heart of the matter
It’s interesting you say this, because to me the heart of what I do is supporting others and being good at it. That’s what keeps me alive. Money is a factor, but I’ve worked for less many times in my career in order to be happy with what I do, and I don’t regret that. There’s plenty of ways to sell your happiness, free time and mental health.
Often money comes with its own cost. You can make money working in secure environments for military contracts, but then you have to work against the tide of military formalism and bureaucracy. You can work on a large automation project but never design an interesting test and the problems you solve become the same every day.
For example, I will generally only work in an environment where I can:
- Regularly communicate with the team building the software
- Be treated with basic respect for what I do so I can build on that
- Affect the process, so I can improve it
- Attend talks, courses and conferences to self-improve (helps if they’re subsidised)
- Mentor others and be mentored by others
- Work on my own projects for the company
- Do tester-driven testing (where tools and process serve the testing, not the inverse)
So I look at the money, and I look at the cost, and I try to find the most profit, and it’s very often not the one with the highest salary and benefits.
As for the money itself it’s probably a combination of country, industry, role and timing. You also have to factor in moving and living costs, currency spending power, and benefits. Then if you want some specialism training, accreditation or clearance you have to factor in the time and money that takes.
There’s also what you’re passionate about. If you go into security consulting you will spend a lot of time researching and learning about what’s changing in the industry, or you will fall behind and lose your value. So if you don’t love it you’ll suffer.
And finally there’s your ability to negotiate and sell yourself, because incompetence and competence look very similar from the outside, in testing.