When the salary cap is reached

I want to immediately warn you that, despite the two screens of text, the article has more questions than answers. I invite you to discuss together.

10 years of your programming career have passed. A lot of professional experience has been accumulated, the carriage of languages ​​and technologies has been studied. But over time, the horizon is only expanding, and you will never be able to say that you have mastered everything. Can not be said about the financial side. I will explain.

In 20-25 years, we think mostly about interesting work and pay little attention to the growing salary (and at the beginning of a career it invariably grows rapidly). However, having created a family and having given birth to children, in one way or another begins to want to improve in the financial sphere. Of course, it is silly to work only for the sake of money, but getting an adequate salary for a family person is very important. And we begin to pay attention to the career.
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What is a career in IT?

This is either the “programmer-leader of the team-architect-chief architect” branch, or “project manager — head of the development department — president of the company”. There are also departments of testing and quality, there is about the same staircase, ending with the director of quality. Often there are mixed options - from programmer to manager, but such a transition in many cases is not justified, since in modern conditions these are two completely different areas. A programmer is completely absorbed in his project, code, architecture, etc., and the manager is a person who can work well with people, both with subordinate developers and with customers. There is an opinion that the manager should leave the programmers environment in order to deeply understand the possibilities of the developed system and the cost of its changes. Ideally, this is the case, then in reality, those who are not very successful in programming go, but their management ability is well developed. There is nothing wrong with that - everyone does what suits him best. Here you can a lot of theorize, but the article is not about that.

Suppose you are successfully moving up the career ladder in one direction or another. In the first years, the salary grows rapidly, projects are interesting, the staff is excellent - you are on a horse. Then salary growth gradually slows down, approaching the ceiling for a given position in your industry and your city. The ceilings are different everywhere. As far as I have the information (correct), in Russia for Moscow and St. Petersburg the ceiling of a good programmer on a “warm place” is about 100-120 thousand rubles (this is the ceiling, “average among high” is 70 thousand from the power), in others medium and small cities it can be 50-80 thousand (guess). Anyway, you realize that asking for more is already incorrect.

Let's stop and understand why you need a salary increase. Everything is simple - in our unstable world, real inflation for a year has long been over 20%, so maintaining a wage level means a deterioration in living standards. I would be the first to refuse promotions if the economic situation was stable. Then it would be possible to reach a certain level and then simply postpone the surplus monthly for large purchases. In this case, fully surrender to your favorite work (if you need a new home / apartment badly - you can go into business, because it will take a very long time to save money from surplus wages). But this is utopia. So a regular salary increase is a must.

Recently, I came across a collection of articles by Max Krainov on the need for financial incentives for employees. Max is a rather authoritative person in the financial sphere. The main idea of ​​his articles is that financial incentives, as carried out in companies, in most cases brings companies (non-employees) more harm. From this point of view it is difficult to argue: the company's expenses for an already costly item increase, and the quality and speed of work often even decreases. I will not go into details here, you can read all 4 articles - quite informative: part 1 , part 2 , part 3 , part 4 .

But what do we, IT-specialists? Those who do not want to change their creative work to a more profitable, guiding one, and yet still somehow want to grow (read, at least, to maintain the achieved level in terms of inflation and gradually raise it). We find ourselves in a difficult situation. To clarify, I will cite the following article: “In a company with incorrect financial motivation,“ star ”employees quickly reach higher than market salaries, develop a feeling like“ the company owes me ”, and then, when at the moment of the next planned salary increase, satisfied, begins the inconspicuous process of disappointment in the company and demotivation, worsening by the fact that such salary is usually impossible to get in another company, so that you can just say goodbye to “ungrateful "Employer." Familiar?

I will add that dissatisfaction also accumulates on the fact that there is no direct dependence of salary on the volume and quality of work performed. There are praises from the leadership and aesthetic pleasure from, say, a beautiful and effective program. But almost no feedback from the salary.

The article focuses on the “wrong financial motivation”. Maybe I missed something, but I do not see the answer to the question of what the motivation is “right.” One can argue here for a long time about the fact that raising the level of income for a person who cannot spend money does not bring anything - he lacked both and didn’t, as he continuously increases his needs. From a certain point it is. However, I can say that now my salary is entirely spent on the immediate needs of the family and rare large purchases, after which there are still debts for a month. While a couple of years ago we could afford more.

The ceiling is almost reached, the increase by 20% is good, but it will not change anything radically. In addition, no one promises it yet - a crisis.

Switching to the unloved non-core work with an increase of even 30-50% does not compensate for the stress of doing an unloved business 5 days a week.

Care in business? This is probably the only way to make a big difference. Also a hackneyed topic on which hundreds of thousands of articles and books have been written. Business can be found interesting and even in the specialty. Overcoming all bureaucratic barriers is also possible with a strong desire.

So far I have tried blogging in “free” time (in a profile), but most ways to monetize a blog are related to advertising or selling links, which is always pretty disgusting. And the income here is penny, not comparable with the effort expended. Therefore, I left it only for the soul - so it turns out better.

What else? How do you see ways to keep interesting work in IT and at the same time make a qualitative leap in financial terms? Who made a successful business in IT in the last year or two - it would be interesting to briefly hear your stories.

PS Thoughts are partly inspired by the reading of the book of Torvalds “Just for fun” - a person doesn’t bother at all about finances, just does what he likes. But not everyone is able to write an OS in student age. The opposite example is Bill Gates. He is exactly a financial genius, but he boasts little in programming. Since this is an IT-site, I want to find the answer and find out the opinion of colleagues in the profession. Thanks to everyone who read it!

Update . According to the results of the comments, I think some clarification is required.

Maybe you try to understand what you want from life for complete happiness? Because for someone to satisfy their family’s life and implement their projects - to put it simply, self-realization, only family or self-realization ... Someone is a white house by the sea. And realizing your desires, depending on the goals set, build a road to them, focusing not only on money alone?


Unfortunately, I need a “white house on the seashore” :) In general, I do not see much sense in rushing up to the detriment of health and interests, if there are no very expensive purchases in the plans, like my apartment or house. The luxury and excesses of the ruble inhabitants do not count - I saw them in my grave. And all the other, less costly goals are achieved even with adequate regular salary and skillful financial management. And when you realize that no matter how much you climb out of your skin, working as a programmer, you won’t be able to save money on a house — you start thinking about such topics.