While my job is not exactly high paying, I'm pretty much at the max salary for my role ($115k, teacher).
My skills are not really transferrable, so whatever I pick next will undoubtedly be a big pay cut, heading back to a junior level.
Been thinking about switching out for a while and it got me wondering who else has left a job to take another role with less money.
Let's hear your stories!
Agreed, after changing to a totally different sector, I realise so much of the work/skills are the same. For me it was decision making and communication that were the key skills. Easier to have those skills and then learn the background of the new industry.
may i ask what industry you came from and what you have now?
mfw when 115 is considered not high paying
*lies down to cry *
Pollies are out of touch. $190,000 is in top 4% according to the article.
Pollies are out of touch
Many such cases. David is probably on $350k+, and only has to bicker like a child and lie through his teeth.
@brendanm: I find it ridiculous that they get to decide their own pay and benefits package at the tax payers' expense.
I love the guys surname. About right.
He's a littleproud to rort taxpayers?
Ian Goodenough (Federal Member for Moore) is another one.
The image on that article is just weird - looks like some South Park like cut/paste.
Pollies are out of touch and they are entitled tossers who think they are better than the rest of us.
The Nationals will give the Libs a run for their money on being the most entitled as well!
I think the issue is you might have older people on relatively small incomes but they own their house and have for a few decades. Compare that to someone earning $190,000 looking to buy in sydney, they can't afford the house of the lower income couple. So income and wealth can be different.
Not many jobs are high paying when you can't afford a house.
Most teachers do a heap of work outside standard hours and during school holidays and cop abuse from shitty parents and administrators.
when 115 is considered not high paying
115 is decent but there's still two tax brackets above that, over 180 is high pay
$122,100 is top of scale for a teacher in NSW.
His nickname is 8ball…
Barney will be 12 ball and Moe you can be cue ball
On reddit and whirlpool everyone is on $300k plus
they don't need ozbargains now do they. just chu-ching.
Well, it's not high paying if you can't afford a 2BR house in most metro areas. Try to call a bank and tell them that you want a mortgage to buy a very basic 500,000 house with your "high" salary of 115,000.
As others mentioned, there are two tax brackets above.
It's hard being a poor person in a country full of rich people. Because people have lots of disposable income the price of everything goes up: housing, healthcare, tradies, repairs, food… A full government pension is poverty in Australia, but in Vietnam or Ghana you would have a comfortable existence on that income.
An experienced teacher on $115,000 per annum earns considerable more than the median worker does in Australia.
Go live in Ghana then?
@brendanm: As if they could make it through their immigration system. He'd have to sneak in illegally on a boat.
Yes maybe not in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra. You're looking at a minimum of $800,000 in Sydney and that's at the borders of Sydney.
Left a relatively well paying IT job back in the day to become a teacher.
Wtf was I thinking 🤦♀️
There's a FB group called Exit stage teach - suggest you join to link up with the rest of us trying to escape teaching.
Ouch.
That is not a lateral move.
What was the motivation to leave IT?
Being a female sys admin from 1999 to 2011.
Most unregulated, misogynistic, dangerous and honestly illegal workplaces during that time. I mean, I can put up with a lot but it broke me and I took 2 years off to recover.
Always makes me laugh when government rabbits on about a lack of women in IT/STEM. We were always there, we just got fed up and left. 🤷♀️
Alas, I can't honestly say much has changed since then.
In larger companies, the misogynists have largely be painted over with a nice thick layer of pink, but the much of the rest is the same - with the bonus threat of having you and your entire team outsourced to DxC, or one of the many offshore body shops.
Alas, I can't honestly say much has changed since then.
I would strongly dispute that claim.
Off the top my head, I know about 40 professional contacts who are women in the industry, some of whom are family members and close friends and around 20 of which are in senior management/C-suite positions. A few of them have been in the industry for longer than I have, going back to the 90s and none of them have mentioned any horror stories of the kind that Benoffie has.
Certainly none of them would paint the IT industry in the very bleak, misogynistic terms you're using there.
I think you may be extrapolating your specific, limited experiences to the wider industry.
If anything, most of the women I know in IT are generally-speaking far more content and motivated in their roles compared to their male colleagues.
with the bonus threat of having you and your entire team outsourced to DxC, or one of the many offshore body shops.
Not if they want to stay in business. That era of rampant outsourcing came to an end some years ago now, mainly for the reasons I described here, after that experiment was trialled with disastrous results over and over again at so many prominent organisations.
@Gnostikos: LOL… I think you misread my reply.
I was saying that the misogyny was the one thing that had changed. My point was the misogynists are largely gone… either pushed out through affirmative action and such, or just plain aging out and retiring/dying. I was there in the beginning… it was a hell of a lot of fun being a guy, but I had enough female colleagues and friends in the industry to know that there was a lot amiss.
However, you're dreaming if you think that the era of outsourcing in IT is over. A recent Australia mega corp client of mine just upped their offshore target to 80%. That not only applies sysadmins but all their technology related staff.
You'll be hard pressed to find any of the major Australian banks - which absolutely dominate the IT hiring market in many of our major cities - that do not run with very similar targets. In fact, I know first-hand of at least one of them has started a venture offshore in an attempt to undercut the usual clowns. They now directly hire close to 50% of their offshore dogsbodies.
@bobbieb: So you're negging me because I know women who had different experiences to the ones you're citing or because you expect people to psychically decipher what "painted over with a nice thick layer of pink" means exactly?
Great reaction. It definitely gives off the impression that you're arguing with reason and not emotion.
I was there in the beginning… it was a hell of a lot of fun being a guy, but I had enough female colleagues and friends in the industry to know that there was a lot amiss.
I think generalising in extremes or outlier examples is never helpful and while discrimination/harassment certainly existed in IT more so in the past, it wasn't to some ridiculous degree relative to all other industries.
Have you ever had the misfortune of seeing a woman on a construction site back in the day? Or women in the police force?
Try that one on for size and then tell me IT has a problem with women.
You'll be hard pressed to find any of the major Australian banks - which absolutely dominate the IT hiring market in many of our major cities - that do not run with very similar targets. In fact, I know first-hand of at least one of them has started a venture offshore in an attempt to undercut the usual clowns. They now directly hire close to 50% of their offshore dogsbodies.
Yeah you're talking about the financial sector specifically, e.g. corporations who sit back and rake in money from investments/interest and the global economy at large (i.e. do very little, effectively). Those entry-level IT jobs in finance companies are easy to outsource because their environments and infrastructure are absolutely flush with resources and everyone is just a tiny and disposable cog in the machine. Even if outsourcing doesn't work out, the banks are not going out of business anytime soon because of a poor quarter or two. Above the L1-L2 space though, you'll barely find any outsourced staff because it just never works out.
Corporations in creative/productive industries where profit margins are thin and where you can't afford to have productivity drop even a few percentage points definitely aren't outsourcing anymore. They need reliable, consistent IT support and services from local people who can speak to them plainly and be held physically accountable in-person and not hide behind intercontinental phone calls and Teams meetings and dodge all responsibility.
Again, you're taking your niche experiences and extrapolating them to the rest of the industry.
A recent Australia mega corp client of mine just upped their offshore target to 80%. That not only applies sysadmins but all their technology related staff.
Once again, try looking at companies where A) everyone actually works, is mission-critical and it's not the usual 30% of the workforce carrying the remaining, unproductive 70% ratio and B) where they're in a tangible, creative/productive industry and not just a "professional services" company that manages people and relationships and delivers hopes and dreams. It's a very different ballgame.
The national/multinational companies you're talking about are still outsourcing because they're literally the only ones that can afford to anymore. No one in the SME space is outsourcing and even in your examples, I would bet good money that half of them will predictably scale back those outsourcing targets if not move entire projects/teams/departments back on-shore after a few years when it inevitably bites them in the ass.
It's the same pattern that's been going on for the last decade now. Just because you can point to a big company or two that's predominately outsourced their entire workforce right now, doesn't mean that outsourcing is a good idea or that will work out for them in the long-run.
@bobbieb: DxC is sht as well. Offhosring support is the worse case. However not many decent internal "sys admin" jobs these days. Demand is low, industry had changed to Virtualisation and Cloud platforms
But teachers are on high demand. And will always be. Just not getting higher pay which I think they should
How many companies did you go through? The exception doesn't make the norm. Pretty sure there's plenty of companies out there that are much more fair. Other that or go to court.
Being a female sys admin from 1999 to 2011.
Interesting.
I entered the IT industry initially as a SysAdmin a little bit after you and while I do agree that IT was more of a "Wild West" industry in the 2010s, at least from a regulatory/professionalism perspective, I certainly never encountered anything as bad as you're describing.
Were you working primary as an internal SysAdmin or for MSPs?
The worst I saw from a sexual discrimination/harassment perspective in my career was some off-colour banter/humour a few times but nothing that'd warrant HR/lawyers getting involved and people being made to feel unsafe/welcome at work.
Obviously it was a far more male-dominated industry back in the day but the places that did have female IT staff were still nothing like the picture your description paints.
I'm certainly not trying to say IT is the be-all-end-all of professions but having worked in a mixture of industries before getting into IT, there's certainly far worse industries to work in, particularly from a female representation and integration point of view.
dangerous
Dangerous as in life-threatening? Or mentally/psychologically traumatising?
I can't say I'd use the word dangerous to describe any of the IT jobs I've had and I've worked at mine sites, oil rigs and out in the middle of nowhere in Australia.
honestly illegal workplaces
Again, I'm curious if you could share any details?
Were these smaller organisations run by one or two people or larger companies?
Always makes me laugh when government rabbits on about a lack of women in IT/STEM. We were always there,
I don't know that I'd agree with the "always there" part. I mean, back in my uni days you could count the number of female IT majors on two hands in an entire semester.
We used to joke that the "gender" ratio in IT classes back in the day was 1 long-haired guy to every 4 guys.
Female candidates for support/SysAdmin/helpdesk/MSP roles specifically were as rare as unicorns until well after 2010, I would say.
@Gnostikos: Its always interesting when someone hasnt experienced it, did it happen? Although I appreciate the hesitancy.
All major network players during the time.
Everything from bashings by team leader leading to bleeding and collapse, sexual harassment, rape at a work function, regular coke at work functions (not the $2 bottle type), high levels of fraud and tax evasion (leading to criminal charges), dildos used as punishment tools for female employees, female bosses describing themselves as c** b**kets and threatening to sack male workers for not sleeping with them, forged payslips and OT, regular stimulant abuse and on and on.
Then, if you complained or went to the police or union, there was the endless surveillance, stalking and harassment to get you to drop the claims or quit. Doesn't even touch on jobs for mates or bedfellows or whatever.
I have cupboards of documents. One delightful one is an email from one female manager to an upper manager on the topic of a female employee raped by a male colleague where they discuss getting rid of her after she filed a police report as a troublemaker who must of asked for it as they were friends at work.
Yeah, the good ol days…. 😒
@Benoffie: Jesus Christ.
Thanks for clarifying. That sounds insane. Were there criminal proceedings and legal action taken against some/all of these individuals and companies for the other charges besides fraud/tax evasion?
I'm certainly not trying to diminish or marginalise your experiences in anyway but your case I would say is an extreme outlier for any industry, let alone IT.
I could be way off here but this has shades of some kind of backwater, small town corruption story where people have no recourse, no alternatives, there's no competition and it's a closed, captive market with a good ol' boys club running the show where nepotism/bribery/full-blown criminal conspiracy is the SOP.
Honestly, the least criminal aspects of your story (drug abuse at work) would have lead to instant termination and possibly even legal proceedings, in any of the organisations I worked for. The rest of the charges? That would have sunk companies and I've known a few that have gone down in a legal/bankruptcy fiasco over a lot less (specifically tax evasion and accounting fraud).
I can't stress enough how alien your anecdotes sound compared to any place I've ever worked at in my career.
I've seen and heard of less extreme, isolated incidents of sexual harassment, drug abuse, physical violence and severe bullying/intimidation in other industries before I got into IT but all of those things together in one specific role? That has the makings of a 60 Minutes special. If I mentioned even half of your experiences to my younger colleagues, I'm pretty sure they'd flat out refuse to believe it happened.
It's a crying shame you had to go through all of that and in an industry where women are making probably more headway, better pay and seeing far better career growth/progression than many others right now.
I would love for you to hear the genuinely optimistic backgrounds/stories of some of the close female colleagues I have in the industry right now because their experiences could not be lightyears further apart from the hellish nightmare you're describing.
@Benoffie: If even half of this was true, you'd be using those docs to have said people arrested today, rather than posting about it on ozbargain.
Dangerous? How many deaths occur in that field each year? You know, people dying at work, like many do in agriculture, construction, mining, manufacturing, etc.
In IT, thinking of leaving and taking a sabatical, too stressed in this industry, $100k is not worth it, mental health is suffering
100k in IT? Stress? For 100k you shouldn’t be taking your job home.
or you could just find ways to relieve the stress. i've been IT over 30 years. I spend my time outside work being active, enjoying life, doing reading etc. Things to offset the job.
you think you are stressed now, try getting by with no income, or on 50k.
if you're still a teacher, you can work for your respective department of education. they usually hire based on experience and if youre interested in policy/project work related to education
none of my friends working in IT are still working in IT these days, they all left pretty much 10 years ago and went into things such as ship captain, naval construction, vague acquaintances still in IT are just sitting in a uni office
Median personal income is like 55k, in what universe is 115k not considered high?
in what universe is 115k not considered high?
Government job.
As a person working in gov, I am not offended.
Can confirm.
Oh, now you like to use the median 😂
Well when your talking about individual salaries, especially with some of the outliers you can have, median is a much better indicator than mean.
Edit: ah, followed your link below. Understood now.
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/14895481/redir
Here you are using a different number when it suits your narrative.
The full time median is around 83k a year (87 for males 78 for females), 115k isn’t too far above.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-workin…
It's only a measly "40%" higher lmao
Is it 40% higher after tax?
You're really going to compare the median salary, which includes all working age groups, all career stages, and all careers, including minimum wage, to someone who's at the max of their career, that required 4+ years of university and a HECS debt? Yeah, it is just a 'measly' 40% higher. Median teachers salary wouldn't be near 115k. Probably closer to 80-90k but requires one of the biggest investments.
Compare that to university jobs that require 4+ years and people at the end of the careers if you want a fair comparison, not every working person.
that's a proper median,
Most of the time people drum up a lazy median, that captures everything
I love the ABS
They do a better job of describing the Wage Gap than WGEA or any other feminist group
median income is a lazy catch cry , its not that far from low income
Its never used because it takes in too many variables that people dont want to compare to
ie non career workers, students, minimum wage workers
Its like the wage gap, of 18%, statistically its real… but no one takes seriously
Median is just middle. 13.5 million people below make less and 13.5 million above make more. You're statistically 50% likely to make less than median, or 50% likely to make more, maybe not even much more or less. Well maybe not 13.5 million if it just includes adults who work but you get the idea. But why isn't it fair? How is average any fairer if it's skewed by billionaires and trust fund babies who withdraw massive amounts as income.
And why isn't it fair to compare yourself to non career workers or minimum wage workers too? They are not a different species, they are your fellow man, your parents, your siblings, your children, your spouse. We can't all be high paid professionals or captains of industry.
At least compare full time earnings to full time median, which is much more than that (all workers median is about $63k btw). If you work full time why on earth would you compare your pay to someone working a few hours per week at a checkout, that’s an absurdly low bar. If you earned the same as them would you think “oh well I guess my pay is average”? No, obviously you’d be severely underpaid.
@diss: But then is it fair to compare your 40 hour a week work to an average that includes people who work 80 hours a week? Comparing what people are actually getting is fair imo. You're no different to the one legged lady next to you who can only work 10 hours a week. Comparing yourself only to the average professional who works at least 40 hours a week of course the numbers will look artificially high.
@AustriaBargain: What use is that? Like I said comparing your full time salary to someone who barely works gives absolutely no indication of how you are paid. Knowing I earn 10x more than someone who can’t work is absolutely meaningless. Knowing I earn 2x more than the median full time worker would tell me I’m in a good position. Many of the people bringing the overall median down are being supported by someone working full time. If you earn the overall median as a full time worker, comparing yourself to other full time workers reveals that you are paid significantly less than most people who work at least as many hours as you do. No it’s not exactly fair to compare yourself to someone working 80 hours if you work 40 but that only highlights my point, at least full time median is closer to a fair comparison.
@diss: Why not only compare to men who work more than 40 hours and have a degree? Or just white men who work more than 40 hours and have a degree. Narrow it down further by postcode and the value of your parents home.
@AustriaBargain: Lol… because it’s a lot harder or impossible to compare on any more of an even playing field than full time. I don’t know what point you think you’re proving by taking it to absurd extremes, I’m saying it’s better to look at the more relevant data available. You’re were saying the opposite, and now I don’t know what you’re saying but you seem to have skipped over everything I said. It’s quite logical. As someone else in this thread put it the median height is below 5 feet. What use is that metric to an adult.
@diss: I just think the ultimate comparison is what all people are actually earning, and the second best is all wealth that is being earned. 115k is considered a lot to most people and that's all that matters. Pretending that the majority of Australian adults do not exist just to make 115k seem like a small amount is absurd.
It just makes the middle income guy feel good about themselves. No one wants to hear their $80K FT income in Sydney is near the poverty line. It makes them feel bad. It makes them realize the capitalist machine isn't in their favour. The stats for the median income weight the uni student the same as Gina Reinhart, and doesn't differentiate the mum working PT to supplement income, from the guy in the mines working OT. Since there's more uni students than Gina Reinhart, suddenly the median looks like "the normal Aussie", whereas the mean income for a FT worker in Sydney is actually six figs.
A universe called Sydney.
That includes part time employees. For full time workers the median income is $1,600 pw or $83,000 pa.
Lets not forget though, only approx 50% of Australia is working full time so the sole full time wage is higher, this takes into account the pensioners, mums etc.
The median full time worker is taking home approx $80k a year.
If you're a man and will never be a woman, shouldn't you only compare to full time working men? Seems that including women would unfairly skew the average lower.
That includes casuals and part time. Full time median is around $80k.
I know of a couple of teachers who have joined IT companies in their education section (they liaise with schools for their tech requirements)
Just say computer salesman lmao
software salesman.
115k is a high paying job, the median in Sydney is 60k-65k, you're / was doubling that.
That made you in the top 15% of earners in Australia, if you think that's low then you need to come back to reality.
The entire public service is a reality distortion field
Median includes all people over 15 including people who are not working or retired. It’s not really a valid comparator. The median full time is about $80k; but keep in mind that median for people with university degrees is 71% higher than for people who didn’t graduate from high school (but both are included in the median FTE figure)
So …. Depends on how apples vs apples you want to be. A 5ft person is above median height.
Where's the 'graduated high school vs uni grads' median %?
The title of this post is "have you ever left a high paying job…..". So don't know why everyone is debating the numbers. Is it high, median, average. Who gives a f$%&. The person posting isn't asking if its a decent income. They want to know others experiences about walking away from a decent income because they are over the job.
115k is good money in most cities, enough to save and get ahead with a good lifestyle.
Re: your prospects. You'd be surprised what it can transfer to.
My friends have left teaching and got jobs in tech / software companies working on education software, for example. Anything that requires BD or marketing into schools would be a good start. You can always leave that once you have picked up those skills and work in another industy too.
I also have friends who burnt out on teaching and went to work in Bunnings or volunteer for 6 months to figure out their next step. Many of them got offered better teaching jobs later (not everyone took them).
I highly recommend reading a book called "What color is your parachute". Its a best seller job hunting book you can find in any library and OP shop.
Discusses how to change careers and industries and identify all your transferable skills.
You can also order online and read positive reviews from all the online book stores. Eg Amazon.
I think it might be a trifle early for a golden parachute
Average full time wage is $90k, median income is circa $60k, but that includes part timers. The high rollers stretch the average up, but it isn’t realistic to say the OP is on double average.
Teaching can be a painful job, but it has rewards. The pay is pretty good, the holidays are good and watching kids learn is pretty rewarding. Paperwork and the latest fads from the government are dispiriting, so are kids that don’t want to be there. And increasingly demanding parents.
I think high paying jobs outside education look a lot like exec positions in a school - you no longer teach kids, but you have lots of unpredictable responsibilities, lots of unreasonable demands and little option to say “time to knock off, this can wait till next week”.
If you wouldn’t like a school vice principal job, what sort of job outside of education would you like? Don’t be fooled into thinking the usual is a 9 to 5 high paying jobs, except in quite narrow niches. Employers want a lot for their salaries.
You could do casual work a few days a week instead of taking a lower paid job. Casual losing gives you more money and dropping down a tax bracket or 2 saves a lot on tax.
Some years back I was a pharma sales rep and can tell you they recruit a lot of ex teachers.
because they can stand and deliver a prepared speech. Like pharma reps to GPs.
I was a farmer of infinite gold leave trees, but the drought occurred and then the fires and then the floods, so had to get a real job trolling like op.
Open a cafe
a teachers cafe
A teachers cafe you can bring your pets to.
Call it: The Teachers Pet™️
and if it fails, can change it into a strip club
If you plan right your skills are very transferable.
For example, getting involved in educational policy development from the educator side is then transferable to policy work anywhere in the public service.
You might already have areas you could develop further - what are you interested in doing for a job outside of teaching?