lucky as I was pretty low at this point. I am good at what I do and I earned modest increases in role and pay over about 5 years. Eventually it got to the point where I felt like I was ready to shake things up so I took a job in London, a huge risk because it meant a massive overhaul of my personal life, my commute went from 30 mins each way to 2.5 hrs, 1.5 hrs of which is cycling, each way. I've been in that job for a year and am now moving to the next role, I can now afford a second car, reducing the commute time significantly. and will be in a role that I'm excited about and in a City that I love working in. Moral of the story, this year has been hard, really hard, with the commute, a massive step up in responsibility and working in a job I'm not fond of to get the experience I needed in a higher role. However, I have doubled my base salary in 12 months as accelerated progression was what I was aiming for. If you're willing to be uncomfortable for a little while it can pay off and get you to where you think you want to be, but life is a bit like bartering, to get more of 1 thing you often need to give up something else, at least temporarily.
In a similar but slightly different situation my wife was a retail manager, she hated her job to the point where it made her ill. She sacked it off with no back up plan, it put a huge strain on our finances but she eventually found a lower paying job that she loves and now has quality of life. In addition, because she also wants success, she started attending night schools and now is a trained silversmith who designs, makes, and sells her own silver jeweller. We currently sell at craft fares and are looking to expand online this year. She has no real schooling beyond GCSEs and a couple of A-levels, you don't need a degree to be successful.
I don't know what I'm trying to achieve by writing this but I think you'd benefit from taking a proper look at your circumstances and trying to understand that the things you are complaining about are not permanent barriers to success, they're obstacles to be surmounted.
Best of luck with it.
Soldato
A lot of people will not do this though. It's the whole "I want a better life and good salary but I'm not willing to make the needed sacrifices for it". What people often don't realize as well is that nothing is forever. If you take a job somewhere to further yourself, you only have to do it 18months/2yrs and move on. By that point you're further up the ladder and can always move back. Fear of change is what holds a lot of people back. I have had a lot of people say that I'm lucky and they wish they could have done something like us and move countries. When there is literally nothing stopping anyone, other than fear and a change from comfort that you currently have.
I've told this before, and it's not an "oh look at me" but just my story; I was headhunting at 21, earning good money for my age (22k), then was headhunted myself for a job in London. It was good for me and a step up, but the commute and the job in the end was crap. The company was useless and although it took me to 32k eventually by 23, in 2008 they went bust due to the market crash. Left with no money that month (they told us they couldn't run salaries on 21st of Feb) and no job, or people looking for recruitment people I decided to switch to IT. I eventually, after a ton of applications, got a role as an IT Support analyst for 17k. I'd had to move back home at 24! I was promoted there and learnt as much as I could. Then had a run in with law (caught smoking weed, full disclosure) which wouldn't have been a problem but I was working at a police constabulary. I was suspended and had to search for ANOTHER new job. In the end I applied for hundreds but got 5 interviews and 3 offers. I chose a small IT consultancy around Cambs, worked on so many projects for my own clients and was on 28k at age 25. I was there a year and the owner, who I got on really well with asked if I wanted to go contract like he did (or take a 5k pay rise), as he knew I was hungry. He offered to line me up with a contract (a client needed a full time contract resource and he thought of me) so I took the chance, even though my gf and 2 kids had just moved down to Cambs to be with me. I chose the risky option and took 295 a day. (about 74k a year)
I did that for 6 months (knew the contract wasn't going to be long term) until I thought I'd see what was out there on jobserve and chucked my CV a few really random places, one was in Basel. I was on holiday in the Alps and got a call asking me for an interview and if I could go that week in person, so I did. I drove up there and did 6hrs of interview and took the job. My wife and kids stayed in the Uk for the first 6 months and I went back at weekends when I could, but that 6 months was tough. Really tough.I literally drove down there in my 650quid Saxo VTR with a couple of bags of clothes and my computer. I didn't even know they spoke German in Basel. Anyway, after that hard 6 months I got my wife and kids over. I started on 500 a day/ 125k a year at 26.
I kept that role for 6.5yrs and in that time I've built nearly 2 of my own companies on the side. Hopefully they'll all come off and I won't need to worry about contracting and in that time I moved my rate up and changed my role to be more consulting/ PM based. Last year I billed 180k and I'm 32.
I'm now sat jobless with no contract and it's been great ha it's been a nice break as I've worked my arse off. Even then it's not a break, I flew to London on Weds to speak at an HR blockchain event, but it's a bit more freedom. While I'm pretty sure I'm going to be offered another contract from my meeting today, I don't think I'll top my previous billings but I'm good with that. I've had more ups and downs than I can think of, some really dark times, some really high times, but it's been a real journey. Not just for me but my whole family. My wife had a good experience in the NHS and had to leave that behind to go to a country she didn't speak the language, same with my kids joining a French school with no French knowledge at all. We're more resilient than you think we are. We're capable of a lot more than you give yourself credit for, too. It just takes a bit of a gamble sometimes. What's the worst thing that could happen? You don't like it and move back? Doesn't sound like a bad thing when you look at the worst possible outcomes.
Soldato
A lot of people could learn from this, and it's not just about money either, we all tend to focus on that but if you want anything in life you're likely going to need to sacrifice and take a risk. Relocate for love, take a risky job for swift promotion, leave a job you hate for a better quality of life, make sacrifices to develop your career, hell even deciding to forego some of the above to have kids. The hardest two parts are making the decision and then taking the first step, after that it gets easier, and if it doesn't then just change it up again, at least you tried and now you have more info to go on when it comes to the path you want to go down.
I do enjoy reading people's success stories but I wish I could get some more detail on how they jumped up the ladder, one rung at a time.
For me it often comes back to the chicken and egg problem.
OK, so I'm doing basic IT full-time, for a basic IT wage. Although the job isn't demanding, it's non-stop with no downtime. There is no time to shadow others and no desire from the business for that to happen, either.
Basically their stance is that "We already have a person for X, and if they left we'd hire externally someone who can already do X and hit the ground running."
So if a person gets hired for basic IT, as I was, you do basic IT... well, forever. It's not just me, the other guys who started out doing basic IT are still doing basic IT. Those who "progressed" in this company entered management, with almost no exceptions. The "techies" who aren't interested in management to a man find themselves doing the same thing they've done since they joined.
It should be noted that the wage for basic IT is ... basic So paying for expensive training courses is right out.
What I would like to know for a start is: the people like randomshenans, who joined a company doing basic IT - just how did you move into a more advanced role? Did your first employer elect to train you up? Did they offer to train you, or did you have to push them into it via persistent pleading?
Did you instead teach yourself entirely via free online courses/ Google? Did you manage to land a more skilled job just by applying for something you weren't really qualified to do? Bluff your way in? Bluff your way up?
I guess I'm confused because none of the companies I've done basic IT work for have ever allowed me to train up for anything else. So I've been doing basic IT for over 10 years now :/
For me it often comes back to the chicken and egg problem.
OK, so I'm doing basic IT full-time, for a basic IT wage. Although the job isn't demanding, it's non-stop with no downtime. There is no time to shadow others and no desire from the business for that to happen, either.
Basically their stance is that "We already have a person for X, and if they left we'd hire externally someone who can already do X and hit the ground running."
So if a person gets hired for basic IT, as I was, you do basic IT... well, forever. It's not just me, the other guys who started out doing basic IT are still doing basic IT. Those who "progressed" in this company entered management, with almost no exceptions. The "techies" who aren't interested in management to a man find themselves doing the same thing they've done since they joined.
It should be noted that the wage for basic IT is ... basic
So paying for expensive training courses is right out.What I would like to know for a start is: the people like randomshenans, who joined a company doing basic IT - just how did you move into a more advanced role? Did your first employer elect to train you up? Did they offer to train you, or did you have to push them into it via persistent pleading?
Did you instead teach yourself entirely via free online courses/ Google? Did you manage to land a more skilled job just by applying for something you weren't really qualified to do? Bluff your way in? Bluff your way up?
I guess I'm confused because none of the companies I've done basic IT work for have ever allowed me to train up for anything else. So I've been doing basic IT for over 10 years now :/
Soldato
How many companies have you worked for and what kind of size/industry?
I think it's unusual not to be offered training and whilst i don't work in IT that's always been something thats expected providing the person in question has the desire/ability.
Have you tried talking to recruiters and explaning what you want? They may be able to put you forward for roles which includes training.
I think it's unusual not to be offered training and whilst i don't work in IT that's always been something thats expected providing the person in question has the desire/ability.
Have you tried talking to recruiters and explaning what you want? They may be able to put you forward for roles which includes training.
if you're not going down a route that requires vendor certificates etc.. then you should be able to teach yourself rather a lot from free material online, books etc..
a degree from the OU or London International Program is an option if you can't afford to take time out from work to study at uni full time
udacity.com has some cool nanodegree programs and plenty of recruitment advice, employers apparently actively trying to hire from their programs etc..
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this stuff before in the thread though
basically if you want to learn a new skillset then go learn one, don't wait for an employer to offer training/for it to be spoon fed to you be proactive about it yourself
a degree from the OU or London International Program is an option if you can't afford to take time out from work to study at uni full time
udacity.com has some cool nanodegree programs and plenty of recruitment advice, employers apparently actively trying to hire from their programs etc..
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this stuff before in the thread though
basically if you want to learn a new skillset then go learn one, don't wait for an employer to offer training/for it to be spoon fed to you be proactive about it yourself
Can't speak for IT specifically, but it's probably the same across the board- sometimes by taking a "sideways" move, you will be offered training, pick up new skills or just be in a different environment/culture where you can develop.
You do have to badger people and be proactive though, that's the key. You're very fortunate if someone takes you under their wing and actively offers you a development path, but I don't think it's the norm.
You do have to badger people and be proactive though, that's the key. You're very fortunate if someone takes you under their wing and actively offers you a development path, but I don't think it's the norm.
This.
I have been in my current IT role for nearly 8 years. I wanted to learn a new skillset so I can move onto bigger and better things. Without the support of my employer I got off my bum and studied some Microsoft Certs in my spare time. 18 months on, I have an MCSA and halfway through my second MCSA. Once I am done, I be going for my MCSE in Cloud Platform and Infrastructure then I'm going see what the whole world has to offer me.
Unless you are proactive FoxEye then you are going to get nothing or very little done.
I'm going to be honest, it hasn't been easy for me over the past 18 months. Studying in areas which has always been my weak spot in IT but I am learning so much and passing the exams, it is worth it.
I'd echo other suggestions of studying online, I managed to get my previous role after just over a year of sudying for a degree with the OU; my new line manager liked how I was motivated to learn outside of work.
I actually took a slight pay cut at the time as I was moving from IT to Business Intelligence (I used to design and generate reports for a service desk via Excel and Crystal so I did have some transferable skills) - I received some training but I was also expected to self-learn; initially basic stuff like code academy but then usually through W3schools, technet or trial and error by looking at and testing other people's SQL or R scripts... and a lot of time spent on Google/stackexchange.
I was very lucky in that I had the freedom to choose whatever method and software I wanted in order to analyse data and present my findings, and sign myself up for any free training that came along provided that it didn't affect my work - I got to learn some really interesting stuff; advanced forecasting techniques, discrete event simulation as well as a good grounding in the basics; direct and indirect standardisation, linear regression, hypothesis testing etc.
The possibility of redundancy meant that I started to look elsewhere (otherwise I would have happily stayed, my line manager was awesome) and I started my new role as a senior analyst just over a month ago.
My commute was increased from 15 minutes to 65 each way, but I also received a 40% payrise and I get to work from home one or two days a week. My new line manager is also very good and I've been given the responsibility of automating a lot of the data collection and analysis - along with helping to develop the SQL skills of the team.
I realised a while ago that the learning never ends, but I've come to enjoy that - especially when I can set my own agenda and do what I want; one evening I'll watch a bunch of youtube videos or read articles/blogs online and others I'll mess around with the work's development server.
Currently I'm learning to use Power BI for user self-service and researching the best method of transferring data via APIs into a data warehouse (I've used R to do it before but on a smaller scale - I'm sure there are better options such as Python).
tl;dr: It's taken a combination of attitude, sacrifice (time and money) and luck to get to where I am now.
I actually took a slight pay cut at the time as I was moving from IT to Business Intelligence (I used to design and generate reports for a service desk via Excel and Crystal so I did have some transferable skills) - I received some training but I was also expected to self-learn; initially basic stuff like code academy but then usually through W3schools, technet or trial and error by looking at and testing other people's SQL or R scripts... and a lot of time spent on Google/stackexchange.
I was very lucky in that I had the freedom to choose whatever method and software I wanted in order to analyse data and present my findings, and sign myself up for any free training that came along provided that it didn't affect my work - I got to learn some really interesting stuff; advanced forecasting techniques, discrete event simulation as well as a good grounding in the basics; direct and indirect standardisation, linear regression, hypothesis testing etc.
The possibility of redundancy meant that I started to look elsewhere (otherwise I would have happily stayed, my line manager was awesome) and I started my new role as a senior analyst just over a month ago.
My commute was increased from 15 minutes to 65 each way, but I also received a 40% payrise and I get to work from home one or two days a week. My new line manager is also very good and I've been given the responsibility of automating a lot of the data collection and analysis - along with helping to develop the SQL skills of the team.
I realised a while ago that the learning never ends, but I've come to enjoy that - especially when I can set my own agenda and do what I want; one evening I'll watch a bunch of youtube videos or read articles/blogs online and others I'll mess around with the work's development server.
Currently I'm learning to use Power BI for user self-service and researching the best method of transferring data via APIs into a data warehouse (I've used R to do it before but on a smaller scale - I'm sure there are better options such as Python).
tl;dr: It's taken a combination of attitude, sacrifice (time and money) and luck to get to where I am now.
Soldato
Both really. I found the work easy, so did it quickly and kept asking for more work. This led to different work, but I also did learning outside of work and spent my evenings learning new techs and then came back into work and asked for more training, which the first company accepted. Since then it's all been self motivated and funded when it comes to new learnings. You have to really do a combination of all of them. You should be able to badger for work to train you more, even if it takes a bit of nagging, and you then need to run with it and use it to get you to the next step. Setup some cloud stuff in your own time, learn with more courses, practice what you've learnt on real infra too. I did this and it's really easy to do, but you need to be motivated to do so.
This grand plan to £50k as if this is a huge number seems like a different market than i am used to in IT. It appears to be being made out to be a grand number - in reality this is a desktop support sort of number which FoxEye should be able to take to with ease i would have thought.
A 3 second browse of cwjobs and i see desktop support roles in Somerset of all places at £200/day, £44k pro rata assuming 6 weeks holiday, up towards London £250/day for 1st/2nd line servicedesk £55k pro rata.
Foxeye, you could do these roles surely, the £55k role entails;
Appears to be basic AD user admin, desktop support, asset register, registering some phones, etc.
I only refer to these as quick examples, but am i way off the mark with your skillset, Foxeye?
A 3 second browse of cwjobs and i see desktop support roles in Somerset of all places at £200/day, £44k pro rata assuming 6 weeks holiday, up towards London £250/day for 1st/2nd line servicedesk £55k pro rata.
Foxeye, you could do these roles surely, the £55k role entails;
Appears to be basic AD user admin, desktop support, asset register, registering some phones, etc.
I only refer to these as quick examples, but am i way off the mark with your skillset, Foxeye?
even if you were, it surely isn't a particularly hard skillset to acquire... I'm pretty sure that things like sales jobs, contracting etc.. were suggested to him before - obviously you're making use of contracting to boost the figure to the target there and the equivalent perm role could easily be close to 20-30-something-k but it is. fair point to make, he probably could get something close to his target fairly quickly/wouldn't necessarily have to wait 5 years to achieve it.
Soldato
Foxeye, we started our journeys at the same time, I've now gone from zero to £65k plus car allowance in 6 years. I was also in a dead end part of the country, I took a job in the south east and just worked very hard, stayed late, did work, had ideas, implemented them. that is all it is, don't be a clock watcher, do the work, then do more, come up with ideas, so some passion, grit and determination.
Caporegime
Pretty sure he mentioned having difficulty socialising/communicating with people, particularly confrontation so even basic 1st line support may be an issue. Still something you can work on overcoming though.
Your figure seems extremely high for 1st and 2nd line though, a quick search here shows 2nd line engineer/analyst roles at £21-25k in Somerset.
well he's obviously quoting contractor rates so making a comparison with a perm salary isn't going to match
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