What's the money like?

moycullen14

learn_more wrote: »

My opinion of the state of pay in I.T specifically development in Ireland is as follows and I'm curious as how many here who work in IT agree with it. I should say I don't work in I.T.

Back in the 80's a job as a programmer/systems analyst would earn your about 60K after say 2 or 3 years of being proficient in say COBOL and just that really. On the spectrum of geat jobs in terms of pay/prestige it was considered to be in a tier just below that of a Solicitor, Doctor etc.

It is nothing like that anymore.

Since I suppose the mid to late 90's the pay in the sector has gone down significantly and if that wasn't bad enough the amount of work one is expected to put in has sky-rocketed to the point of insanity. The net result of all this is that an average job as a developer could not really be classified anything much above the status of a working-class job. A far cry from where it used to be.

Now, I am not saying that this has come about by some natural evolution. I am saying this has come about by design and I blame both the universities and the tech companies for this. Could say a lot more about that but I'll leave it there for the time being suffice to say I'm aware that performance and productivity expectations have increased in other sectors too but still nothing like what has happened in IT.

So to anyone who asks about pay I would say look elsewhere if pay is your primary concern. What is expected of you in uni and especially your own personal time is not worth it for the remuneration currently as it stands. By all means if you are the type that loves, really loves, studying and putting your knowledge into practise 24/7 then go ahead but don't do it because you think you will be rewarded with a commensurate salary cause you won't.

I would agree 100% with this.

There is no doubt that - in relative and absolute - terms pay has declined since the peak (late 90s/early 2000's).

Combination of a lot of things. Barriers to entry have been lowered. It's easier to get into the industry. Writing software in the 80s and 90s was difficult and expensive. Outsourcing has put downward pressure on wages as well.

Another problem is that you reach your earning peak quite early in development. There is no premium for 20 years experience over 10. There is a limit to what companies will pay at the top-level and once you've hit that, you have nowhere to go.

Of course, there are exceptions to all this. Contracting/consulting can increase the money you make and, in a small number of cases, you can earn huge bucks - but that's not for everybody.

I'm not sure I would recommend contracting for everybody. It can be difficult and you really have to have a plan in place for your declining years. You don't want to be chasing an ever decreasing number of opportunities in your 40s and 50s. Keeping up with technology can be difficult. It's said that there are major technology shifts every 10-12 years and that the average developer can adopt to at maybe 2 of these changes before burn-out kicks in.

Probably the best strategy for a young developer is to hitch your wagon to a rising star. Go and work for a company that is going to be successful. An Intel, Oracle or Microsoft in the 80's, a Google, Facebook, Amazon today.

Working in a successful company will do more for your career and finances than anything else. Be ruthless. If the company is not succeeding, leave.

Remember, you only have to hit the jackpot once!

ILikeBoats

moycullen14 wrote: »

Probably the best strategy for a young developer is to hitch your wagon to a rising star. Go and work for a company that is going to be successful. An Intel, Oracle or Microsoft in the 80's, a Google, Facebook, Amazon today.

Maybe even try a pre-IPO company that will be big...you could become very rich overnight

Yourself isit

lawred2 wrote: »

While separate; it's entirely relevant. Someone earning 60k is not significantly better off than someone on 30k. Nowhere near twice as well off as their gross income would suggest.

So saying that they are 'rich' in comparison is not accurate.

That's true. To double a take home pay of 2k a month you need to nearly triple your income. From 26k to high 70s

Yourself isit

moycullen14 wrote: »

I would agree 100% with this.

There is no doubt that - in relative and absolute - terms pay has declined since the peak (late 90s/early 2000's).

Combination of a lot of things. Barriers to entry have been lowered. It's easier to get into the industry. Writing software in the 80s and 90s was difficult and expensive. Outsourcing has put downward pressure on wages as well.

Another problem is that you reach your earning peak quite early in development. There is no premium for 20 years experience over 10. There is a limit to what companies will pay at the top-level and once you've hit that, you have nowhere to go.

Of course, there are exceptions to all this. Contracting/consulting can increase the money you make and, in a small number of cases, you can earn huge bucks - but that's not for everybody.

I'm not sure I would recommend contracting for everybody. It can be difficult and you really have to have a plan in place for your declining years. You don't want to be chasing an ever decreasing number of opportunities in your 40s and 50s. Keeping up with technology can be difficult. It's said that there are major technology shifts every 10-12 years and that the average developer can adopt to at maybe 2 of these changes before burn-out kicks in.

Probably the best strategy for a young developer is to hitch your wagon to a rising star. Go and work for a company that is going to be successful. An Intel, Oracle or Microsoft in the 80's, a Google, Facebook, Amazon today.

Working in a successful company will do more for your career and finances than anything else. Be ruthless. If the company is not succeeding, leave.

Remember, you only have to hit the jackpot once!

While I wouldn't recommend contracting for other reasons, the idea that a 40 year old needs to continuously reskill is not true. Sure new fads appear every month particularly in Web Dev but the contractor with his niche (cobol, c++, or others ) is still getting the big bucks and legacy systems don't die off.

In terms of hitting the jackpot - very rare in Ireland.

Yourself isit

In fact a lot of the advice here (which I have followed myself) is probably wrong abd it's been wrong for me. I'm 38. Earn well enough but have plateaued.

1) move jobs a lot.

No way into senior management if you do that. I moved every 2-3 years and am just now a manager. A friend who stayed with a boring mid ranking company is a VP.

2) look for startups.

You could get lucky. Three times I joined startups they failed.

3) leave unsuccessful companies

I left an unsuccessful company which is now one of the most successful in the world. The stock I left would make me a millionaire.

4) keep updating your skill set.

Did that too but there are always younger bloods latching onto the new thing. It hasn't harmed me that much but I know that some guys older than me have stayed in their niche and making 600 plus a day.

14ned

Yourself isit wrote: »

Remember he is locking away lots of money in his business. It's not hugely tax efficient but he can pay himself 33k and take a few years off.

I think you mean it's hugely tax efficient. Because of the close company surcharge, all monies not paid out as PAYE and expenses go into the occupational pension fund. Under current tax rules, once I reach 51 years old I can retire and my pension fund will pay out a lump sum tax free plus an annuity thereafter.

A word to the wise, though, they will start costing a LOT more as they grow up.
College could end up costing you 8-10K per child per year, a figure that is only going to increase.

Oh for sure. But by then I'll have cashed out the pension.

The cheapest house (3 bed semi) for rent in mallow is 950 per month. Now you might be spending a helluva lot less but - and this is the key - you must be prepared to pay market rates if you're renting. His current landlord could chuck him out with very little notice. What does he do then on his 33,800K per year?

I'm currently paying 575 per month. And it's not Mallow town centre, I'm in a village outside it. Again, a remote worker need not live close to anywhere but a train station.

Where does the 2K deposit + rent come from? What happens when the 10+ year old car claps out? What happens when the kids need medical or dental care? 33K for 4 people is precarious - it's not sustainable or ideal.

Anyway, he is not earning 33800, that's what he PAYS himself. Big difference. As you say the money is being held in the company and can be used if required.

All of which is absolutely accurate. What makes people feel poor after a certain minimum income is lack of liquidity, so when they need X euro urgently as an emergency, they can't raise it easily. I don't have that problem except at the very beginning of each tax year because Irish tax law requires you to zero your company cash balances i.e. either pay out via PAYE or put the money beyond access into a pension fund. So I have plenty of liquidity, and can adjust spending to bring total outgoings back under budget later. Hence the feelings of wealth.

Niall

purpleisafruit

I'm 21 months out of college and into my second company. I work in DevOps and have done since I started out. As it's a relatively new role type in IT circles, there is a shortage of people with the skills so salaries are quite good.
I started on high 30s in an MNC and joined a start up that has been acquired 6 months ago. Into the mid-50s now and will push into 60s by end of the year.
Based in Cork so cost of living isn't too bad.

moycullen14

Yourself isit wrote: »

In fact a lot of the advice here (which I have followed myself) is probably wrong abd it's been wrong for me. I'm 38. Earn well enough but have plateaued.

1) move jobs a lot.

No way into senior management if you do that. I moved every 2-3 years and am just now a manager. A friend who stayed with a boring mid ranking company is a VP.

2) look for startups.

You could get lucky. Three times I joined startups they failed.

3) leave unsuccessful companies

I left an unsuccessful company which is now one of the most successful in the world. The stock I left would make me a millionaire.

4) keep updating your skill set.

Did that too but there are always younger bloods latching onto the new thing. It hasn't harmed me that much but I know that some guys older than me have stayed in their niche and making 600 plus a day.

To be honest, what happened to you doesn't mean that the strategy is wrong, it means you were unlucky (maybe a bit of bad judgement too).

Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to being in the right place at the right time. I don't think there is a strategy that is guaranteed to work. The best you can do is shorten the odds for success.

Yourself isit

14ned wrote: »

I think you mean it's hugely tax efficient. Because of the close company surcharge, all monies not paid out as PAYE and expenses go into the occupational pension fund. Under current tax rules, once I reach 51 years old I can retire and my pension fund will pay out a lump sum tax free plus an annuity thereafter.

Isnt there a limit on what can be paid in.

Oh for sure. But by then I'll have cashed out the pension.



I'm currently paying 575 per month. And it's not Mallow town centre, I'm in a village outside it. Again, a remote worker need not live close to anywhere but a train station.



All of which is absolutely accurate. What makes people feel poor after a certain minimum income is lack of liquidity, so when they need X euro urgently as an emergency, they can't raise it easily. I don't have that problem except at the very beginning of each tax year because Irish tax law requires you to zero your company cash balances i.e. either pay out via PAYE or put the money beyond access into a pension fund. So I have plenty of liquidity, and can adjust spending to bring total outgoings back under budget later. Hence the feelings of wealth.

Niall

Good strategy.

Yourself isit

moycullen14 wrote: »

To be honest, what happened to you doesn't mean that the strategy is wrong, it means you were unlucky (maybe a bit of bad judgement too).

Ultimately, a lot of it comes down to being in the right place at the right time. I don't think there is a strategy that is guaranteed to work. The best you can do is shorten the odds for success.

My judgement is exactly what you recommended.

I'm still doing OK, in fact on the high end of salaries mentioned here, but same aged or older colleagues of mine who didn't retrain or stayed in the their supposedly obsolete niche or boring companies are doing better.

In fact guys in their 50s and 60s contracting for cobol and c++ are cleaning it.

Now there are anecdotes not statistics, just pointing out there are other stories.

(There's luck too - my VP friend could have been unemployed if the company had fallen over).

srsly78

Yourself isit wrote: »

Isnt there a limit on what can be paid in.

Company director can have an executive pension, which has (much higher) limit compared to a normal employees pension.

edit: To be clear, the "limit" refers to tax relief available. Company contribution to occupational pension is not taxed, so relief is not relevant.

moycullen14

Yourself isit wrote: »

My judgement is exactly what you recommended.

I'm still doing OK, in fact on the high end of salaries mentioned here, but same aged or older colleagues of mine who didn't retrain or stayed in the their supposedly obsolete niche or boring companies are doing better.

In fact guys in their 50s and 60s contracting for cobol and c++ are cleaning it.

Now there are anecdotes not statistics, just pointing out there are other stories.

(There's luck too - my VP friend could have been unemployed if the company had fallen over).

There is some evidence that the best times for particular technologies is at the start and at the end. The key is supply AND demand. I suppose the best skills are those that have a certain level of demand and a high barrier to entry.

Like you, I also walked away from a wildly successful start-up and have flogged myself to death on turkeys. I still think you are better off - on average and in the long run - focussing on the companies you work for, rather than technology.

14ned

Yourself isit wrote: »

Isnt there a limit on what can be paid in.

There is a surprisingly large number of ways to pay into a pension in Ireland, each with different rules and caps. The way we legally configured ours is as an occupational pension fund same as a SME. That way the company contributes to it out of operating income, not us, and thus you get flexibility in contribution amount per year depending on how good or bad that year was.

Yourself isit wrote: »

Good strategy.

Thanks. It isn't by accident, I paid lots of fees to professional advisors to design it for me, and it is not without sacrifice. For example, everyone I grew up with lives far away from here, but we chose here for the main line train station, the low rents and the excellent broadband. But no one ever visits, we're considered to live out the back of beyond by people in Cork and far too far away.

Like you, I also walked away from a wildly successful start-up and have flogged myself to death on turkeys. I still think you are better off - on average and in the long run - focussing on the companies you work for, rather than technology.

I had a number of startup failures too early on. They persuaded me to give up that lark until I was much older and no longer need to care about regular income.

Some people I know struck it lucky with startups, cashed out and are now millionaires, but the vast majority saw their startup fail or not become valuable. Startups are very hard to pull off, I contract my services to a lot of them.

Niall

moycullen14

14ned wrote: »

There is a surprisingly large number of ways to pay into a pension in Ireland, each with different rules and caps. The way we legally configured ours is as an occupational pension fund same as a SME. That way the company contributes to it out of operating income, not us, and thus you get flexibility in contribution amount per year depending on how good or bad that year was.



Thanks. It isn't by accident, I paid lots of fees to professional advisors to design it for me, and it is not without sacrifice. For example, everyone I grew up with lives far away from here, but we chose here for the main line train station, the low rents and the excellent broadband. But no one ever visits, we're considered to live out the back of beyond by people in Cork and far too far away.



I had a number of startup failures too early on. They persuaded me to give up that lark until I was much older and no longer need to care about regular income.

Some people I know struck it lucky with startups, cashed out and are now millionaires, but the vast majority saw their startup fail or not become valuable. Startups are very hard to pull off, I contract my services to a lot of them.

Niall

Rather than 'startups', I was thinking of companies that look to have a good chance of success. Hindsight, I know, but it was pretty obvious in the early 90s that microsoft was going to be a huge success. Similarly, intel, oracle, google, facebook, etc, etc. You could, I guess, just buy the stock.

You didn't need to join these companies when they were in the two men and a dog phase to make lots of money.

Yourself isit

moycullen14 wrote: »

Rather than 'startups', I was thinking of companies that look to have a good chance of success. Hindsight, I know, but it was pretty obvious in the early 90s that microsoft was going to be a huge success. Similarly, intel, oracle, google, facebook, etc, etc. You could, I guess, just buy the stock.

You didn't need to join these companies when they were in the two men and a dog phase to make lots of money.

That's right, the (relatively) unsuccessful company I left lots of stock and money on the table wasn't a startup.

moycullen14

Yourself isit wrote: »

That's right, the (relatively) unsuccessful company I left lots of stock and money on the table wasn't a startup.

Yeah, management buy outs, spin offs, etc can be surprisingly lucrative.
Some of the companies that came out of the Quinn group collapse have made the management/staff millions.

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

Rather than 'startups', I was thinking of companies that look to have a good chance of success. Hindsight, I know, but it was pretty obvious in the early 90s that microsoft was going to be a huge success. Similarly, intel, oracle, google, facebook, etc, etc. You could, I guess, just buy the stock.

You didn't need to join these companies when they were in the two men and a dog phase to make lots of money.

Thing is, it's far harder at the time to pick the winners. I was investing in tech during the 1990s and I lost a lot of money. I kept choosing what looked to have a good chance at the time, but it turns out they did not. For example, I invested in Microsoft three years before they plateaued, and during that time I made good money, but lost that gain and more on AMD which at the time looked to be a great bet with their not Pentium 4 CPUs.

I remember when Google first turned up and I panned the service to anybody I knew because, well it was crap initially. It looked highly likely to fail at the time and a very bad investment bet. Similarly Intel have always looked to be a one trick pony (and still are), and Facebook, well, I still think it unlikely to make money in the long term. I barely use FB anymore, and neither does an increasing number of people I know. It's mostly for the retired nowadays and selling them stuff is hard.

My lesson learned from that period is don't invest in companies, invest in industries. So a good chunk of my pension is in a very low cost passive tracker of the top 100 tech companies, and even after the current Silicon Valley bubble pops, I reckon the top 100 tech companies are a good bet for growth relative to other passive trackers available.

Niall

srsly78

14ned wrote: »

I remember when Google first turned up and I panned the service to anybody I knew because, well it was crap initially. It looked highly likely to fail at the time and a very bad investment bet.

Wait what....?

I did the exact opposite. All other search engines at the time were garbage (altavista etc). With google you actually got relevant results for your search, it was revolutionary at the time. Everyone I saw try it was an instant convert.

Whatever the wisdom of investing was, the service itself was not crap!

moycullen14

14ned wrote: »

Thing is, it's far harder at the time to pick the winners. I was investing in tech during the 1990s and I lost a lot of money. I kept choosing what looked to have a good chance at the time, but it turns out they did not. For example, I invested in Microsoft three years before they plateaued, and during that time I made good money, but lost that gain and more on AMD which at the time looked to be a great bet with their not Pentium 4 CPUs.

I remember when Google first turned up and I panned the service to anybody I knew because, well it was crap initially. It looked highly likely to fail at the time and a very bad investment bet. Similarly Intel have always looked to be a one trick pony (and still are), and Facebook, well, I still think it unlikely to make money in the long term. I barely use FB anymore, and neither does an increasing number of people I know. It's mostly for the retired nowadays and selling them stuff is hard.

My lesson learned from that period is don't invest in companies, invest in industries. So a good chunk of my pension is in a very low cost passive tracker of the top 100 tech companies, and even after the current Silicon Valley bubble pops, I reckon the top 100 tech companies are a good bet for growth relative to other passive trackers available.

Niall

And that's why you diversify your portfolio.

Google was a breath of fresh air back in 99-00 when I first used it. Altavista - the best SE at the time - was horrendously difficult to use. People ran courses/wrote books on how to get AV to work properly. By the time Google IPOd in 2004, it was obvious that it was a winner and owned the Internet. That's when you made your investment decision.

Facebook has been dying for years. So much so that it's stock is up 5x since the low just after the IPO. FB may fail in the long run but, as any fool knows, you make your money when you sell, not when you buy.

For a serious investor I would say these companies must have been blindingly obvious buys. Closer to home RyanAir is up 7x since 2009.

rainbow kirby

I'm on "not enough" in London - could do with a significant increase and should get one next time I move jobs. I was strongly considering jumping ship in summer 2015 and had a couple of interviews when we found out that our little guy was on the way, and that meant I was stuck where I was because of the pretty good maternity topup my current company offers.

Started looking around again now. I get a LOT of recruiter interest, but a good bit of it seems to be for totally unsuitable roles (I'm a Python developer with 4-5 years experience, people seem to want me for management roles a lot).

BrokenArrows

rainbow kirby wrote: »

I'm on "not enough" in London - could do with a significant increase and should get one next time I move jobs. I was strongly considering jumping ship in summer 2015 and had a couple of interviews when we found out that our little guy was on the way, and that meant I was stuck where I was because of the pretty good maternity topup my current company offers.

Started looking around again now. I get a LOT of recruiter interest, but a good bit of it seems to be for totally unsuitable roles (I'm a Python developer with 4-5 years experience, people seem to want me for management roles a lot).

If you like your current company just try and get a job offer for any role that pays more (even if you have no plans to accept it). Bring the offer to your current management telling them youre considering leaving and see if there is anything that can keep you.

Most companies have a certain budget to retain staff. A few people in my company have done that recently and received significant pay increases.

All this is assuming your management dont want to get rid of you

moycullen14

BrokenArrows wrote: »

If you like your current company just try and get a job offer for any role that pays more (even if you have no plans to accept it). Bring the offer to your current management telling them youre considering leaving and see if there is anything that can keep you.

Most companies have a certain budget to retain staff. A few people in my company have done that recently and received significant pay increases.

All this is assuming your management dont want to get rid of you

Be aware that you can probably only get away with this once and be prepared to leave if it doesn't work. If they can't/won't match the offer then leaving is probably the right thing to do anyway.

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

Google was a breath of fresh air back in 99-00 when I first used it. Altavista - the best SE at the time - was horrendously difficult to use. People ran courses/wrote books on how to get AV to work properly.

Ah, but I was an Altavista master. It found so much stuff Google at the time could not, and moreover didn't clutter results with stuff based on popularity i.e. early PageRank which Google did. Altavista was far superior for the power user (at that time). But Google did catch up, and more importantly popularity with (the correct) masses became a much better barometer to value than it originally was.

(The key part is "the correct masses". That part of Google is hand maintained by a fair army of engineers who tune that stuff daily.)

By the time Google IPOd in 2004, it was obvious that it was a winner and owned the Internet. That's when you made your investment decision.

Even in 2004-2005, Google didn't look to be too great a bet. I remember at that time pondering it for investment ... what put me off honestly was how well Apple was doing at that time, they looked like they could crush Google and everyone knew they were breaking into adjacent markets in a big way. But I didn't invest in Apple then either as at that time, I had been hearing rumours they were going to knock Microsoft out of the business smart phone business, and that seemed very risky ...

(you might laugh now, I more cry, but my point is this stuff is hard to predict at the time and very easy to predict with hindsight. In 2005 many, including Nokia, had tried and failing to push Microsoft out of business smart phones. I felt at that time it would be an expensive, company destroying idea, too risky).

Facebook has been dying for years. So much so that it's stock is up 5x since the low just after the IPO. FB may fail in the long run but, as any fool knows, you make your money when you sell, not when you buy.

For a serious investor I would say these companies must have been blindingly obvious buys. Closer to home RyanAir is up 7x since 2009.

As you might be guessing, I have terrible investment instincts, so after I lost lots of money on investing in banking in 2008/2009 I no longer invest directly. I am very, very bad at it.

Niall

Talisman

14ned wrote: »

I remember when Google first turned up and I panned the service to anybody I knew because, well it was crap initially. It looked highly likely to fail at the time and a very bad investment bet.

I knew a guy who was offered a large stake in Google for $1M before they were launched, he turned down the offer because he felt it was a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a search algorithm.

needhelpguy

a fat guy wrote: »

A friend of mine stayed in Waterford and has worked there since 2013 in a medium-sized company. He has made himself indispensible and is on almost 70K now, but all he does is work. Not that that's a bad thing really, he lives for development. But it shows that you really have to work your ass off to get to that level (For years) and get pretty lucky AND be a little forceful with salary negotiation.

In my experience this is not true at all. None of the devs I know in that pay bracket had to or are working their ass off. Don't get me wrong, they are good but I think it's more a case of the shortage of skilled devs in this particular area that has them where they are. They're not breaking their backs or super stressed. And if they don't get the salarys they are worth, they simply go elsewhere.

From what I've seen though, contracting is where it's really at. If you're good and have even a couple years experience, there is a lot of money to be made, and a lot of flexibility is there. Thinking of going this route myself. Contractors we have in house at the moment are earning €500/day and get to take as many leave days as they want, practically. No internal political bullsh*t, no ever having to work beyond 8 hours/day, no oncall, go where you want when you want, great money. Seems like a dream tbh. Not for everyone I think, and most of these guys are single.

14ned

needhelpguy wrote: »

In my experience this is not true at all. None of the devs I know in that pay bracket had to or are working their ass off. Don't get me wrong, they are good but I think it's more a case of the shortage of skilled devs in this particular area that has them where they are. They're not breaking their backs or super stressed. And if they don't get the salarys they are worth, they simply go elsewhere.

People don't tend to advertise how hard they worked in the past to get to where they are now. They tend to make it look effortless, when usually it was not. For example, try being competent at your job when you've barely slept for a week due to a teething newborn. This past week I've had two sick children, and I felt like living death yesterday from sustained lack of sleep, yet I still sat down and made myself review a potential new contract. That's the kind of working your ass off which people don't mention they did to get to where they are now.

needhelpguy wrote: »

From what I've seen though, contracting is where it's really at. If you're good and have even a couple years experience, there is a lot of money to be made, and a lot of flexibility is there. Thinking of going this route myself. Contractors we have in house at the moment are earning €500/day and get to take as many leave days as they want, practically. No internal political bullsh*t, no ever having to work beyond 8 hours/day, no oncall, go where you want when you want, great money. Seems like a dream tbh. Not for everyone I think, and most of these guys are single.

The Irish tax system, like the British tax system (although a lot less so now after yesterday's Budget), makes contracting unusually lucrative, so yes it's where the money is, as a permanent employee you'll always be trapped by the very steep tax curve for higher earners in Ireland. But contracting comes with substantial added risk. For example, I've been out of contract since the start of this year, and yes while it's great to be able to play with the children a lot more, and do much more childminding and taking them out places during the day, the hard cold reality is that there is zero income and every month our savings drops significantly. That makes the wife get angsty, and that makes my life stressful. You constantly hear "when are you returning to work?" as if I can just wave a wand and that magically happens.

As you mentioned, a lot of contractors are single, but that's because a lot of men after a divorce tend to go into contracting so they can move somewhere new and keep moving around every six months. The money might be good, but if you want to be always employed then you'll need to relocate, otherwise you need to accept there will be months without income between gigs until something turns up within commuting distance and you get past the interviews etc. One way around this is to live central to a big urban area like Dublin, but unless you own your house outright then your fixed costs very significantly rise and that means more onus on you to land new contracts with minimum downtime between them. It's a balancing act, and perhaps half of people who try contracting give it up and go back to permanent employment.

Niall

needhelpguy

14ned wrote: »

People don't tend to advertise how hard they worked in the past to get to where they are now. They tend to make it look effortless, when usually it was not. For example, try being competent at your job when you've barely slept for a week due to a teething newborn. This past week I've had two sick children, and I felt like living death yesterday from sustained lack of sleep, yet I still sat down and made myself review a potential new contract. That's the kind of working your ass off which people don't mention they did to get to where they are now.

I get what you're saying but none of them have teething newborns. I'm good friends with many of them and I know them well enough to know they are not and did not struggle with getting good wages. One guy is on €80k and is bored with his job, and is considering moving to contracting. My point was that, in my experience, nobody I know struggled or worked to the point of exhaustion to get where they are. Maybe they're the exception, I don't know. But I doubt it.

14ned wrote: »

60k isn't just a good wage, it's a great wage. The median income for full time workers in Ireland is about 32k. The household average income is about 46k. Just a few years ago 60k household income would put your household in the top 10% richest households in Ireland, that's likely changed a little since but it still won't be far off.

People in the professions way, way, way overestimate how poor they are. If you're earning 60k as a family unit, you are rich. Period.

Sorry Niall but statements like this are simply incorrect. It's all relative. With all due respect, 60k for a "senior" developer is a paltry wage. That would actually be seen as mid level in some development disciplines. As another posted pointed out, we are not talking low-barrier-to-entry jobs here, but skilled labour, in a market where demand outstrips supply. Talk of median wage is not particularly relevant.

As to whether it's a good wage in Ireland, as you say yourself it's not a great wage in Dublin. Maybe in parts of Cork, or Leitrim where living costs are not inflated. Again all relative. But just because, relative to the median wage, 60k might be seen as great, doesn't mean it is, to the person earning it. I know good devs who wouldn't get out of bed for that money. Not because they have an inflated sense of their own worth, but because they genuinely know their own worth. If you accept a €60k job when you know you're worth more, you're hurting yourself more than anyone.

Don't get me wrong I'm not having a go but when I see some of the statements in this thread I feel they need to be challenged.

14ned

needhelpguy wrote: »

Don't get me wrong I'm not having a go but when I see some of the statements in this thread I feel they need to be challenged.

I get what you're saying that if you're a senior software developer, then 60k is mid range.

But my point was that it's a great salary compared to the median income, hell even the median household income. Getting into the top 10% income bracket is precisely why any of us spent at least five years at university and another decade training ourselves. And I'm sorry, but if you're in the top 10%, then you are rich by any objective or relative measure, and you should feel wealthy because you are. If you don't feel wealthy, you need to change something up because the blocker is not your income level.

As you mention, if it really bothers you that you're earning 60k when you think you should be earning 70k, then sure do something about that. But in after tax terms that's only an extra 6k per year, and extending your commute can easily wipe that gain away. I'd argue that it's not rational to go nuts over a 60k vs 70k salary differential. Far better to move jobs because it's unchallenging, the commute is too long, or central Dublin fixed costs are too high. Or even where you live is depressing. All those are much more rational motivators and for which you ought to consider a small salary drop if the change will seriously improve your quality of life.

There are more things to a good life than raw income. So I return to my original advice, if you're into the top 10% of income in Ireland, I really advise don't sweat it, kick back, be a salaryman and enjoy life as best you can. You've made it.

Niall

lawred2

14ned wrote: »

I get what you're saying that if you're a senior software developer, then 60k is mid range.

But my point was that it's a great salary compared to the median income, hell even the median household income. Getting into the top 10% income bracket is precisely why any of us spent at least five years at university and another decade training ourselves. And I'm sorry, but if you're in the top 10%, then you are rich by any objective or relative measure, and you should feel wealthy because you are. If you don't feel wealthy, you need to change something up because the blocker is not your income level.

As you mention, if it really bothers you that you're earning 60k when you think you should be earning 70k, then sure do something about that. But in after tax terms that's only an extra 6k per year, and extending your commute can easily wipe that gain away. I'd argue that it's not rational to go nuts over a 60k vs 70k salary differential. Far better to move jobs because it's unchallenging, the commute is too long, or central Dublin fixed costs are too high. Or even where you live is depressing. All those are much more rational motivators and for which you ought to consider a small salary drop if the change will seriously improve your quality of life.

There are more things to a good life than raw income. So I return to my original advice, if you're into the top 10% of income in Ireland, I really advise don't sweat it, kick back, be a salaryman and enjoy life as best you can. You've made it.

Niall

you've just regurgitated the same twaddle

"you should feel wealthy" - that's meaningless

14ned

14ned wrote: »

................... Getting significantly past 80k definitely requires specialisation into some niche skillset, or going into contracting................

Quickest way to line the pocket in many tech industries, less politics too.