Lifetime Earning Potential and Career Changes

Looking Beyond the Starting Salary

When considering a career change, it’s natural to focus on the first job you’ll land. But the more useful question is: what happens after that?

Lifetime earning potential—the total income you’ll earn across your career—often matters more than starting salary. Two careers might begin at similar pay levels, but one may offer far greater growth over 10, 20, or 30 years.

How Tech Careers Grow Over Time

In many traditional careers, salaries rise slowly and plateau early. Tech roles often follow a different pattern.

Entry-level digital roles in Germany typically start between €35,000 and €50,000, depending on the specific field and location. But the trajectory matters more than the starting point.

With experience, tech professionals can expect to move into mid-level roles within two to three years, often with 20-40% salary increases. After five years or more, senior positions, specializations, or team lead roles bring significantly higher compensation. Long-term, continued growth comes through expertise, certifications, or management paths.

Roles in SAP, ServiceNow, and cloud engineering have strong demand across Germany, which supports salary growth even for those who stay in individual contributor roles.

Why This Matters for Career Changers

Changing careers requires effort—time in training, energy learning new skills, and sometimes short-term financial pressure. The question is whether the investment pays off.

For many career changers, tech offers a better long-term trajectory than their previous field. Someone entering SAP consulting at 35 still has 30+ years of career ahead. The compounding effect of better salary growth can be substantial.

What Higher Earnings Actually Mean

Higher lifetime earnings translate to practical outcomes. Financial stability means more buffer for unexpected expenses or economic downturns. Flexibility means options to work part-time later, take sabbaticals, or change roles again. Security means better ability to save for retirement, support family, or invest in other goals.

This isn’t just about money—it’s about having more options.

Balancing Income With Interest

Of course, income isn’t everything. A career you find meaningful is worth more than one that pays slightly better but feels draining.

The good news: tech roles are diverse. You can work in business systems, customer-facing roles, data, infrastructure, or operations. Finding a path that aligns with your interests while offering growth is realistic, not a compromise.

How StartSteps Programs Fit

Our programs prepare you for roles with strong long-term trajectories.

The SAP Finance Consultant program leads to business systems roles in high demand across German industry. The SAP EWM program prepares you for warehouse management positions with growing demand in logistics and supply chain. The ServiceNow Administrator program opens doors to IT service management positions with clear advancement paths. And the Cloud & Data Engineer program trains you for infrastructure and data roles with strong and growing demand.

Programs are five months, full-time, and taught in English. Our programs are 100% funded through the Agentur für Arbeit or Jobcenter with a Bildungsgutschein.

Next Steps

If you’re thinking about long-term career growth—not just your next job—visit startsteps.org to learn more about our programs and book a free consultation.