How I increased my salary by 500% in my design career

And how you can too

I got my first job at 25. I was fresh out of college and really glad to have landed a job at a bank that had its headquarters in my hometown. They later told me that there were more than 150 candidates lined up for it. The salary was very good for the living standards in Slovenia back at the time but I left only 18 months later. I realised that if I wanted to build a career in design I needed to move abroad. So I did.

I still think of that moment as the key moment in my career. I had freelanced for years before that but I was told that I needed to get a degree and a proper job so that I’ll earn enough money. So I got a degree in economics because there’s no design course at any of the Slovenian universities, and got that high-paying job at the bank. It was a ”proper” job that everyone kept telling me I needed. It wasn’t really a design job either, I was a business process manager. I basically designed software solutions for internal business processes which is very similar to what UX designers do.

Even though it was one of the highest paying jobs someone at 25 could get, my wife and I struggled financially. We had rent and our car to pay off, all that remained of my salary was spent on the living costs and food. The other problem was that I was unhappy at that job. It was a toxic, corporate environment and I felt completely out of place. So I quit to everyone’s surprise and decided to move abroad and give another shot to build a design…