My career changed vastly but salary didn’t much

Today’s society really value money over happiness in many ways. I know many people who would gladly stab someone to get their way to the top of the ladder chain and make a name for themselves so they are established as the next wolf of Wall Street. Of course, I’m not against making money, but as a person who has been on that route before: I value my happiness more than I do earning a tonne of money, and being unhappy in my job.

Put simply - I’m introverted and want a job that I can progress in but has a happiness factor added into it. You’ll understand this as I dive a bit deeper into my history.

When I came out of education, there were a few of these odd obscure jobs posted around. One of them really stuck out, I’ll not name and shame the company but I’ve never heard any positive reviews or feedback about the place. Starting salary was £35,000. The only catch was that you needed some degree and 3 A levels at A grades. At 24 (I think I was that age, I really can’t remember) I immediately applied for that job because who wouldn’t want that salary right?

They never replied…

My first adult job out of college

My first proper job out of education was for a big bank in UK. I managed to get placed on one of the absolute WORST teams ever, but the thing is, I was outearning a lot of the people in my course. Not by an awful lot, but it was still a win in terms of that 24 year old wanting to climb up the money tree. I felt like I won a race.

The first team I was put on was HORRENDOUS. Generally I would never let people talk to me like they did in that team, but I was desperate to earn money, and my confidence was knocked to the curb. What little dignity I had left was clinging on for dear life.

What exactly was so bad about the job? Well at the start the recruiters all said that they were recruiting for IT grads, and would be teaching us all from scratch so we didn’t have to worry about anything. They did absolutely no such thing. I want to stress for any grads out there looking for jobs: the first 2-4 weeks in a job is MASSIVELY important to the impression the whole company makes. So that begs the question, what happened in the first few weeks…

Well I remember being quite new to the industry and wanting to make a decent impression, however that fell flat on its face. My senior developer (if you can call them that) took my 2 years of dabbling with Java in college to mean that I was an enterprise coder with extensive backend/middleware… actually, let’s just call it Full Stack developer knowledge. We’ll come back to that one.

They assigned me some work that I couldn’t really figure out with very little support at all. I was doing things like I was straight out of college. One main class and a small algorithm to do the activity. And then another guy done it in a clean OOP way where it had models and tonnes of classes. I loved it but couldn’t get my head around it. I was trying my best to understand it but didn’t understand how it all hooked together.

Before I knew it, I didn’t have time to get to grips with it, and then ended up behind. The senior dev was NOT very happy… and this all happened within the first few weeks. The next few weeks after that got worse. And I just wanted to leave and go to a different team. It got so bad, and I don’t ever really think I’ve cried because I couldn’t do a job before. This led to one of the first of panic attacks I’ve ever had, coupled with a bit of anxiety and just overall: it felt like I lost my soul. It finally got to a point that when I asked for a bit of help/training, my senior dev pulled me aside to rant about how incompetent I was, and how if I went for a job in another department, he’d ensure that I wouldn’t get it because he would tell them I wasn’t good enough for the job. He was just a complete and utter ass.

Fast forward a year later, I managed to leave that side of the team and go to the Infrastructure team, where I totally found my niche – we’ll come back to that in a bit. Overall, I was making great progress and finally found my place within the team. It was a great experience, however according to my line manager that WASN’T the case. My manager was happy with the work I was doing to help the infrastructure team, he also was fine with me doing the extra work to improve the infrastructure and etc, however politics dictate that it wasn’t enough because I wasn’t doing any of the following:

• Networking with other people
• Doing up my balanced scorecard to reflect how what I done impacted the bank
• Charity work (Yes that impacts if you get a raise or not)

Finally, I had enough. When I heard I wasn’t getting a good rating because of politics, I started applying for different jobs. A job I would love and a job that would make me much happier in life. The thing was though, my confidence was so low I thought I wouldn’t be able to find a job anywhere at all. Fast forward about 3 months later, I got VERY lucky and ended up finding a job that I was really keen on doing. This time, I made sure that I told them that coding is NOT my thing. They said it was fine. It was another junior position and it was a chance for me to reinvent. The salary was a bit iffy because it wasn’t a hike. Sometimes when you get a new job and go up, you get an increase in say about 10-15%. I got a 7% increase. I had to have a think about it, but in the end I took the job. Do you know why?? Well keep reading.

I’ve had enough, time to rotate jobs

I bit the bullet and told them I would accept the offer. I transitioned then from enterprise bank to what I thought was another financial institute, however I was a tad wrong, but wrong in the best way possible. The company (the big brand anyway) is a financial company, however the part I work for is a standalone unit rather than a big part of that company. To put it in simple terms, it’s like what Instagram is to Facebook, owned but still a separate business.

The job I was going in for was Devops. So let’s go backwards again… during my stint in Infrastructure, They were trying to adopt Devops and got me to look into it. Eventually that hit a bit of a halt because apparently our main person was gone. I took over in my spare time and got immediately enthralled because it was something new and something enterprise were adopting, this became the market that I wanted to look at my niche. I learned about part of the tool stack, and ended up wanting to learn more and more as I went along. Eventually, it became my calling to do something with Devops and the opportunity came for me to come in and strut my stuff as a junior in another company.

The first month in the company, they have already set me up to do certain things. They’ve provided me with good hands on training and will be providing me with a lot more to help me go further in the company. My laptop ISN’T locked down and I get to use Chrome instead of Internet Explorer. It also has a SSD so I’m not basically spending 30 minutes of my working day shutting down and starting up. They use up to date tools, and it just felt like home for me.

What I walked into was essentially a software house with some of the most talented people working in one of the most chilled out environments. A different culture overall, with the Devops/Agile culture of being blameless… and best of all, there is no formal performance calibration nonsense that happens in enterprise. No balance scorecard… no calibration sheet… just what are your objectives and boom.

The first week, I learned more about the company than I did in my last one. It was blissful because it is a relaxed atmosphere with a bunch of friendly people. My manager is fun and very down to earth, and the team are quite friendly. Overall, I bit the bullet and it paid out better for me.

Sadly though, the company took a bit of a down turn and eventually went to shit. That company still exists but it got merged with another company and the staff eventually started leaving one by one, including me. 20 minutes after the announcement of that merger, I got a phone call from a dear friend informing me of a place that was going to provide me with an amazing opportunity to progress and go higher than I’ve ever been for a company that I had been eyeing up for over a year. The only thing was, it was a graduate scheme again.

Are we back to square one again?

Let’s look at the scale again - I went from a graduate to a junior (more responsibility) to another graduate scheme again. It seemed a bit like a step down for a few people, however this company: I knew was different and I knew they were going to be amazing. I didn’t have to bite the bullet this time, I was already there and got an interview. Once that got sorted, I waited around all day to get the news. I was successful for the job and was now working for one of the best IT consultancy companies in all of the nation. And no, I wasn’t exaggerating.

Let’s get a bit of business out of the way first. I went from Bank to Financial at a salary change of 7%. Then I went from Financial to an IT Consultancy firm - this salary change was 12%. Bear in mind, each job I had to add on an extra 5 hours per week - so on an hourly rate: It wasn’t a big hike overall.

Overall in a year I managed to get a bit under 20% (annual) salary hike. BUT WAIT… this article says this is very important:

Don’t Change Jobs Unless You Get a 30 Percent Increase

Now I’m going to say this with absolute gravitas - FUCK THE PERSON WHO WROTE THAT, THEY KNOW JACK SHIT. I can understand this increase applying in a bank, but not for the place I work in.

Conclusion

Finally - we have to arrive at a conclusion. Do you know why I don’t give a fuck that my salary didn’t increase 30% TO THE MAX so I can drive a gold plated Ferrari?

It’s because I value my happiness more than I value selling my soul to climb up the ladder.

With each job, I got progressively happier and got my mental health back to sanity.

• Young me thought it was important to earn more money than everyone else.
• Now me realises that chasing a pay packet is the stupidest thing you can ever do as a graduate looking for a job.

I can guarantee you that working enterprise for bigger wage will make you more miserable than taking a smaller wage and doing something you truly enjoy. This doesn’t apply to every job in the world, but in my circumstances it did. I am the happiest in my job now than I’ve ever been since I left education, and that’s because the company nurture me and help me grow both as a person and as a consultant. You can’t put a value on what you learn from the company nor on how happy you are in a job. No matter what wage you earn, it will not make you happier if you hate your job.

Realistically, what’s more important to you? Doing work, enjoying it and getting paid well for it, or doing mediocre work, having to justify your job every 6 months and getting paid higher for it? I chose the happier option, and you should too.