Today an important $$ topic that not everyone likes to talk about. I wanted to write a bit about how you can increase your earnings by working in IT. I wanted to emphasize that this is my point of view and not everyone has to agree with it. If you have a different opinion or would like to add something to the topic, please leave a comment.
Firstly, you have to believe that it is entirely up to you how much you earn. If you are working, then in my opinion you have agreed to do a certain job for a certain rate. If you want to earn more, it would be fair if you also gave something more of yourself. Don’t expect that by doing the same thing all the time, your salary will increase significantly.
In the article I wanted to write some things that can make you earn more. I am writing this based on several years of observation. I can confirm from my example that it is effective.
Improve your qualifications
The first is the most important and the most obvious. Improve your skills always and everywhere. That way, even if you do the same job, you can do it faster better and with fewer mistakes.
By increasing your qualifications you can go from junior to expert. Experts are knowledgeable and get a lot of well-paid job offers.
If you are able to do more than others, they should also pay you more than others. I’m not talking about physical work here, just automating work or doing it smartly.
Think you don’t have time to improve your qualifications? This is exactly the sign that you should do it as soon as possible.
Each of us has 24 hours at our disposal no matter if we are rich or poor. It is only up to you how you use them.
How to improve your qualifications?
- training
- courses
- conferences,
- workshops
- webinars,
- meetups,
- books,
- blogs and press,
- podcasts,
- learn from colleagues who know more,
- …
Where?
There are plenty of paid platforms with courses/training. Most companies will happily cover the cost of such platforms and will be happy to upskill their employees for such a low amount.
If possible, attend conferences that are closest to what you do and network with people. Exchanging views and experiences with others can be very valuable, and conversations with others can be irreplaceable. I once had a problem I couldn’t solve for a week. When I mentioned it during a break in the conference, it turned out that a newly met person had encountered something similar at work and gave me some tips on how they had solved it. I remember it was a breakthrough discovery for me. I couldn’t wait to get home. When I sat down to do my after-hours project, I had solved the problem and the project started to take shape.
Nowadays, you don’t even have to pay to get trained. There are plenty of free and good quality courses on YouTube alone and there are other platforms too. Just while you’re there, don’t waste your time watching funny cat videos 😉
Podcasts have the advantage that you can listen to them on your way to work, or while running or cycling. See for example apple-podcasts, podcasts.google.com etc.
Do you prefer contact with people, are you interested in meetups? You will definitely find something for yourself on meetup.com.
Do you like conferences? Great, there are conferences every now and then, check confs.tech or worldconferencealerts.com. Do you like the cloud? Even better 😉 leading vendors always have an up-to-date list on their websites:
Take the initiative
Put forward your ideas, take the initiative often. Do you have an idea? Do you know what could be changed to make it work better? Then I’ll say it again – tell others about your ideas.
Here I wanted to point out a problem that I often observe and I Am So Heartbroken. There are people who are given a certain task and they don’t think, they just do it. They do not even ask ‘why‘ they have to do something.
I once had a task to double the power on virtual machines in one project. I looked at the metrics and again at the task and again at the metrics and found it a bit odd. The machines had plenty of computing power always, except for one day a week where they reached 100%. I asked ‘why’ I should increase, as it was a bit strange, but maybe there were some changes coming that I didn’t know about. It turned out that there are no changes, but one day the machines are processing large amounts of reports and everything is running very slowly.
So I suggested not to increase the power and cost twice permanently, but to use scaling. Automatically increase the power only for one day, and on the other days, then the machines can even be at a lower level. Thanks to this idea the overall cost of maintaining the machines dropped, the satisfaction of users increased and my bank account received a nice gift from the company.
I often get the impression that soft skills matter more than hard skills. Just because you are super specialist and have a lot of knowledge doesn’t mean you are effective. It’s worth asking ‘why something needs to be done‘, especially if you have increasing knowledge. The other person may not have it and may not know that it can be done easier and faster. Are you a specialist? Want to earn more? Talk to people and ask ‘why something needs to be done’ 🙂 .
When you have to work, just work
When I am busy, time passes quickly. Sometimes doing nothing made me more tired than during a normal working day. Don’t get me wrong, rest is important too. It’s just that if you go in for 5 minutes to watch a funny video and an hour later you’re still there, you haven’t done anything and you’re still watching funny videos, it’s going in the wrong direction.
Procrastination is terrible, so it’s good to have a to-do list or your system that works for you. Maybe one day I’ll write an article on how I deal with it, because it’s not always easy 🙂
see the big picture
The work you do, does not have to be your only source of income. You can also increase your earnings if, for example:
- write a book, a guide, etc,
- host a podcast,
- record your own course,
- run a YouTube channel,
- start a blog,
- write articles for others,
- give training after work,
- create a good template, or plugin for WordPress,
- you will be selling domains,
- sell the website,
- win a programming competition,
- …
When it comes to websites, you don’t have to create one from scratch at all. You can buy a website with a domain name, tweak it a bit and sell it for more money.
If you don’t have time to write your own blog, you can write articles for other people and make a good income from it. You can also find some portals on the web that pay you according to how many hits your article gets, e.g. Medium
On the web you can find a lot of competitions for programmers in which you can win really good prizes, money and in addition improve your qualifications, for example Google’s Coding Competitions or Microsoft Imagine Cup.
Summary
There are many more ideas. In the near future I will try to describe the topic in more detail and interview people who have successfully published a book, run a podcast, or a YouTube channel related to the IT world. I hope they will give me some advice, tell me how to start and answer the question, was it worth it $$ 😀
A little teaser… The first interview I did with Krzysztof Kempiński from Let’s talk about IT porozmawiajmyoit.pl. The interview will soon be published for you to read on the blog.