And if you are good at your job, it better not be an entry/mid level job or else it can actually hinder your career. No one is going to promote the only person who is holding that department together
As the glue of my department I agree with this statement.
Do you think the manager who tells you at least weekly “if you leave this place will fall apart” is going to want to promote me? Honestly I don’t even think I could trust them to give me a good reference.
I know you’re probably being slightly facetious, but please know that even if you DO leave, the place DOESN’T fall apart.
Live goes on, business continues.
All it actually means when you are told this is, “You leaving will be both annoying and inconvenient as well as a mild professional embarrassment to me personally.”
Do not constrain yourself for the betterment of lazy and incompetent leadership. Real teams pull together.
Leave, they’re out there.
Exactly this. It’s the hit by a bus scenario. If I got run over tomorrow, my supervisor would have my job listed the next day and delegate my responsibilities to others. It’s not that they can’t live without you; they just don’t want to make their own life harder.
being good at stuff is overrated. you will always be explaining things and getting your skills questioned by the numpties in charge. no one can tell the difference between you and some charlatan anyway (especially in technical fields)
This is incredibly relevant...
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ofl90fcMRew](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ofl90fcMRew)
I could watch this on repeat for the rest of my life.
To add to the list:
4. Be visible to the people doing the promoting. Your manager was promoted to that position by someone else. Make sure that someone else knows your name.
I seriously got so much further by doing minor projects for the c-suite or presenting the stuff that I've done to other teams.
While this is a good strategy, it's by no means the only one, or even the best one in all circumstances. Job hopping is great if you're good at what you do and want to keep doing a similar thing for more money. But if you have aspirations of leadership, it's often better to stay in one company for longer to get noticed, get experience acting in higher roles, and then moving up as opportunities arise. Then of course as you get more experience in leadership you can look at moving again.
I have pretty much doubled my salary in the last 4 years doing exactly this, and there's *no way* I could have done that if I moved. I had little to no experience in management, I was given opportunities because people knew me from working there for a while, and I took those opportunities and made the most of them. Now I have 2-3 years of management experience, and I can potentially look elsewhere at similar positions. I won't, because I'm very happy where I am, but I could.
So while job hopping regularly is great to keep your salary going up doing the same job, it certainly isn't the best way to move into more senior roles unless you've already somehow gained experience in those higher roles. And usually the way you gain that experience is by being in the same organisation for a while.
The flip side to this was stagnating where not many leadership roles were available and management are dangling the carrots to get free work out of middle management burning you out.
I’ve even worked places that prefer not to promote up to management and instead external hire as they believe staff don’t respect a manager they used to be peers with.
Doubled my salary specialising & job hopping to diversify skill set in a similar period with zero staff below me.
EXACTLY the culture i left my last company because of. For 2+ years i was being told over and over i just needed to take on bigger projects, make myself more visible, etc. I busted my ass and literally completely reinvented the way my team operated to reduce workload by almost half, *while* meeting all the KPIs of the same entry level role.
After all that. Get told it's still not the right time for a promotion. And don't even get a raise beyond the standard good performance raise the entire team got for the year. While the c suite hires in a new middle manager from outside to fill the role i was working for.
I lost it. Started applying around to new jobs the same day. 2 weeks later had an offer at another company offering more than the management role i was trying for at the current place, doing half the work i was currently doing. Gave my resignation the same day and never been happier.
You'll need to be lucky. My colleague in the Uni had been working there for two decades and got laid off...the leadership positions were filled by external candidates who had some relationship from higher rank management.
Anything need luck as a factor cannot be a strategy.
\+1 on this, granted it's not as easy as you're not staying in one role/skillset while job-hopping.
There are other ways into leadership, but sometimes especially if your company deals in many tenders / tight competition - Loyalty and inner circles moves you up just as good as Job hopping.
You just have to be present and open to opportunity when it knocks. You'd be amazed at how much opportunity comes up just having a coffee with the right person.
I've found the opposite. Job hopped, moved up the ranks quickly and have had a few CTO positions. If I stuck around in any one company this would have taken many more years to achieve.
Sometimes. I've been at the same place since 2018. Moved into a different role (slightly more management) in 2020, for a very slight pay increase, and this year got my first pay increase since then, despite having my normal overtime removed after the first year due to split shift.... so still earning less than when I first started in the new role.
Finally a decent approach, lately all I seem to hear and read is "job hopping is the only way!".
When i'm interviewing & see someone who has moved jobs every 2 years for an extended period of time, their resume is discarded.
Similar story, got into higher paid roles by working my way up and being noticed. Go the extra mile & more often than not, it will work.
This really depends on the company you work for, the size, structure etc. You can do excellent work for years, go above and beyond, and get nowhere. Luck (goid management), positioning, and a strong desire to be social in the workplace is often a massive part of moving up in this way.
Disagree, at a certain level it matters. I jumped around a lot a few years ago - new job every year. Got big salary increases because of it, $90k --> $200k in 4 years. At a certain point (exec roles), employers start to question why you move around so much. You start to be viewed as a flight risk.
Or that you keep getting told "it might be an idea that you leave now".
In a senior role it can also take a few years for it to be clear that you're no good, so the crap ones do like to move often.
I think it is really dependant on the field, org(s) and roles. If you're climbing positions internally that's one thing. A bricky changing company every 6 months is another... and of course theres a million variations in between. You can talk about the narrative of those changes in your cover letter and in the interview.
Well obviously climbing the ladder internally is a good thing on your resume, we're talking about changing companies. There's only so many times you can say, 'I ran out of opportunities', or 'it was a step up', etc before it starts to look like you're chasing money.
Strange because my COO just left after 18months and in her exit speech says life is a revolving door if you work hard and keep your contacts and to not be surprised if shes back in a few years.
Or because you showed too much of your previous experience.
After some years of experience, the older the experience the more it’s irrelevant to the new position.
At some point you need to have runs on the board as opposed to 'exposure'.
Otherwise your resume reads as all the different orientation/onboarding processes you've been through.
No, it's not.
I'm an employer. Totally fine with jumps every 2-4 years. If I see you jumping often, significantly faster than that... I'll look past you.
And I know most employers will do the same.
Yeah. Totally agree.
If I see someone moving every 2-3 years and I assume they're hungry. That's good.
If I see someone moving every 6-18mo I assume there's something wrong and don't look further. I've got plenty of applicantations. Happy to trim.
If I see someone that has moved quickly a couple of times, but stays other places for 2+ years, I just assume there was an issue and will still leave that in the "yes for now" pile.
So you know this is my rough thought pattern.
0-6months in role - I expect you to be unproductive compared to what the role requires. (Less grace for execs and c-level. There you need to deliver faster.)
6mo-12mo in role - you're break even. Should be doing what's necessary.
12-18mo - you're now improving what we had and are kicking arse.
18mo-2yrs - you're still kicking butts. Depending on the person could have boredom setting in. But that depends on what the individual wants in life and out of employment.
2yrs+ - depends. Could love it. Could be looking for promotions and new roles internally, or to move away. I'm super happy to have someone still in this role for longer, but I'm mindful of silent quitting.
i wouldn't even mention a few month job on my resume. if I was there for only that much time it must be a *real* basket case.. unfortunately I seem to stay basket cases a lot longer... golden handcuffs...
Yep, exactly. 2-4 years is completely fine - it's not a waste of time and money to hire and train somebody for a few years. I've seen people where their max time at a company was 2 years and most were a year or so, and for anything other than pretty entry level, the time it would take them to get settled in the job and start being effective means that you'll end up hiring their replacement before they've added much value.
Not true. Like all things, there is nuance to it.
Nobody reasonable is going to be concerned that you changed jobs every 2-4 years.
However, if you change jobs every 6 months (and don't work in contracting or similar), you are definitely going to hurt your career prospects.
I disagree. I do t want to go through the hiring & product familiarisation process for somebody that won’t stick around for more than a couple of years.
When you get to a certain level of management, it can be a negative. If the company is looking to hire someone who can manage a team and/or project over the long term, they're not going to be thrilled about someone who's changed jobs every other year.
I travelled and lived overseas most of my 20s. My resume doesn't reflect all of my years living away. Stretch the truth if you have someone to vouch for you
Second that.
You need to have a story. Worked somewhere for only 6 months, but have the knowledge of someone who worked there for 1 year?
Stretch it and show your experience for a whole 1 year. As long as you can come up with a story, communicate well, and have a reference to back up your story. Well done you will sell yourself.
For references you can use your mate to back you up, show him as your manager/direct report even if he doesn’t work at your current company.
A hack that’s consistently overlooked is becoming an expert in your field.
Pick something you like and that you’re good at, and stick to it.
In 6.5 years I went from $40k to $230k (inc bonus)
Exactly right. Far easier to increase the amount of money you make when you’re young, VS moving every spare cent into an ETF or property.
I have one small IP, and I rent where I live
Just don't make yourself too invaluable to a single business area or team, otherwise you'll be too hard to replace and risk not being able to get promoted
Yes and no, in banking it’s easy to progress if you perform.
I’ve spent most of my career at the one bank. Started on $100k here and they’ve looked after me every single year (not a brag, but my KPI’s are usually 150%+ every year) so they’re good to me
In my previous job in the events industry, I was responsible for rostering my team of 3-4 people. I'd use Google Sheets and Discord.
My current job in the aged care sector has actual software for rostering and I'm responsible for building and maintaining the roster for 80 staff in accordance to legislation and enterprise agreements.
Lets just say that in my interview I did not state how simple my experience was...
:EDIT: The more I work in an office environment, the more I realise that nobody actually knows what they're doing.
Totally agree with this, though there is just one caveat depending on your field; don't get yourself locked into a niche.
For example, if you are a software developer and become the absolute best in one particular obscure language (i.e. COBALT), you may be able to ask for 300k+, but those roles won't last forever and you may find yourself in a tight spot down the road if you don't have a good foundation.
Much like a share portfolio, you need to have some level of diversification. For example, I'm a Business Analyst but I also have skills and experience as a Project Manager. The two go hand in hand and means I can realistically work in either role.
A breadth of experience can be quite valuable (whether the tards in HR doing phase 1 vetting realise it or not).
You need to balance the two, but ultimately you do have to invest in yourself as others have said. Get certifications, get experience across domains (might involve industry jumps or staying in the industry but swapping roles), keep learning.
I would say your first 5 - 10 years should be building a really solid base and from there you need to specialise for big money.
I had a similar post-uni path. 6.5 years, 55k - > approx 190 - 200k (contracting rates, same work year as FT perm).
Yeah, I’ve followed a similar trajectory. It’s interesting; if I don’t think about it, I still feel like I did 5-6 years ago in terms of knowledge. Then I talk to someone new-ish and get a sense of how far I’ve come.
Sounds like imposter syndrome!
I was so nervous moving roles internally, and now 2 years in I can’t believe I was so stressed! I’m also training some of my old colleagues from my previous team
So many people don’t want to back themselves
The only way you're getting 500k in IT is: tech sales, leadership (GM, engineering manager, etc at a tippy top company), or to work for a top US-based company that's willing to pay you 320k (good luck with that).
Two paths to high income. Become a generalist in your field with great soft skills (sales, leadership) or become a specialist in your field with great soft skills (Solution Architect, SME).
Failing that, just keep BS'ing your way up the ladder every 18-months to 3 years.
But, seriously, if you want to turbocharge. You need to take a risk. Join a start-up/scale up, take equity and bust your balls (balls chosen deliberately due to transition comment) to make the company get bought by VC/PE/IPO. Arguable if you can get equity without being either a generalist or specialist anyway.
What's the expected return if the startup you work for is bought out?
Understand that this will be subject to equity/stocks and the specific contract youve signed, but is there a very rough ballpark for someone with say 10yrs experience that would otherwise be earning 200k in a big bank or similar?
And you can always hedge a little and join a start up around the series A region and get a good salary and still some (albeit less) equity.
But yes it is a high risk/high reward strategy. It makes your job more rewarding imo though because your work in making the company stronger directly benefits you (speaking as someone with non-trivial equity in a former start up that has grown up a bit).
There’s no rough ball park figure.
All depends on when you joined, how much equity you obtained and then the selling price.
But to give you an idea, last place I was at sold and I took home 5k. My mate took home 150k.
He joined at a very early stage so his shares had a different value and he was there for 7 years compared to my 24 months.
Thanks for this, it was pretty much what I was looking for. I suspect the returns arent amazing unless the company really takes off (which most won't)
Not an amazing return on the 7 yrs IMO in your friend's case too. Hard(er) work throughout those 7 yrs on a salary that would generally be lower than industry depending on your role.
Way too many variables. It could be as little as a 10k bonus or all the way up to percentage stakes. Then you need to factor in if you are bought for 2 million or 100 million or 1 bn...
There is a reason why it is a risk. There is also a reason why I pretty much exclusively take roles at scale ups and not start-ups. More base pay, less stake but still some upside.
It's little different to other suggestions here such as:
* Lie on your resume and quadruple your income;
* Join a start-up, bust your balls, and profit when it sells;
* Find something you like and are good at.
The problem with *all* advice, not just this advice, but especially this vague, general type, is survivorship bias.
The most effective salary hack you can do, realistically for most, is actually just do the hours you are paid for. When working. Do less for more the same.
Lol who said your time is worth $50/hr? Based on your current salary your time is worth $27.5/hr.
81k in IT is quite low, but that depends on the position, are you a junior? What is your job?
That's like Mid Systems Administrator in a suburban area though, it's a middle of the road kind of salary for a middle of the road kind of position in IT.
I've worked with SME's all my career in media strategy/digital production related roles and pull about sub $90k a year. Moving through my 30s quickly realised this wasn't a very high growth career trajectory and that it probably made more sense for me to incorporate my own SME and hire remotely to service any new business that I bring in for myself.
At average monthly billings of $5k per client, I am starting to see that it isn't that difficult to sign 6 retainers and triple my full time earnings just from focusing on growing my own agency.
It required a mindset shift from me but I suppose this happens to a lot of people who start to realise the ceiling to their earnings potential sooner in their career than say, someone who's climbed the corporate ladder right up to their mid 40s.
Nice job. How long did it take you to reach the point of signing 6 clients for an average of $5k a month? And how did you go about attracting business when you first started out?
Was a matter of good timing. Opportunity presented because I was doing outreach and business development for my day job. The business I represented wasn't keen to take certain businesses due to shortage of internal resources (viewed clients as paying too little, being too demanding etc).
Some of this outreach was to former clients of mine and as a result I felt responsible for not leaving the discussion cold. I felt like if noone wanted to take the money on the table, I may as well incorporate by myself and service the role with remote support.
In my business, clients tend to renew their retainers around the same time - especially when it involves similar billing cycles within their industries. So going from 1 to 3 client retainers was not difficult, took about under 2 months. A bit of digital marketing and cold outreach and I soon saw how doubling those retainers was actually way within reach.
This is only if you want to be a careerist as reward vs work is low. You can get a good ratio of reward vs work (not the highest reward though) in the right tech niche, I am talking circa $250k.
NV2 is absolutely a salary hack.
Some contracts are 50 - 100k more than their corpo equivalent.
Any immigrant with a degree can be hired into corpo land on pennies. NV2 requires you to be perm resi or citizen and those kids know the market, not to mention have likely been around the traps for a while so it's known that these roles have to offer big bucks to attract big talent.
I'd argue the big perm $$$ are only in management in certain roles. It's really only the top tiers that would out-earn a highly skilled IC in other companies and it usually takes quite a long term grinding it out to get to Director level at these companies.
You can easily add ~$50k/yr of building value to an old house with tutorial vids and a bit of go about ya.
Note if you're already in the top tax bracket you'd have to increase your income by $100k to foot a $50k bill. Reckon your employer will quickly raise your income this much if you work twice as hard?
Forget the rat race. Go to Bunnings.
These are some things that helped me out earn most others:
* Negotiate well
* Interview well
* In the world of software engineering, there's a lot of us with terrible communication skills. If you get good at that + you're likeable, your value goes up a lot.
* Switch jobs often
* Be a problem solver
* Work on functions that either improve profit or reduce costs, making you much more vital to the company
The biggest hack is jumping to a new job every 6 months to a year for an easy 10%+ pay bump every time.
Unfortunately, employers don’t seem to value loyalty in this day and age anymore.
Plus, just remember that they wouldn’t hesitate to replace you, so why stay?
If I see someone with a string of 6 month tenures on their CV, it just says the person is too incompetent to make it past probation and thus I shouldn't waste my time.
This.
I agree that you need to job hop to boost your salary but not too often. Every 3 years is fine. I won’t hire someone who never stays in a position for long.
\+1.
I interview quite a few people, and duration is something I look at.
It doesn't mean they wont get an interview, but it will be something I will question if they make it to the interview.
Yeah people need to stop acting like they can just endlessly hop for free money. Its dependent on the market and the industry youre working in. But if all you've done is 6 months-1 year at each job, its pretty clear what your career priorities are.
At least for me, I would hire someone who has some tenure at previous jobs if I want to build and kind of plan around them.
The people jumping every six months are being poached or working short term contracts. In that case just become a contractor and earn more money. Not many HR looking favourably on six month jumps
As a hiring manager if I see someone's resume with multiple roles where he spent less than 2 years at each without a valid reason I wouldn't consider him for an interview.
While I agree with the fact that moving companies is the easiest eay to get pay bumps, I would recommend doing that every couple of years.
> As a hiring manager if I see someone's resume with multiple roles where he spent less than 2 years at each without a valid reason I wouldn't consider him for an interview.
Works fine when you have candidates beating down the door, but in a lot of sectors that just isn't the case so you're getting everyone with a pulse in.
$500k a year? Bro this is reddit, uni grads make that much. The average income here is easily $2m +, anything less then that and your prob going to get banned.
I'm at ~$200/hr (inc super, ex gst) on a single client and got there through changing contracts, networking and upskilling.
It is a very big jump to go up higher from here, I'd need to take on extra work across multiple clients to get up to $500k.
Aim smaller and work your way up, but know even if you got to $500k, it wouldn't be enough and you'd want more.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
I'm assuming you live in Canberra, do you at least have a baseline? What sort of role do you work in? You can definitely get more than $81,000 as long as you have a baseline.
$81K per year isn’t nothing but its buying power nowadays pretty much makes it a McSalary. I’m only on $120K and I’m not living high on the hog and being wasteful either and I find it not to have much buying power.
not directly into defence or government , but defence/government adjacent IT is the money. if you can do IT stuff, learn basic cyber and Data security and go nuts. look at Defence industry security programs (DISP) the field is new, is growing and pays well.
Continue to educate yourself with certs and courses. They will more than pay for themselves.
Be trustworthy and dependable.
Keep an eye on the job market. Don't repeat my mistake of staying with one employer for 20 years.
The emphasis is on “apparently”. I can assure you that a) this sub is full of fantasists and b) very few if any people earning half a million are going to be on Reddit, bragging.
Take it from a fellow woman in IT (5 years, DevOps/Linux admin) and has more than doubled her income in that time - the best way to get ahead in this industry is to study your ass off to be better than the boys and job hop whenever you’re no longer learning (in the first few years) or you’re not being paid what you’re worth. For the latter, I use job listings to figure that out and honestly compare myself against the criteria and what I’m currently doing.
Apply to multiple jobs, use multiple offers to negotiate the most pay. Get a counter offer from your current employer, mostly just to use in negotiations, as things generally don't go well when you do that.
So based purely on my personal experience, changing companies usually comes with a boost, or working for a dysfunctional company and making it functional - second tip is not a given though and usually comes with a whole bunch of other bullshit.
I was on 80K 4 months ago and now I'm on 115k. Don't wait for the company to give you a raise, just leave them.
I'm HR and can tell you the loyal employees are always underpaid, every person hired to fill someone that left gets 20k~ more, though the one that left only asked for a 5k raise and was rejected.
If you are in the early years of your career,go for bigger companies, small companies are stingy asf!
Also, stop applying for roles that you meet 100% of the criteria and start applying for ones you can on tick 70-80%. Every role should be about growth, not just money.
"Get a clearance (NV1/NV2)" is not simple. It's a long process, and very involved. It also requires sponsorship. Your current employer would need to support it happening, and be involved in the process. Just so you're aware.
Strategic job hopping. Eg, don't just jump for any job that pays 5k more. Aim for 20%~ pay increase.
Try fluff your job titles as much as possible. Smaller companies can be great to work for because they give good job titles as a incentive because they usually can't pay as well.
Also when looking for a new job, don't think what you want your next job to be, think what you want the job after that to be and work backwards.
Staying within the same industries is a great way to get interviews and ultimately jobs, especially at senior levels.
Using the above I was able to go from forklift driver to senior project manager in 5~ years
I think the NV2/1 and defence is coming from a recent hiring blast from Department of Defence that requires NV Clearance? Well for starters getting to point where someone sponsors you NV is pretty hard, you need to have demonstrated skillset, experience working as contractor and probably previous government experience having Baseline clearance at least. Current timeframe is around 100 Business days to get NV2.
Not many people are earning 500K, for most positions 200K is the top limit, According to [https://paycalculator.com.au/](https://paycalculator.com.au/) if you earn 200k pre tax, you're already in 97th Percentile income band, means only 3% working Australians get paid higher then you. 200K is pretty great spot and people will literally do anything to get there, that's an idea target you can go in 4-5 years.
Lastly, if you're in IT, you should pretty much know the structure of whole IT Operations and which roles you can target and attain such certifications. Feel free to chat if you want more information, I have 10 years of Experience in ITOps.
Have conversations with your manager regularly. Pay increase request should not be unexpected or kept for salary review time.
Find out what your manager values and make sure you talk about your achievements relating to that to your manager.
Find out how to make it easy for your manager to give you a raise. What do they need to get approval etc.
Make sure you are visible not just within your silo but also across your organisation.
Change organisations when your pay increases have plateaued / you are not valued appropriately.
$500k+ incomes are rare 1 in 1000 people rare. Typically people who earn this much have diversified income streams from a lifetime of building wealth.
But let say you want to earn this as a salary, you need to be extremely highly skilled in a very in demand role that very few people can do or do well.
Another area where you could achieve this is software or other high margin, high value items which have extremely high bonus potential.
Government is not the Bees Knees.
I work in Government (27+yrs), you're treat like a number. Pays not all that either. You need degree's to get anywhere or it's who you know. Then again, don't rely on anyone to get you a job, because if you do a shit job, it will back fire not just on you but them too. That's why I don't recommend friends for jobs in my department.
Your job, in ANY job, is to make your wage decider (usually direct superior but not always) job easier.
Don't go to them with whinging, be amenable when they assign you tasks, don't make their life harder. Make it easier. Ask for raises every 9 months, so you get them yearly. No one doesn't give a raise to someone that is performing and not making their life hard. You can earn the company a lot, but if you make your managers life hard with BS, good luck getting raise.
Find people on linkedin with jobs that you want to do and reverse engineer what you need to do to get them by looking at what experience/education/certification they have compared to you.
Defence private industry? Yes.
Defence for the Government, no. The salary floor in Defence Government jobs is great but the ceiling is laughably low until you're seriously high up.
The best salary hack I know is job hopping, but being selective where you hop (salary jumps and opportunity for huge increase in skills and knowledge).
Also, you're in IT so you're in an industry where the earnings potential is enormous - don't waste it by going government if money is what you really want.
Source: went from $70k in April 2019 to just under $140k in July 2023.
Contract, high risk (job security) but high reward.
You will get exposure to more organisations as you will be forced to cycle your jobs, become proficient in interviews and turn into a consultant whilst building your experience and worth.
I found I have been brought into many organisations to deliver a body of work and have a sense of achievement once completed.
BTW, you are in the right industry to earn very well - NV2 is a massive booster especially if living in Canberra.
Become a contractor. Less security but a lot more money and if you get on a big government project you'll be fine because there are some moron contractors sitting on the project I am on and really should not be getting their contracts renewed.
Sidestepping into Data I highly recommend as its where a lot of IT jobs are right now.
When you get a penny from a chum,
Don't just buy some bubble gum.
Put it in your cap! Put it in your cap!
When you find a nickel in the snow,
Don't just blow it on a picture show.
Put it in your cap! Put it in your cap!
When you spy a quarter in a pie...
For any employee anywhere, its as simple as:
-make yourself more valuable
(so many ways to do that- this is where your focus should be: figuring out what that is)
-push to be recognised & remunerated accordingly.
As others have said, job hopping, being nice to work with, making your manager looks good, doing your job well - all help the process along. And those tips can get you to a $150k salary in a lot of fields eventually.
But at the end of the day, your choice of field/career is the biggest determinant of how much you earn and how quickly it grows.
However, most people who are earning $500k do so because they have spent 20-30 years building something, either industry leading expertise in a specialist field, building a business from scratch, climbing the ladder at a large multinational. Often at great expense to their personal lives.
Things that help that process are.
\- Develop skills that are in demand such as coding, finance, project management, sales enablement.
\-Sacrifice a lot of extra time to be the best at your company at what you do.
\- Work for a start-up for a dud salary but under an equity share arrangement and hope it's worth big bucks in 10-15 years time.
It depends on your field, I guess. Start talking to your organisations competitors if you can. Worked wonders for me
I'm a tradesman, spent 17 years at my last company, I'm fortunate that I have never asked for a pay rise but have always managed at least 5% if not 10 % year on year. It's very much based on your skill set, and mine is niche. Plus, I'm NV1 along with ASIC and other security and aviation related clearances that not many other staff were willing to get.
Long-term loyalty worked well for me up to a point. But once I was told I'd never be promoted any higher by my immediate boss, I walked.
Once I started talking to competitors I found out I could increase my pay by at least 30%, get a car allowance that was 12k more than what I was getting, with unlimited overtime it was a no brainer to go.
Best part is its way less stress.
Public service doesn't pay shit unless you contract and security clearances don't increase your rate.
I used to get paid 200k to contract as a senior business analyst.
1. Be easy to get on with. Friendly. Funny. 1. Be Confident. 1. Be good at what you do. In that order.
The last one is even optional.
And if you are good at your job, it better not be an entry/mid level job or else it can actually hinder your career. No one is going to promote the only person who is holding that department together
As the glue of my department I agree with this statement. Do you think the manager who tells you at least weekly “if you leave this place will fall apart” is going to want to promote me? Honestly I don’t even think I could trust them to give me a good reference.
I know you’re probably being slightly facetious, but please know that even if you DO leave, the place DOESN’T fall apart. Live goes on, business continues. All it actually means when you are told this is, “You leaving will be both annoying and inconvenient as well as a mild professional embarrassment to me personally.” Do not constrain yourself for the betterment of lazy and incompetent leadership. Real teams pull together. Leave, they’re out there.
Exactly this. It’s the hit by a bus scenario. If I got run over tomorrow, my supervisor would have my job listed the next day and delegate my responsibilities to others. It’s not that they can’t live without you; they just don’t want to make their own life harder.
Everyone is replaceable. Spread your wings and leave
being good at stuff is overrated. you will always be explaining things and getting your skills questioned by the numpties in charge. no one can tell the difference between you and some charlatan anyway (especially in technical fields)
I like the way old-dumb-full-of-cum thinks!
Yep. That’s me. 3 years in a company and the overconfident idiots get promoted with better pay and I’m still here because “I’m good at what I do”
This is incredibly relevant... [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ofl90fcMRew](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ofl90fcMRew) I could watch this on repeat for the rest of my life.
Volume warning for those clicking on that link
Echo this. Soft skills. Be amazing at them. Invest in your EI. This shit matters and I learned it at 28 but wish I learned it at 20.
How did you go about learning/improving?
Alternative 3. Manage up well, doesn’t matter if you’re not good if management thinks you’re good.
To add to the list: 4. Be visible to the people doing the promoting. Your manager was promoted to that position by someone else. Make sure that someone else knows your name. I seriously got so much further by doing minor projects for the c-suite or presenting the stuff that I've done to other teams.
Yes,order matters!
1. Expanding here, Kiss ass and don't cause problems. When you say something once and a superior does not listen, don't try to push it.
If you're shit at your job, you're not getting a pay rise.
I work in IT and work with a project manager who simply suck at doing her job. She gets along well with the team and earns $200k+
There is only one hack and it is this: Switch jobs every 2 years to a higher paying job. Job loyalty is a negative trait in 2023.
While this is a good strategy, it's by no means the only one, or even the best one in all circumstances. Job hopping is great if you're good at what you do and want to keep doing a similar thing for more money. But if you have aspirations of leadership, it's often better to stay in one company for longer to get noticed, get experience acting in higher roles, and then moving up as opportunities arise. Then of course as you get more experience in leadership you can look at moving again. I have pretty much doubled my salary in the last 4 years doing exactly this, and there's *no way* I could have done that if I moved. I had little to no experience in management, I was given opportunities because people knew me from working there for a while, and I took those opportunities and made the most of them. Now I have 2-3 years of management experience, and I can potentially look elsewhere at similar positions. I won't, because I'm very happy where I am, but I could. So while job hopping regularly is great to keep your salary going up doing the same job, it certainly isn't the best way to move into more senior roles unless you've already somehow gained experience in those higher roles. And usually the way you gain that experience is by being in the same organisation for a while.
The flip side to this was stagnating where not many leadership roles were available and management are dangling the carrots to get free work out of middle management burning you out. I’ve even worked places that prefer not to promote up to management and instead external hire as they believe staff don’t respect a manager they used to be peers with. Doubled my salary specialising & job hopping to diversify skill set in a similar period with zero staff below me.
EXACTLY the culture i left my last company because of. For 2+ years i was being told over and over i just needed to take on bigger projects, make myself more visible, etc. I busted my ass and literally completely reinvented the way my team operated to reduce workload by almost half, *while* meeting all the KPIs of the same entry level role. After all that. Get told it's still not the right time for a promotion. And don't even get a raise beyond the standard good performance raise the entire team got for the year. While the c suite hires in a new middle manager from outside to fill the role i was working for. I lost it. Started applying around to new jobs the same day. 2 weeks later had an offer at another company offering more than the management role i was trying for at the current place, doing half the work i was currently doing. Gave my resignation the same day and never been happier.
This is what I’ve seen to be a more successful strategy than job hopping.
You'll need to be lucky. My colleague in the Uni had been working there for two decades and got laid off...the leadership positions were filled by external candidates who had some relationship from higher rank management. Anything need luck as a factor cannot be a strategy.
\+1 on this, granted it's not as easy as you're not staying in one role/skillset while job-hopping. There are other ways into leadership, but sometimes especially if your company deals in many tenders / tight competition - Loyalty and inner circles moves you up just as good as Job hopping. You just have to be present and open to opportunity when it knocks. You'd be amazed at how much opportunity comes up just having a coffee with the right person.
I've found the opposite. Job hopped, moved up the ranks quickly and have had a few CTO positions. If I stuck around in any one company this would have taken many more years to achieve.
Sometimes. I've been at the same place since 2018. Moved into a different role (slightly more management) in 2020, for a very slight pay increase, and this year got my first pay increase since then, despite having my normal overtime removed after the first year due to split shift.... so still earning less than when I first started in the new role.
Finally a decent approach, lately all I seem to hear and read is "job hopping is the only way!". When i'm interviewing & see someone who has moved jobs every 2 years for an extended period of time, their resume is discarded. Similar story, got into higher paid roles by working my way up and being noticed. Go the extra mile & more often than not, it will work.
This really depends on the company you work for, the size, structure etc. You can do excellent work for years, go above and beyond, and get nowhere. Luck (goid management), positioning, and a strong desire to be social in the workplace is often a massive part of moving up in this way.
I've jumped 6 times in the last decade and my salary has grown by 250%. It works.
I've worked for 2 companies in the last decade and am paid 550%+ more than I was 10 years ago.
This. Jumping too often can look bad on your resume and employers are wary of short terms. 2-4 years is ideal.
Have one job with a 3-5yr tenure and you can hop a few times for under 1 yr each without scrutiny.
If they ask just say it was a 6 month contract
Looking bad on your resume because of jumping too much is a 2015 thing.
Disagree, at a certain level it matters. I jumped around a lot a few years ago - new job every year. Got big salary increases because of it, $90k --> $200k in 4 years. At a certain point (exec roles), employers start to question why you move around so much. You start to be viewed as a flight risk.
Or that you keep getting told "it might be an idea that you leave now". In a senior role it can also take a few years for it to be clear that you're no good, so the crap ones do like to move often.
I think it is really dependant on the field, org(s) and roles. If you're climbing positions internally that's one thing. A bricky changing company every 6 months is another... and of course theres a million variations in between. You can talk about the narrative of those changes in your cover letter and in the interview.
Well obviously climbing the ladder internally is a good thing on your resume, we're talking about changing companies. There's only so many times you can say, 'I ran out of opportunities', or 'it was a step up', etc before it starts to look like you're chasing money.
Strange because my COO just left after 18months and in her exit speech says life is a revolving door if you work hard and keep your contacts and to not be surprised if shes back in a few years.
If she left after 18 months in a COO role she probably couldn't wait to get out of there lol
Or because you showed too much of your previous experience. After some years of experience, the older the experience the more it’s irrelevant to the new position.
Probably not. I have about 6 jobs total on my resume, and they're all relevant.
Agree entirely
And also, if people don't like your resume because you've jumped too much, congratulations, you're probably already earning much more than your peers.
At some point you need to have runs on the board as opposed to 'exposure'. Otherwise your resume reads as all the different orientation/onboarding processes you've been through.
No, it's not. I'm an employer. Totally fine with jumps every 2-4 years. If I see you jumping often, significantly faster than that... I'll look past you. And I know most employers will do the same.
will you hire me? i am too fat to jump
Don't make me run, I'm full of chocolate
A couple of years isn’t a shock. A few months would be.
Yeah. Totally agree. If I see someone moving every 2-3 years and I assume they're hungry. That's good. If I see someone moving every 6-18mo I assume there's something wrong and don't look further. I've got plenty of applicantations. Happy to trim. If I see someone that has moved quickly a couple of times, but stays other places for 2+ years, I just assume there was an issue and will still leave that in the "yes for now" pile. So you know this is my rough thought pattern. 0-6months in role - I expect you to be unproductive compared to what the role requires. (Less grace for execs and c-level. There you need to deliver faster.) 6mo-12mo in role - you're break even. Should be doing what's necessary. 12-18mo - you're now improving what we had and are kicking arse. 18mo-2yrs - you're still kicking butts. Depending on the person could have boredom setting in. But that depends on what the individual wants in life and out of employment. 2yrs+ - depends. Could love it. Could be looking for promotions and new roles internally, or to move away. I'm super happy to have someone still in this role for longer, but I'm mindful of silent quitting.
i wouldn't even mention a few month job on my resume. if I was there for only that much time it must be a *real* basket case.. unfortunately I seem to stay basket cases a lot longer... golden handcuffs...
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Yep, exactly. 2-4 years is completely fine - it's not a waste of time and money to hire and train somebody for a few years. I've seen people where their max time at a company was 2 years and most were a year or so, and for anything other than pretty entry level, the time it would take them to get settled in the job and start being effective means that you'll end up hiring their replacement before they've added much value.
Not true. Like all things, there is nuance to it. Nobody reasonable is going to be concerned that you changed jobs every 2-4 years. However, if you change jobs every 6 months (and don't work in contracting or similar), you are definitely going to hurt your career prospects.
Not for employers. You can’t increase your salary through job hopping if you can’t get a job, or if you exhaust all the options in your industry.
I disagree. I do t want to go through the hiring & product familiarisation process for somebody that won’t stick around for more than a couple of years.
When you get to a certain level of management, it can be a negative. If the company is looking to hire someone who can manage a team and/or project over the long term, they're not going to be thrilled about someone who's changed jobs every other year.
As a GM, I avoid 1-2 year serial job hoppers. Not worth my investment in them.
I travelled and lived overseas most of my 20s. My resume doesn't reflect all of my years living away. Stretch the truth if you have someone to vouch for you
Second that. You need to have a story. Worked somewhere for only 6 months, but have the knowledge of someone who worked there for 1 year? Stretch it and show your experience for a whole 1 year. As long as you can come up with a story, communicate well, and have a reference to back up your story. Well done you will sell yourself. For references you can use your mate to back you up, show him as your manager/direct report even if he doesn’t work at your current company.
Fake it, till you make it. Living by this ever since I started my career, it has done wonders to my professional career.
IT contractor since 1994 - never been a problem, in fact staying too long in a contract is seen as a negative.
this is why there is so much shit software out there.. especially in govt.
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Doesn’t work for everyone/every position
If you're not on the partner track, don't stay - whether you want to make partner or not.
A hack that’s consistently overlooked is becoming an expert in your field. Pick something you like and that you’re good at, and stick to it. In 6.5 years I went from $40k to $230k (inc bonus)
This. If you are low to moderate earner forget ETF’s or property. Invest in yourself and upskill.
Exactly right. Far easier to increase the amount of money you make when you’re young, VS moving every spare cent into an ETF or property. I have one small IP, and I rent where I live
Just don't make yourself too invaluable to a single business area or team, otherwise you'll be too hard to replace and risk not being able to get promoted
Yes and no, in banking it’s easy to progress if you perform. I’ve spent most of my career at the one bank. Started on $100k here and they’ve looked after me every single year (not a brag, but my KPI’s are usually 150%+ every year) so they’re good to me
Yes, but banking
That’s nice but what do you do?
He started at Dominos then went to work for his daddy's Fortune 500 company.
Haha I genuinely had no handout. A few years ago I exaggerated a couple things on my resume which helped move me along. Then 5 years later here we are
Same boat. But I only get 25% of what you get. Exaggerated my resume and LinkedIn and went ham in the interview.
This might be a dumb question, but what part of your resume are you exaggerating? Knowledge and skills?
In my previous job in the events industry, I was responsible for rostering my team of 3-4 people. I'd use Google Sheets and Discord. My current job in the aged care sector has actual software for rostering and I'm responsible for building and maintaining the roster for 80 staff in accordance to legislation and enterprise agreements. Lets just say that in my interview I did not state how simple my experience was... :EDIT: The more I work in an office environment, the more I realise that nobody actually knows what they're doing.
And no one knows what YOU do. Which is even better.
Totally agree with this, though there is just one caveat depending on your field; don't get yourself locked into a niche. For example, if you are a software developer and become the absolute best in one particular obscure language (i.e. COBALT), you may be able to ask for 300k+, but those roles won't last forever and you may find yourself in a tight spot down the road if you don't have a good foundation. Much like a share portfolio, you need to have some level of diversification. For example, I'm a Business Analyst but I also have skills and experience as a Project Manager. The two go hand in hand and means I can realistically work in either role. A breadth of experience can be quite valuable (whether the tards in HR doing phase 1 vetting realise it or not). You need to balance the two, but ultimately you do have to invest in yourself as others have said. Get certifications, get experience across domains (might involve industry jumps or staying in the industry but swapping roles), keep learning. I would say your first 5 - 10 years should be building a really solid base and from there you need to specialise for big money. I had a similar post-uni path. 6.5 years, 55k - > approx 190 - 200k (contracting rates, same work year as FT perm).
Yeah, I’ve followed a similar trajectory. It’s interesting; if I don’t think about it, I still feel like I did 5-6 years ago in terms of knowledge. Then I talk to someone new-ish and get a sense of how far I’ve come.
Sounds like imposter syndrome! I was so nervous moving roles internally, and now 2 years in I can’t believe I was so stressed! I’m also training some of my old colleagues from my previous team So many people don’t want to back themselves
Agree with this 100%. Been doing the same thing in engineering for about 20 years and got good at it. Just changed jobs for a tidy 45% pay rise.
The only way you're getting 500k in IT is: tech sales, leadership (GM, engineering manager, etc at a tippy top company), or to work for a top US-based company that's willing to pay you 320k (good luck with that).
Go into software sales. You'll either be fired in 6 months or making 200k base with 400k total compensation when you move into enterprise selling.
This is the correct answer. Most lucrative career for the least amount of effort
Not from that field. How’s one supposed to find a job like that without any prior experience?
You can get a starting role in SDR and work up quite quickly. You’d maybe even start on better than $81k
Two paths to high income. Become a generalist in your field with great soft skills (sales, leadership) or become a specialist in your field with great soft skills (Solution Architect, SME). Failing that, just keep BS'ing your way up the ladder every 18-months to 3 years. But, seriously, if you want to turbocharge. You need to take a risk. Join a start-up/scale up, take equity and bust your balls (balls chosen deliberately due to transition comment) to make the company get bought by VC/PE/IPO. Arguable if you can get equity without being either a generalist or specialist anyway.
What's the expected return if the startup you work for is bought out? Understand that this will be subject to equity/stocks and the specific contract youve signed, but is there a very rough ballpark for someone with say 10yrs experience that would otherwise be earning 200k in a big bank or similar?
It really depends on when you join and how much equity you’re allocated. It’s very high risk high reward
And you can always hedge a little and join a start up around the series A region and get a good salary and still some (albeit less) equity. But yes it is a high risk/high reward strategy. It makes your job more rewarding imo though because your work in making the company stronger directly benefits you (speaking as someone with non-trivial equity in a former start up that has grown up a bit).
There’s no rough ball park figure. All depends on when you joined, how much equity you obtained and then the selling price. But to give you an idea, last place I was at sold and I took home 5k. My mate took home 150k. He joined at a very early stage so his shares had a different value and he was there for 7 years compared to my 24 months.
Thanks for this, it was pretty much what I was looking for. I suspect the returns arent amazing unless the company really takes off (which most won't) Not an amazing return on the 7 yrs IMO in your friend's case too. Hard(er) work throughout those 7 yrs on a salary that would generally be lower than industry depending on your role.
Way too many variables. It could be as little as a 10k bonus or all the way up to percentage stakes. Then you need to factor in if you are bought for 2 million or 100 million or 1 bn... There is a reason why it is a risk. There is also a reason why I pretty much exclusively take roles at scale ups and not start-ups. More base pay, less stake but still some upside.
Insider trading
Launch your own business. That is the salary and tax saving hack.
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It's little different to other suggestions here such as: * Lie on your resume and quadruple your income; * Join a start-up, bust your balls, and profit when it sells; * Find something you like and are good at. The problem with *all* advice, not just this advice, but especially this vague, general type, is survivorship bias.
The most effective salary hack you can do, realistically for most, is actually just do the hours you are paid for. When working. Do less for more the same.
Hmmm, you want to jump from $81K pa to $500K pa in a reasonable amount of time? That's not a salary hack but rather you're hoping for a miracle.
That figure seemed more tongue and cheek than literal
>tongue and cheek Tongue in cheek
Redditor who earns $500k? Most of those are bs.
Yeah your average /r/AusFinance user earns much more than 500k
Floats around 600-700k karma.
Very few Australians would earn this much to start.
not working in a low paid industry.
I work in agriculture. Just riding it out until the world turns on it heads and people who grow the food you all eat to survive has all the power.
Don't hold your breath
Then we will eat them!!
Lol who said your time is worth $50/hr? Based on your current salary your time is worth $27.5/hr. 81k in IT is quite low, but that depends on the position, are you a junior? What is your job?
That's like Mid Systems Administrator in a suburban area though, it's a middle of the road kind of salary for a middle of the road kind of position in IT.
Their profile indicates they’re a Junior Sysadmin so at that level, they’re pretty well paid. $50/hr is closer to mid-level.
I've worked with SME's all my career in media strategy/digital production related roles and pull about sub $90k a year. Moving through my 30s quickly realised this wasn't a very high growth career trajectory and that it probably made more sense for me to incorporate my own SME and hire remotely to service any new business that I bring in for myself. At average monthly billings of $5k per client, I am starting to see that it isn't that difficult to sign 6 retainers and triple my full time earnings just from focusing on growing my own agency. It required a mindset shift from me but I suppose this happens to a lot of people who start to realise the ceiling to their earnings potential sooner in their career than say, someone who's climbed the corporate ladder right up to their mid 40s.
Nice job. How long did it take you to reach the point of signing 6 clients for an average of $5k a month? And how did you go about attracting business when you first started out?
Was a matter of good timing. Opportunity presented because I was doing outreach and business development for my day job. The business I represented wasn't keen to take certain businesses due to shortage of internal resources (viewed clients as paying too little, being too demanding etc). Some of this outreach was to former clients of mine and as a result I felt responsible for not leaving the discussion cold. I felt like if noone wanted to take the money on the table, I may as well incorporate by myself and service the role with remote support. In my business, clients tend to renew their retainers around the same time - especially when it involves similar billing cycles within their industries. So going from 1 to 3 client retainers was not difficult, took about under 2 months. A bit of digital marketing and cold outreach and I soon saw how doubling those retainers was actually way within reach.
I told a friend that I was thinking of leaving my company. I knew that they socialised with my manager. Two weeks later, I got an unrequested raise.
NV2 is not a salary hack, nor is moving to government/defence The big $$$ are in management roles so studying an MBA might be the best idea.
Yeh, i highly recommend the AGSM. s/
Why is that sarcastic? Genuine question.
This is only if you want to be a careerist as reward vs work is low. You can get a good ratio of reward vs work (not the highest reward though) in the right tech niche, I am talking circa $250k.
NV2 is absolutely a salary hack. Some contracts are 50 - 100k more than their corpo equivalent. Any immigrant with a degree can be hired into corpo land on pennies. NV2 requires you to be perm resi or citizen and those kids know the market, not to mention have likely been around the traps for a while so it's known that these roles have to offer big bucks to attract big talent. I'd argue the big perm $$$ are only in management in certain roles. It's really only the top tiers that would out-earn a highly skilled IC in other companies and it usually takes quite a long term grinding it out to get to Director level at these companies.
You can easily add ~$50k/yr of building value to an old house with tutorial vids and a bit of go about ya. Note if you're already in the top tax bracket you'd have to increase your income by $100k to foot a $50k bill. Reckon your employer will quickly raise your income this much if you work twice as hard? Forget the rat race. Go to Bunnings.
These are some things that helped me out earn most others: * Negotiate well * Interview well * In the world of software engineering, there's a lot of us with terrible communication skills. If you get good at that + you're likeable, your value goes up a lot. * Switch jobs often * Be a problem solver * Work on functions that either improve profit or reduce costs, making you much more vital to the company
Nv2 here. When is the hack supposed to kick in?
The biggest hack is jumping to a new job every 6 months to a year for an easy 10%+ pay bump every time. Unfortunately, employers don’t seem to value loyalty in this day and age anymore. Plus, just remember that they wouldn’t hesitate to replace you, so why stay?
If I see someone with a string of 6 month tenures on their CV, it just says the person is too incompetent to make it past probation and thus I shouldn't waste my time.
Yeah or has conflict issues with staff, so the effort you put into onboard will be wasted with them gone within a year
This. I agree that you need to job hop to boost your salary but not too often. Every 3 years is fine. I won’t hire someone who never stays in a position for long.
Same. If I see a couple of short hops that's fine, if it's frequent then it's a red flag.
\+1. I interview quite a few people, and duration is something I look at. It doesn't mean they wont get an interview, but it will be something I will question if they make it to the interview.
Yeah, until it says ‘6 month contract’ next to all of them
Yeah people need to stop acting like they can just endlessly hop for free money. Its dependent on the market and the industry youre working in. But if all you've done is 6 months-1 year at each job, its pretty clear what your career priorities are. At least for me, I would hire someone who has some tenure at previous jobs if I want to build and kind of plan around them.
The people jumping every six months are being poached or working short term contracts. In that case just become a contractor and earn more money. Not many HR looking favourably on six month jumps
> jumping to a new job every 6 months to a year the only people who type this are idiots who have also never done it and succeeded on this sub...
Why would you value loyalty when your company can’t meet market prices? It’s a commercial transaction
As a hiring manager if I see someone's resume with multiple roles where he spent less than 2 years at each without a valid reason I wouldn't consider him for an interview. While I agree with the fact that moving companies is the easiest eay to get pay bumps, I would recommend doing that every couple of years.
> As a hiring manager if I see someone's resume with multiple roles where he spent less than 2 years at each without a valid reason I wouldn't consider him for an interview. Works fine when you have candidates beating down the door, but in a lot of sectors that just isn't the case so you're getting everyone with a pulse in.
$500k a year? Bro this is reddit, uni grads make that much. The average income here is easily $2m +, anything less then that and your prob going to get banned.
I'm at ~$200/hr (inc super, ex gst) on a single client and got there through changing contracts, networking and upskilling. It is a very big jump to go up higher from here, I'd need to take on extra work across multiple clients to get up to $500k. Aim smaller and work your way up, but know even if you got to $500k, it wouldn't be enough and you'd want more. Comparison is the thief of joy.
>Comparison is the thief of joy. Especially in JavaScript
I'm assuming you live in Canberra, do you at least have a baseline? What sort of role do you work in? You can definitely get more than $81,000 as long as you have a baseline.
$81K per year isn’t nothing but its buying power nowadays pretty much makes it a McSalary. I’m only on $120K and I’m not living high on the hog and being wasteful either and I find it not to have much buying power.
I've never heard getting an NV2 is a super hack. It's just a requirement for a job. PV they normally give you some extra money to.maintain.
not directly into defence or government , but defence/government adjacent IT is the money. if you can do IT stuff, learn basic cyber and Data security and go nuts. look at Defence industry security programs (DISP) the field is new, is growing and pays well.
Continue to educate yourself with certs and courses. They will more than pay for themselves. Be trustworthy and dependable. Keep an eye on the job market. Don't repeat my mistake of staying with one employer for 20 years.
The emphasis is on “apparently”. I can assure you that a) this sub is full of fantasists and b) very few if any people earning half a million are going to be on Reddit, bragging.
Take it from a fellow woman in IT (5 years, DevOps/Linux admin) and has more than doubled her income in that time - the best way to get ahead in this industry is to study your ass off to be better than the boys and job hop whenever you’re no longer learning (in the first few years) or you’re not being paid what you’re worth. For the latter, I use job listings to figure that out and honestly compare myself against the criteria and what I’m currently doing.
Shift to contracting.
If you think transitioning into a man is going to get you that sweet “male salary” you’re going to be very disappointed…
I actually wouldn't mind transitioning to female for the industry I work in.
>• Transition into a man. Just fetching my popcorn.
Apply to multiple jobs, use multiple offers to negotiate the most pay. Get a counter offer from your current employer, mostly just to use in negotiations, as things generally don't go well when you do that.
Apply to multiple jobs, take all jobs*
So based purely on my personal experience, changing companies usually comes with a boost, or working for a dysfunctional company and making it functional - second tip is not a given though and usually comes with a whole bunch of other bullshit.
I was on 80K 4 months ago and now I'm on 115k. Don't wait for the company to give you a raise, just leave them. I'm HR and can tell you the loyal employees are always underpaid, every person hired to fill someone that left gets 20k~ more, though the one that left only asked for a 5k raise and was rejected. If you are in the early years of your career,go for bigger companies, small companies are stingy asf! Also, stop applying for roles that you meet 100% of the criteria and start applying for ones you can on tick 70-80%. Every role should be about growth, not just money.
"Get a clearance (NV1/NV2)" is not simple. It's a long process, and very involved. It also requires sponsorship. Your current employer would need to support it happening, and be involved in the process. Just so you're aware.
Getting a clearance is not as big of a deal as you think.
What skills do you have? Kinda depends on that. Not a hack but to get any meaningful increases, you have to increase your skill set that is in demand.
Strategic job hopping. Eg, don't just jump for any job that pays 5k more. Aim for 20%~ pay increase. Try fluff your job titles as much as possible. Smaller companies can be great to work for because they give good job titles as a incentive because they usually can't pay as well. Also when looking for a new job, don't think what you want your next job to be, think what you want the job after that to be and work backwards. Staying within the same industries is a great way to get interviews and ultimately jobs, especially at senior levels. Using the above I was able to go from forklift driver to senior project manager in 5~ years
Ask for more money. Changes jobs. Upskill at work.
I think the NV2/1 and defence is coming from a recent hiring blast from Department of Defence that requires NV Clearance? Well for starters getting to point where someone sponsors you NV is pretty hard, you need to have demonstrated skillset, experience working as contractor and probably previous government experience having Baseline clearance at least. Current timeframe is around 100 Business days to get NV2. Not many people are earning 500K, for most positions 200K is the top limit, According to [https://paycalculator.com.au/](https://paycalculator.com.au/) if you earn 200k pre tax, you're already in 97th Percentile income band, means only 3% working Australians get paid higher then you. 200K is pretty great spot and people will literally do anything to get there, that's an idea target you can go in 4-5 years. Lastly, if you're in IT, you should pretty much know the structure of whole IT Operations and which roles you can target and attain such certifications. Feel free to chat if you want more information, I have 10 years of Experience in ITOps.
Have conversations with your manager regularly. Pay increase request should not be unexpected or kept for salary review time. Find out what your manager values and make sure you talk about your achievements relating to that to your manager. Find out how to make it easy for your manager to give you a raise. What do they need to get approval etc. Make sure you are visible not just within your silo but also across your organisation. Change organisations when your pay increases have plateaued / you are not valued appropriately.
$500k+ incomes are rare 1 in 1000 people rare. Typically people who earn this much have diversified income streams from a lifetime of building wealth. But let say you want to earn this as a salary, you need to be extremely highly skilled in a very in demand role that very few people can do or do well. Another area where you could achieve this is software or other high margin, high value items which have extremely high bonus potential.
Government is not the Bees Knees. I work in Government (27+yrs), you're treat like a number. Pays not all that either. You need degree's to get anywhere or it's who you know. Then again, don't rely on anyone to get you a job, because if you do a shit job, it will back fire not just on you but them too. That's why I don't recommend friends for jobs in my department.
Your job, in ANY job, is to make your wage decider (usually direct superior but not always) job easier. Don't go to them with whinging, be amenable when they assign you tasks, don't make their life harder. Make it easier. Ask for raises every 9 months, so you get them yearly. No one doesn't give a raise to someone that is performing and not making their life hard. You can earn the company a lot, but if you make your managers life hard with BS, good luck getting raise.
The easiest way to increase your salary on ausfinance is to lie about it
Haha, transition into a man - absolutely loved that.
Find people on linkedin with jobs that you want to do and reverse engineer what you need to do to get them by looking at what experience/education/certification they have compared to you.
Defence private industry? Yes. Defence for the Government, no. The salary floor in Defence Government jobs is great but the ceiling is laughably low until you're seriously high up. The best salary hack I know is job hopping, but being selective where you hop (salary jumps and opportunity for huge increase in skills and knowledge). Also, you're in IT so you're in an industry where the earnings potential is enormous - don't waste it by going government if money is what you really want. Source: went from $70k in April 2019 to just under $140k in July 2023.
Contract, high risk (job security) but high reward. You will get exposure to more organisations as you will be forced to cycle your jobs, become proficient in interviews and turn into a consultant whilst building your experience and worth. I found I have been brought into many organisations to deliver a body of work and have a sense of achievement once completed. BTW, you are in the right industry to earn very well - NV2 is a massive booster especially if living in Canberra.
Become a contractor. Less security but a lot more money and if you get on a big government project you'll be fine because there are some moron contractors sitting on the project I am on and really should not be getting their contracts renewed. Sidestepping into Data I highly recommend as its where a lot of IT jobs are right now.
Join your union and get your colleagues to do the same.
absolutely
Just apply for another job paying more. You didn't even state what kind of IT
A dollar saved is a dollar earned.
This is the best way. Instead of spending 80k don't spend -$420k.
When you get a penny from a chum, Don't just buy some bubble gum. Put it in your cap! Put it in your cap! When you find a nickel in the snow, Don't just blow it on a picture show. Put it in your cap! Put it in your cap! When you spy a quarter in a pie...
For any employee anywhere, its as simple as: -make yourself more valuable (so many ways to do that- this is where your focus should be: figuring out what that is) -push to be recognised & remunerated accordingly.
fire thousands of employees.
As others have said, job hopping, being nice to work with, making your manager looks good, doing your job well - all help the process along. And those tips can get you to a $150k salary in a lot of fields eventually. But at the end of the day, your choice of field/career is the biggest determinant of how much you earn and how quickly it grows. However, most people who are earning $500k do so because they have spent 20-30 years building something, either industry leading expertise in a specialist field, building a business from scratch, climbing the ladder at a large multinational. Often at great expense to their personal lives. Things that help that process are. \- Develop skills that are in demand such as coding, finance, project management, sales enablement. \-Sacrifice a lot of extra time to be the best at your company at what you do. \- Work for a start-up for a dud salary but under an equity share arrangement and hope it's worth big bucks in 10-15 years time.
It depends on your field, I guess. Start talking to your organisations competitors if you can. Worked wonders for me I'm a tradesman, spent 17 years at my last company, I'm fortunate that I have never asked for a pay rise but have always managed at least 5% if not 10 % year on year. It's very much based on your skill set, and mine is niche. Plus, I'm NV1 along with ASIC and other security and aviation related clearances that not many other staff were willing to get. Long-term loyalty worked well for me up to a point. But once I was told I'd never be promoted any higher by my immediate boss, I walked. Once I started talking to competitors I found out I could increase my pay by at least 30%, get a car allowance that was 12k more than what I was getting, with unlimited overtime it was a no brainer to go. Best part is its way less stress.
Change companies often. People pay for what they don’t already have. Human nature.
Leave. It's unfortunately the fastest way to get a pay rise.
500k seems pretty rare for Australia tbh
Public service doesn't pay shit unless you contract and security clearances don't increase your rate. I used to get paid 200k to contract as a senior business analyst.
I get paid more than 50/hr but still feel like it's not enough to live off.
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Haha 😂 transition into a man
You need to watch the movie about the woman who transitioned into a man… she didn’t like it much.
Learn to market yourself and market your work in a way thats tailored to the job youre chasing