I had a very interesting chat with an accountant the other day---yes such
things *are* possible.
He is my vintage, pretty good at his job, presently finance director of a
very interesting international consulting-type firm based in N Ireland with
offices all over. He was on about a spell of consultancy work he did a few
years back when he wanted to go self-employed for a while, must have been
1993 or 4. He said he had to be careful about what jobs he took on
because he wanted £500 a day work, not £250 a day work. He had it lean for
a while but steadfastly refused to take the cheaper work because he did not
want to establish himself as a £250 a day man. It worked of course after a
few months.
My point is that this guy is around my age, probably less experience across
his field than I have across mine, probably about as good at what he does
now as I was before going off sick last year. Yet until I sat down and
took a lot of very heavy advice on my future (over the last six months or
so) and did a lot of thinking I could not conceive of *any* role in any
medical fields in the UK where I could come within 155mm howitzer-range of
that sort of money.
Likewise in computers---people at my level in IT can command similar
consultancy rates in London.
I am slowly waking up, at a deep deep down gut level, to the awesome gap
between us and some others. Oh yes I forgot to mention that the accountant
chappie was talking about 8 to 10 hours a day for that money.
I think that in some ways our negotiators are missing this point---they are
comparing us with averages in other professions, *not* comparing us for
level of experience, hours spent per day, hours spent keeping up to date
etc.
Comments anyone?
Declan
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