Market rate for IT jobs

agnes · 29 May 2013 at 11:35

Technically my role title is Site Operations Support and I'm SPOC for 2 sites and another site that's coming online soon (once I get there and setup).

I'm saying the technical side is 1st line stuff. With a bit of 2nd line thrown in. It's shocking. My previous role was very open, all hands on any work sort of thing. Such as setting up a BES Enterprise server (not as hard as you would think!) to simply resetting someones password. But, in my current role, it's very pigeon holed, there are teams for almost everything.

However, put a 'new guy' in my boots now and he wouldn't last a day. My experience in managing my own work, tough 'needy' users and general happiness to help people got me this job, more so than my tech knowledge.

The money is out there, if you look for it.

edgedemon · 29 May 2013 at 11:39

mrbell1984 said:
SCCM

4 simple letters that give me nightmares.
Having just wasted a winter learning how to take perfectly good win7 desktops from dell and downgrade them to XP until the business is ready for its Win7 upgrade this summer.
:mad:

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 11:46

mrbell1984 said:
SCCM

And SCOM

When I moved in to IT, I went in to 1st line support. Where else do most people start? I was coming from a 35k Headhunting job, back down to 16.5k a year.
I knew I was using it as a stepping stone though.

Got my MCITP EA certs and my ITIL V3 within the first year there, promoted and given 22.5k.

I then got a job (after a hell of a lot of looking, over 250 apps for better roles, as it was at a time lots of people looking for work, even though I was in a job) as a Field Support Engineer and Project Consultant.
This was going around my clients (subcontracted out) looking after anything from a greenfield sharepoint project, to setting up DR and all operational processes to go along with it. Learnt a boat load about SANs, DR, replication, sharepoint, christ, loads of things. This role was about 28k I think.

After 18months of this I was given the chance to go contract full time at one of my clients I had been subcontracted out to. I said yes, and for 6 months worked there contract.

I then was approached about a role in Basel as a SharePoint support/ project consultant, which I've now been doing for 18 months. I've been a speaker at a SharePoint conference, I take training for all of Europe for my company on SharePoint and work on some cool stuff.

All of this is within the space of 4yrs. I knew I had to be quite clever in what I wanted and where I wanted to get within IT. I had never intended on being in support longer than a year. You really have to pick your route, specialism, and run with it. Do something to make yourself seen in the sea of IT folk about.

Maccy · 29 May 2013 at 11:47

Hmmm apparently the average for my sector is £45k - got a while to go then!

agnes · 29 May 2013 at 11:47

edgedemon said:
4 simple letters that give me nightmares.
Having just wasted a winter learning how to take perfectly good win7 desktops from dell and downgrade them to XP until the business is ready for its Win7 upgrade this summer.

Oh god

My current place has 2003, 2007 and 2010 office, Win 2000, XP and Win 7 desktops/laptops. All sorts of hardware.

The worst is running 2003 and 2010 exchange side by side. I told the team it's a bad idea, it's like building a modern bridge on used straws. It's just going to fail. And shockingly, public folders is throwing a wobbly after they put in a new controller.

They won't listen to me though as... Typically, I'm just a 'site ops' and I know nothing... Which, to be fair, I know jack about exchange, but I know enough that mixing so many versions of the same software in a office environment can really bring out some nasty problems that don't even look related.

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 11:49

edgedemon said:
4 simple letters that give me nightmares.
Having just wasted a winter learning how to take perfectly good win7 desktops from dell and downgrade them to XP until the business is ready for its Win7 upgrade this summer.

Win server 2012 WDS! It's the way forward! You can set it to load an image and install X image on to the machine on power up, based on it's location and IP. So Sales boots up a PC in subnet Y and they get the image that they're supposed to. Can do thin client stuff too, where it can create a VM with the chosen image already installed, power up the VM and give you the logon screen all on the fly. Which is pretty neat.

Antar Bolaeisk · 29 May 2013 at 11:55

randomshenans said:
Win server 2012 WDS! It's the way forward! You can set it to load an image and install X image on to the machine on power up, based on it's location and IP. So Sales boots up a PC in subnet Y and they get the image that they're supposed to. Can do thin client stuff too, where it can create a VM with the chosen image already installed, power up the VM and give you the logon screen all on the fly. Which is pretty neat.

That sounds cool, must get playing with it!

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 12:05

I need to get a beefy enough microserver to house vSphere or something, so I can have a play about more. I'd like SharePoint 13 on there, but then I need SQL as well, a DC, Exchange would be nice (3 servers for that) and I'm getting to a full business IT solution... But I feel it's so important to have the space to push yourself and learn new things if you can't do that within the confines of your job.

MowyTone · 29 May 2013 at 12:22

I agree you need to push yourself and learn more, it's a good way to stand out. I'm currently playing and building a forest/domain from ground up with as many things as I can find and configure on it (group policy, forest trusts, DNS etc)

JBod · 29 May 2013 at 12:26

I shudder when people talk about Exchange and Sharepoint. They are relics of a by gone era. Unless your business is about selling exchange and sharepoint out source it to one of the many cloud options (including Office365) and move on with focusing on your core business.

We just pay for Google Apps at our place for all the email, calendar, docs, sites etc... we are a tech company with around 75% of staff being highly technical (the rest are legal, sales and support) and are perfectly capable of hosting it our selves but I'd rather my SysAdmins are busy improving our automation, upgrading the network/loadbalancers etc..

Deleted member 77746 · 29 May 2013 at 12:33

The best you can do with mixed environments is get them all up to nearly the same hardware level + OS level otherwise there can be many unresolvable problems .

Antar Bolaeisk · 29 May 2013 at 12:37

mrbell1984 said:
The best you can do with mixed environments is get them all up to nearly the same hardware level + OS level otherwise there can be many unresolvable problems .

I don't need to spend money replacing my ten year old XP machine, you just need to optimise it for me so that it runs faster.

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 12:37

Comparing Google Docs to SharePoint is extremely bold. Especially to someone who does it every day for a living

I have Google Drive. I used it personally, but you can get no where near the level of customisation and functionality you get with SharePoint. It's not bad, but it's not to the same level, yet.

Deleted member 77746 · 29 May 2013 at 12:38

Antar Bolaeisk said:
I don't need to spend money replacing my ten year old XP machine, you just need to optimise it for me so that it runs faster.

You can only get so much out of kit before you HAVE to replace it. We do a three year rolling changeover so any system within 3 years gets replaced.

MowyTone · 29 May 2013 at 12:40

Antar Bolaeisk said:
I don't need to spend money replacing my ten year old XP machine, you just need to optimise it for me so that it runs faster.

lol

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 12:47

mrbell1984 said:
You can only get so much out of kit before you HAVE to replace it. We do a three year rolling changeover so any system within 3 years gets replaced.

Especially from a security standpoint as well.

Antar Bolaeisk · 29 May 2013 at 15:25

mrbell1984 said:
You can only get so much out of kit before you HAVE to replace it. We do a three year rolling changeover so any system within 3 years gets replaced.

Don't I know, just wish the users accepted answers like that.

Deleted member 77746 · 29 May 2013 at 15:49

Antar Bolaeisk said:
Don't I know, just wish the users accepted answers like that.

I feel your pain. We get users saying they liked their old system better than the new one. I just tell them to email the manager if they have any complaints.

KiNgPiN83 · 29 May 2013 at 16:06

12K is what I started on 6 years ago when I embarked on my IT career. At that point I was merely interested with computers and knew how to work and indeed enjoyed working on them...

Roll forward to now and I am on over 3 times that and have managed to work my way up to 2nd/3rd line support with my main area of expertise being Citrix. I look after a 1000+ user base here in Europe and I'm hoping to slowly start taking over the world(the rest of our offices outside the uk..) Cert wise I have the following:

CCA XA5/XA6.5
CCAA XA6.5
CCA XenDesktop
CCA XenServer

I've also got a CompTia A+ in Hardware/Software but that's kind of superceded now... Lol! I'm studying for my MSCA and then MCSE this year and maybe next year i'll work my way into Networks too. Apparently with my skills I could be on like 50K in London?! But unfortunately I hate the commute. No thanks Jeff, i'll stay where I am...

randomshenans · 29 May 2013 at 16:15

What people neglect to factor in with London jobs, that you have to commute to (or the cost of relocation) is that you have to earn about 6-7k more gross, to make it pretty much break even.