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Promotion Or Job Change: Which Is the Best Way To Advance In IT?
I've had a couple of management consultants tell me that if you want to move into management, it's better to change jobs or change where you work within your current company than to stay where you are. What if you have to fire one of your old friends? Not cool. Or are you better off starting your management career surrounded by people who know and (hopefully) like you? Read the rest .
If you have to ask, you need to move job. Although my yearly reviews and bonuses are in the top 10% for my pay grade, I was having trouble getting promoted for political reasons. I could maybe accept their promise of 'it will happen in 2012', but since they've spent the last year hiring a tonne of people in the grade above me, my prestige has been lowered.
So, I just handed in my resignation. The gaping whole I am leaving has my former employer in a bit of a bind now, since I was the last person with the knowledge and skills to support a key system. They have offered to promote me now, but it's too late.
I will earn more than double as an IT contractor at a competitor, so that is what I'm lined up to do. I've seen the other side and the grass is definitely greener.
When I'm ready to go back to being permanent in the next year or two, I will automatically get that grade and set of responsibilities as well as a much bigger pay-packet. It's a no-brainer.
I'm 33, and I've worked for a single large aerospace company since getting my undergrad degree 11 years ago. I started off as a desktop support guy making $42k, and then was bumped to $43k after a year, then to $45k after another year, then to $46k after another year. In late 2004 I was promoted to junior sysadmin and was bumped to $50k, and through yearly raises got that up to $55k by 2006, when I transferred formally from sysadmin to the enterprise architect side of the house. That got me a bump to $68k, which brought me up to the minimum salary level for that position, and then between 2006 and mid-2010 the pay rose to $74k through those yearly incremental raises.
In 2010 I was a senior architect, making decisions that directly affected the technology direction of a Fortune 50 company with $65B in revenue, making $74k a year. It was nice, of course, and the job was fun, but the compensation just hadn't scaled to the job. There were other benefits--outstanding and near-zero-cost insurance, stock, a functioning pension program, and as near a thing to stability as it's possible to get in an American job--but I wanted more money, so I left. Now I work as a presales engineer (that's "engineer," not real engineer) at one of the same vendors that used to sell to me, making $120k. I would have had to stay at the first job for another 20 years to hit the same level of salary. More, I left on excellent terms, and I wouldn't mind going back there some day.
This experience echoes that of my much-older peers at the aerospace job, where I was one of the only folks in the group less than 50 years old. All of them, without exception, had left at some point for between 1-5 years and then come back, bringing with them a large salary bump. Even in a company that gives you near-guaranteed 2-5% incremental raises, the only way to get a massive salary increase is by leaving.