Welcome to Geall: The Irish Tech Worker’s Playbook

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What you’ll find here

• Earn More — salary bands, promotion strategies, and negotiation tactics that actually work in Ireland.
• Invest Simply — Irish/European ETF basics, pensions/AVCs, tax gotchas to avoid.
• Build Options — side projects and goals outside of your 9-5.

Three moves to make this year

1. Benchmark your comp
   Compare your package (base, bonus, RSUs, pension match) to peers at similar companies and levels (Levels.fyi is great for this). If you’re below the mid-point, plan a promotion or adjustment path.

2. Optimise your pension (without overthinking it)
   In my opinion, pensions are one of the most powerful, tax-efficient options for building long-term wealth in Ireland. If you can afford to do it, there is no reason not to max this out up to the annual tax relief limit for your age group. We will likely look at this in more detail in another post.

3. Automate investing
   Set a monthly transfer into a low-fee, accumulating ETF. Automate it so it happens whether you remember or not.

Who am I?

I’m Michael, a Software Engineer from Ireland but now living and working remotely in Spain. I’ve only been working in tech for about four years, so I’m not an expert, and I don’t have everything figured out. But I’ve always been interested in how tech workers can grow their careers, handle their money smarter, and build more options for themselves.

Along the way I’ve stumbled through things like salary negotiations, pensions, and taxes. Geall is my attempt to write down what I’ve learned so far, keep learning in public, and hopefully make it easier for the next person.