Share your salary progression

I remember an study with a bit more granular details and the gap between men and women was smaller.
For example you can have a bucket cleaning where you put together the a basic cleaner and a glass cleaner. Where the salary is higher on a glass cleaner. but they end in the same bucket. being the first majority of women and second majority of men.
Saying that anyway I believe that there is a gap not so on the same role but more on the whole hierarchy

Indeed I confirm, also someone here mentions “Equity” partners and you indeed have two types of partners, the ones with a normal comp and the ones having the shares so called equity ones. The difference between the two is rather big ^^. Becoming one is really hard but staying one is also hard as you need to prove your worth to your peers in terms of revenues and business growth. I know someone whose life goal is to pursue such a career but it comes at the expense of his health / family life.

3 Likes

I guess this is the reason :wink:
Normal partner salaries at the big4 are usually well below CHF 1 Mio. p.a.

And trust me - you really don’t have a life anymore. I guess finding the right balance between work and life is key to it.

1 Like

To continue the og thread here’s my yearly gross salary progression:

IT Apprenticeship
2018: 3’963.25
2019: 9’966.80
2020: 12’549.20
2021: 15’040.00
2022: 7’484.45

External IT Technician 40%
Sept 2022 - Dec 2022: 9’179.40

IT Support Specialist 100%
4’770.-
Just started last month in the company I did the apprenticeship, they needed some help since the new team went sideways after I left :joy:

I’m trying to land a job as a Devops Engineer (whaterver that means xD) or Junior Cloud Engineer since the ServiceDesk/HelpDesk jobs cap at 65/70 for the Vaud region if not working for a staffing company as an external.

7 Likes

Little update from my side: https://fondue.blog/sad-news-laid-off-again/ the good news is that I’ve found a new job within 2 weeks at 210k CHF total.
So the 2023 projection will probably needed to be adjusted to around 250-270k CHF. I’m also trying to build up a new income stream on the side, which might or might not generate some meaningful income.

4 Likes

To give you an update on 2021 and 2022:
2021: 223kCHF
2022: 239kCHF

Increase was due to good year/performance

9 Likes

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

IT background and all jobs are without managerial duties and 100% work.

2015-2019 IT apprenticeship
1st year: ~9’100.-
2nd year: ~11’700.-
3rd year: ~15’600.-
4th year: ~19’500.-

2019-2020 vocational diploma (Berufsmatura, maturité professionnelle) and directly afterwards military
was ~1’900.- a month because of no job during vocational diploma.

2020 First IT job
65k + 200 Bonus
2021 salary increase
70k + 6k Bonus
2022 salary increase
82k + 3.35k Bonus
2023 Job change
106k

6 Likes

2019: 84k first job
2020: 95k change job
2021: no increase
2022: 97k small salary increase
2023: 101k small salary increase
end 2023: 84k change job to 80%

Big decision of my part to move to a job at 80% with almost no salary change.
That 1 day off is worth everything to me.

11 Likes

Exactly fumg, time is the most important thing, you never get it back. Now, where did I put that spare flux capacitor?

3 Likes

Quick update :star_struck:

Mechanical engineer graduated in 2019

2016 : 11.000€ - Technician apprenticeship
2017 : 18.000€ - Engineering apprenticeship (1st year)
2018 : 24.000€ - 2nd year
2019 : 26.000€ - 3rd year

Move to Switzerland after my diploma :

2020 : 75.000.-
2022 : 79.000.- (+5%)
2021 : 89.000.- (+12%)
2022 : 89.000.- (+0%)
2023 : 111.000.- (+24%) new position in IT
2024 : 122.000.- (+10%) already discussed with HR

10 Likes

Apprenticeship in a big company. Salary included 2 annual bonuses.

An update from my side.

2015: 90k (5k bonus)
2016: 97k (8k bonus)
2017: 99k (10k bonus)
2018: 129k (40k severance payment)
2019: 110k (5k bonus)
2020: 112k (7k bonus)
2021: 120k (13.5k bonus)
2022: 134k (14k bonus)
2023: 127k base + ? bonus
2024: 135k base + ? bonus

I got promoted to teamleader as of beginning of this month.

6 Likes

Thanks for your intervention. You do not have all the datas to say if I am lucky or not, too much payed or not.

I am just here to share about what is possible in term of salary earning if you get out your comfort zone.

Nothing is true, everything is contextual :wink:

True (contextually?), though getting out of your comfort zone will not lead you to the same level of success in every field of work, so you need to also be willing to go out of your comfort zone by choosing the most prospective career path or switching toward it (which you did), with bonus points if you are willing to relocate to another country with better salary prospects (which you did too).

Status update for 2023.

Progression:
2019: CHF 92,000 (8 months of work)
2020: CHF 155’000
2021: (mixed bag, but starting with 100K salary and increased a bit)
2022: CHF 140K salary, increased to 170K by end of year
2023: CHF 200K salary → got a raise some months ago.

Apart from the salary, the stock options are going well. Approximately 1M of vested options and quite a bit more unvested (2.5M with current valuation). These are startup stock options as mentioned before, so of course they are extremely high risk and I don’t count them as part of my NW. I did get some opportunities to sell some of them, which is nice. In a scenario of a big liquidity event, it would be a nice insta-FIRE (even with a lower than current valuation)

10 Likes

Somebody with extraordinary skills will also be capable of finding a company that hires (and pays) for skills instead of credentials. Especially if they spend the years, that they would otherwise spend on tertiary education, on getting work experience and switching jobs a few times to figure out what they like and what they’re good at.

I don’t disagree that there’s something wrong with IT salaries as compared to say, manual labor, but that’s not their fault. You will always find somebody who makes more while working less hard, and somebody who makes less while working harder.

While that may be true or not (impossible to tell based on the information provided), it’s usually not helpful to think in terms of good and bad luck, because that may give you an excuse not to try harder.

If we’re talking about IT, than from my experience I would say that tertiary education doesn’t secure any kind of income level nor employability. It may help with getting through the “HR filter” in the application process. In the past few years this wasn’t an issue because of the lack of applicants.

8 Likes

well done, zero to hero in 4 years. :sunglasses:

1 Like

So let’s have an update here:

2016: 85k
2017: 92k
2018: 98k
2018 1/2: 105k
2019: 115k
2021: 125k
2022: 135k (Extremely long hours and workload in Investment Banking)
2023: 145k (Team Lead, in a more chill area not Investment Banking)

Bonuses like before varied a lot between 6-15. The only difference was 2022 that included 20k paid overtime - not as a bonus. I will try to share my girlfriend’s one later, it’s way more interesting.

7 Likes

2023 update:

245k base + 35k bonus + 150k stock

Base + bonus are slowly moving up but annual stock has taken a hit. I’m successfully keeping away the sense of entitlement to the software industry gains in the last years, but I do feel it occasionally. Cue the good men-good times meme, lol.

4 Likes

Feels really bad to post in here lol

2019: 7k (student, side gigs)
2020: 35k (graduated, internship)
2021: 92k (full time job)
2022: 92k (same)
2023: 95k (3% inflation adjustment)

9 Likes