Hi,
I work as an IT engineer in the North West in a medium sized organisation on 50k a year with a good pension. My work is somewhat varied as I have a reasonable amount of freedom around projects that I get involved in. I left the contracting market a few years ago after the Mrs wanted to move and I took my job as:
- It's a 25 minute commute from home
- It pays reasonably well for the area
- Good pension
- I can work 2-3 days a week from home (generally there's very little travel requirements)
- Low stress and pressure, this is in part due to the fact that I'm good at what I do, but also as the organisation is a bit disorganised, I only need to work at the level of my peers to do a reasonable job (in some cases, not difficult)
- Flexible hours, e.g. 8 to 4, 10 to 6, etc without the need to do overtime, on calls or formally log hours
The downsides to the role are:
- No formal training/courses available
- Takes forever for senior management to make a decision or change the status quo
- Slow to adopt new technology
- Lack of career progression
- A significant culture of following the highest paid opinion
From what I've seen, most of the roles that would be a step up career wise involve a significant increase in hours, stress and travel, which when you consider the 45% tax on the salary increase just isn't worthwhile. I'm curious on readers' opinion if my assumption on moving up the career ladder is in line with their experiences?
I work as an IT engineer in the North West in a medium sized organisation on 50k a year with a good pension. My work is somewhat varied as I have a reasonable amount of freedom around projects that I get involved in. I left the contracting market a few years ago after the Mrs wanted to move and I took my job as:
- It's a 25 minute commute from home
- It pays reasonably well for the area
- Good pension
- I can work 2-3 days a week from home (generally there's very little travel requirements)
- Low stress and pressure, this is in part due to the fact that I'm good at what I do, but also as the organisation is a bit disorganised, I only need to work at the level of my peers to do a reasonable job (in some cases, not difficult)
- Flexible hours, e.g. 8 to 4, 10 to 6, etc without the need to do overtime, on calls or formally log hours
The downsides to the role are:
- No formal training/courses available
- Takes forever for senior management to make a decision or change the status quo
- Slow to adopt new technology
- Lack of career progression
- A significant culture of following the highest paid opinion
From what I've seen, most of the roles that would be a step up career wise involve a significant increase in hours, stress and travel, which when you consider the 45% tax on the salary increase just isn't worthwhile. I'm curious on readers' opinion if my assumption on moving up the career ladder is in line with their experiences?
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