Want a top 1% income in IT

In Australia to earn in the top 1% of incomes you need to earn at least $351,000 per annum.

If you want to have assets in the top 1% you need to build up a portfolio of over AUD$8,000,000.

On Wall Street a key reason why they make such big incomes is not a very high hourly rate but a good rate and long hours. Wall Street employees are not 9 to 5 people; it is common for them to work 80 hour weeks.

Median income for a Wall Street trader is US$250,000 = A$391,000.

Average income for a Wall Street trader is US$422,000 = A$660,000.

The very high earners make the average MUCH HIGHER than the median.

So you are an Australian IT guy and want to earn over A$350,000 placing you in the top 1% in Australia?

Early in your career build qualifications and experience that will give you string skills in a highly demanded area.

Once you have strong skills get a contract that pays $120 per hour. (Easy enough in IT.) $120 x 40 hours per week x 50 weeks per year = $240,000 per annum. Good but way short of the top 1%. You still need an extra $111,000 per annum.

At $120 per hour you would need to work a total of 58 hour per week. Another 18 hours per week work beyond the 40 hour contract is required. Can you arrange to do overtime on a regular basis? Especially after a colleague leaves? “Just give me a bit of overtime and I can do his job too.”

If you are able to work 80 hours per week at $120 per hour that would gross: $120 x 80 hours per week x 50 weeks per year = $480,000 per annum. (80 hours per week would kill me.) Some people can enter into arrangements where they are working two 40 hour per week jobs.

What to do for the extra $111,000/annum income?

Investment income is good. Buy 4 lower middle quality apartments each paying a rent of $500 per week will give you $100,000 per annum that will rise over time as rents rise. Of course you will need borrowed money to buy them, but work hard at paying the loans back and once paid off this is clear income.

Earn some extra cash

You might benefit from watching: Broke at 50, should you Learn to Code? https://youtu.be/2m7Bd6lGxX8

Do some training: Professional Certificate in Computer Science for Web Programming https://www.edx.org/professional-certificate/harvardx-computer-science-for-web-programming?index=product&queryID=98ee5aeb80f152fa234bc0c75fe1e32a&position=1 Good introductory programming course with the CV building Harvard name attached. Do lots of work and get really good at web programming.

Start your micro business: So you build yourself a web site to promote your skills. (In my case it has a Cyber Security spin.) Pimp yourself out on : https://www.freelancer.com/ Under these arrangements you can work from home.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the stamina to work a 58+ hour work week. That is 9 hour 40min per day, 6 days per week. Many of us, myself included, could start building the mental and physical stamina by losing weight and getting fit.

In Asia there is something called the 996 work culture. Work 9am to 9pm 6 days per week which is a 72 hour week less any breaks for lunch etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

Part of being able to work long hours is to manage stress in that time. Having a high level of competency in your chosen area of specialisation is essential to sustaining a high work output. The work has to be in the Goldilocks zone, not too hard and not too easy. If you are constantly challenged by work at the outer end of your ability then you will thrive in it. Good managers (they are in short supply) should consider where the edge of the employee’s ability when assigning work. It is important for keeping people engaged.

Getting into a state of flow

Read about this in “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport You need to choose one goal. Flow takes all your mental energy, deployed deliberately in one direction. That goal needs to be meaningful to you – you can’t flow into a goal that you don’t care about. It helps if what you are doing is at the edge of your abilities.

Like all good things training and experience builds competency. This can be built with: Formal qualifications like degrees and diplomas. Industry certifications. Informal study – read relevant books. This bring me on to my 5 point plan for learning IT but it can be adapted for many things.

Being in the day job

Something I learned early in my military career is don’t take anything to heart. If something unfair happens to you just get over it. The world is not fair, get used to it. Some days you will be unfairly blamed for something, you will be yelled at, there will be a bad vibe at work. Don’t take it to heart. Find a way to deal with it but working out in the gym, or meditation, or playing guitar is a much better way to deal with stress than alcohol!

Develop the character and emotional maturity to deal with the problems. When a customer or your boss yells at you, don’t feel bad about it, think this a exercising my emotional robustness muscle.

When I was in the Army Sergeants would have us stand on parade and shout at individuals an inch from their face things like: “Private Ellis you look like a bag of shit tied in the middle.” Once I worked out that they were doing I had to restrain myself from laughing at them.

I was so tempted to reply: “Sargent, you must have some very good looking bags of shit.”

An angry person is an undisciplined person and that is their problem, not yours. I have noticed young women have a special fear of people being angry at them. Just learn you don’t take it to heart.

Work hard, play hard

I have been to job interviews where I am told we ‘work hard and play hard’. This is secret code for – we expect you do a whole lot of unpaid overtime then come out drinking with us. The ‘work hard, play hard’ statement is a red flag from a potential employer.

The reality is most people can only spend a maximum of 5 hours a day doing top quality work and then spend 3 hours just doing routine process work or socialising, hopefully in a team building manner.

Tip for interviews

Towards the end of an interview it is common for interviewers to ask: “Do you have any questions for us?” I have found the best response to that is: “What will be the most challenging part of the role?” Listen very carefully to the answer. You might respond by saying how do you are about that thing, or you might tell them sorry, that job is not for you.

Be realistic about what you are good at

Don’t claim to be an expert on everything they ask about. You sound like a liar if you are claiming to be an expert on everything. I have got plenty of contracts where I have said in the interview: “No, that is not my thing. My expertise is in Citrix and Cyber Security.” The worst thing that can happen is you start a job working on something they expect you to have way more knowledge than you have. You will end up with a bad reputation and poor references.

The company team building weekend

Occasionally you have a real expert who can take a team away for a weekend and challenge the team members by gently pushing the edges of their envelope with activities like abseiling, snorkelling, ball games, escape rooms, debates, problem solving, trivia games etc.

Most times these things are not well run and end up making some team members feel uncomfortable and degenerate into excess drinking sessions. This is especially true when you have people with greatly varying physical capacities, intellectual abilities, and cultural backgrounds. This is especially prone to going wrong when it is run by an outgoing, extraverted senior manager.

One horrendous weekend we were asked to line up according to height. I’m 6’1” and comfortable with my height, but my immediate manager was short and he was standing among all the women. I could tell how uncomfortable he was having his height so publically highlighted. Just thoughtless.

How to study

How to learn IT - 5 point plan

Having done a Masters Degree while working in a full-time job and having a house to maintain, wife, adult daughter and 3 poodles I can offer some suggestions on how to learn IT that may be of use to people:

1. Video lectures from university, Pluralsight or similar sources. https://pluralsight.com (Free 10 day trial available).
2. Read a book on it. Read in 45 to 55 minute blocks then take a break and go for a short walk, exercise bike or similar. When you have read a logical section hand write a quick summary of what you have read. Even if you throw your notes away a few minutes later, the act of recalling and hand writing a summary will significantly improve your retention of what you have read. Turn your reading into a super power.
3. Play with the technology on a test network. Play in an environment where you have no fear of breaking stuff. I wonder what happens if I try this…? I have test lab based on a mini-tower with 32GB of RAM, quad core CPU and a Broadcom NIC. Use free or trial versions of Hyper-V, VMware or Citrix XenServer and use Microsoft and other evaluation software. (Remember slmgr.vbs to reset the Microsoft trial period.)
4. Make notes from your reading and lectures using the “Cornell Note-taking Method” (or an adaption of it) in a notebook and use this as the basis for your daily revision. (Search YouTube for Cornell note taking.)
5. At the start of a study session always do revision of the last session.

How to learn mathematics

1. Learning is a noble struggle.
2. Mathematics is a set of skills that must be learned sequentially. Every step is the foundation for the next. If you miss a step then you don’t have the foundations for the next level. Not building strong skills at one level before moving on to the next is the most common reason for failure in mathematics.
3. Put in the hours. Sit at your desk and work through the examples in your text book. Just do the work one problem after the next. Do a set of exercises and check the answers. If you are not getting the right answers try to figure out what you are doing wrong.
4. Help can come from your text, other texts, You Tube videos or a teacher.
5. Keep working, grinding through the text books. Just do the work.

Learning the right skills

How do you know if the skills you are learning will get you the right job? A great example of a spectacular fail in the mismatch of skills with the job market is people who did audio engineering degrees to work at recording studios only to find the professional recording studio industry was contracting and people who had engineered multiple hit records were leaving the industry and getting non-music day jobs. Entry level jobs are almost non-existent.

Another example: People doing degrees in journalism only to find out that the profession of journalism is contracting and there are about 10 graduates for every entry level position.

There are more people studying law at university than there are jobs as lawyers at law firms.

In Australia, at any given time, there are 400 people at university conservatoriums studying flute but there are only 17 full time positions with orchestras in the country. There is spectacular opportunity for disappointment. What are you going to do when you graduate? Became a music teacher and teach more kids to follow in your footsteps of disappointment?

To find out what skill set is really required in the job market. Look at jobs advertised in places like http://seek.com.au in your competency area and you will see consistent clusters of skills that are required in job after job. Build your qualifications and work experience around those areas. Write your resume to highlight your training and experience with those areas.

You have to find out what the world is asking for and build your skills to match. Always do the reality check before investing the time and money building the skills.

Cheap or free online training

• EDx: https://www.edx.org/ This is really good.
• Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/
• Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/ Good courses on AI here
• Udacity: https://www.udacity.com/
• Alison: https://alison.com/
• Future Learn: https://www.futurelearn.com/programs
• Open Learn: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/

I am not endorsing the quality of any of these and I am sure there are plenty more I have not listed. Find something in you price range that works for you.