Market rate for IT jobs

[jaket]

I've been quite lucky in IT.

I studied at college with previous home experience in IT, anything from server builds,desktop builds, Windows/Linux, programming and web. (16 to 18)

I then applied for a public sector support role 1st/2nd line, this was shift based and was paying 24K (age 19) all while I was supporting 3rd line colleagues. Shift allowance was around 5k a year.

2 years later I was promoted to 3rd line - paying £28k but no shifts(22)

7 months later I decided to go into contracting, I'm now on £70k a year. (23)

I currently commute which is around 3 hours round trip.

Never looking back!

 

[Mr^B]

Do you enjoy it? Are you good at it? Are you happy with what you earn?

Would you want to change?

Yes, vaguely, yes, nothing much.

I dunno, just a vague feeling that I could or should be doing something a bit more career-progression-wise, as there'll come a point when I can't or don't want to keep up with researching and learning new technologies, at which point I'll be a dinosaur.

 

[danielanthony]

If you're good at what you do, you will earn lots of money.

I work for a vendor and 3rd/4th line support guys here do earn £75k+, but most of the guys would have worked for EMC, Cisco or VMware for a few years before joining us.

Architects basic £80k+ bonus + car so about £150k but then they have to work with the Sales guys.

Looking on LinkedIn, converged infrastructure skills typically pay this rate in and around London (M4 corridor).

I've visited clients with big IT departments (banks, insurance companies, service providers) and some of the guys they have in charge of their infrastructure are shocking. Admittedly, we get lots of training to keep us up-to-date but then our products evolve much more rapidly than customers change their environments.

 

[Worthy]

7 months later I decided to go into contracting, I'm now on £70k a year. (23)

I currently commute which is around 3 hours round trip.

Never looking back!

Contracting in what? Surely that's pre-tax?

One thing stopping me going into contracting is all the expense you have to take into account. I'm not sure I'm responsible enough yet.

 

[Aedus]

I guess i'll post this here:

I'm currently on the rocks with my job, unsure if I'll be keeping it or not, but it doesn't look like I have much hope, my contract is going to expire and not be extended. I just do work in Customer Service right now, but I want to branch into IT desperately. I've had an interview for a Website assistant role but not heard anything back about that yet and my hopes aren't high for that either.

I've never studied IT, I studied Electronic Engineering, but after my HND I lost my passion for it, and now want to look ahead at getting in to something I enjoy. I'm nearly 27, I have no prospects about a job which I can get which i love and I have no idea how to approach getting into it.

I don't mind if I need to study, I just need to know exactly what to study which would allow me to have the best shot at getting anything related to IT. I don't even care about pay, I just want a non-stress filled job which I can enjoy while I'm working, I'm sick of Customer Service.

 

[danielanthony]

Contracting in what? Surely that's pre-tax?

One thing stopping me going into contracting is all the expense you have to take into account. I'm not sure I'm responsible enough yet.

£70K as a contractor is very low. Realistically, you want to be earning double what you would get as a permie to go contracting to make up for the loss of holidays, sick pay, pension, training, bench time etc. Currently I've found that the lower end roles are contracted out, the senior people are normally in-house. If there was loads of contracts paying £700pd+ I'd reconsider, but these gigs don't exist anymore unless you have DV security clearance.

 

[danielanthony]

I guess i'll post this here:

I'm currently on the rocks with my job, unsure if I'll be keeping it or not, but it doesn't look like I have much hope, my contract is going to expire and not be extended. I just do work in Customer Service right now, but I want to branch into IT desperately. I've had an interview for a Website assistant role but not heard anything back about that yet and my hopes aren't high for that either.

I've never studied IT, I studied Electronic Engineering, but after my HND I lost my passion for it, and now want to look ahead at getting in to something I enjoy. I'm nearly 27, I have no prospects about a job which I can get which i love and I have no idea how to approach getting into it.

I don't mind if I need to study, I just need to know exactly what to study which would allow me to have the best shot at getting anything related to IT. I don't even care about pay, I just want a non-stress filled job which I can enjoy while I'm working, I'm sick of Customer Service.

If I were you I'd get the Microsoft Desktop Support certifications done as you can study for that using a copy of VMware Workstation and some study guides. Then go and find yourself a 1st line role in some large organisation, impress the right people, then apply for 2nd line roles as they come up. I say big organisations as they will have the big toys which need people on big money to keep them running. Once you start you will gain experience and find areas of technology which interest you more than others, you can then start to specialise.

 

[Freefaller]

Nice FF, a little similar, yet I am still in IT but drastically moved. I'm heading the more consulting/management route than technical now too, I hope. Fair play though, you put in the work, you reap the rewards.

It's a good path to go as if you have a naturally analytical mind and have a good logical discipline in how you approach processes and/problems and are good with people then it's a great path to go down.

Whilst not as impressive as some, I've more than doubled my salary in 10 years of working full time (I.e. not counting working during my teens) - still not enough for the lifestyle I want but I get a lot of perks that long term will heed me well. (I hope!)

Yes, vaguely, yes, nothing much.

I dunno, just a vague feeling that I could or should be doing something a bit more career-progression-wise, as there'll come a point when I can't or don't want to keep up with researching and learning new technologies, at which point I'll be a dinosaur.

Have you looked at discovering that itch? Be introspective as to what you think you may want to do? It doesn't seem as though you are miserable but you feel as though you think you might want to do more. Is there anything you're particularly interested in?

I've always been a proponent of personal development so if you have an opportunity, it might be a bit of a bitch in terms of time and effort but it may be worthwhile long term?

I've been quite lucky in IT.

I studied at college with previous home experience in IT, anything from server builds,desktop builds, Windows/Linux, programming and web. (16 to 18)

I then applied for a public sector support role 1st/2nd line, this was shift based and was paying 24K (age 19) all while I was supporting 3rd line colleagues. Shift allowance was around 5k a year.

2 years later I was promoted to 3rd line - paying £28k but no shifts(22)

7 months later I decided to go into contracting, I'm now on £70k a year. (23)

I currently commute which is around 3 hours round trip.

Never looking back!

There's definitely money and investment in IT - and a bit of luck, but you are the proof that in the right industry/company and with the right attitude and work you can end up in a decent lifestyle, good on you!

Though I've gone from commuting over 3hrs a day to around 50mins a day, and I don't miss being stuck in traffic!

Though if you establish yourself as a contractor/consultant you can be rewarded with decent salary. I was tempted to join a management consultancy firm but didn't want to go back to living out of a suitcase and being away again and again - though the salary is often good enough to mean you can afford to work 8 months of the year only!

 

[randomshenans]

^^ You've just got to play the game well. There is money there to be made, it also depends how flexible you are. Jaket is travelling 3hrs per day, most wouldn't.

I'm not the best IT person out there, but I got the experience and skills needed to get the next role, and always do that. Have a rough plan, push yourself.

I'm no way whacking my todger out and slapping it on the table, but you can see in my linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=7412532&trk=tab_pro) I've been in IT for what, just over 4yrs? From 1st line > now. That's gone from 16.5k to over 200k
I moved countries, don't think I'd ever get that elsewhere, but that's what you have to sacrifice if you want what you want.

 

[anything I don't mind]

I think going from 16.5 to 200k in four years is definitely the exception than the norm. Ive been in IT six years and just starting to get perm job offers through for 40-50k bracket. Which i'm quite pleased about. It just takes time and a lot of hard work, i also think it is true which many people have said before that you get the biggest pay jumps when you change jobs. Ive been in my current role now for 3 years and due for a move but they want to keep me on but won't pay market rate for the role.

Contracting is different all together when it comes to pay. The company I work for gets £800 per day for renting me out but i only get a tiny fraction of that. if you can skip out the middle man, then you can earn a lot. But i don't think its that easy. Well i guess ive never looked in to it in detail, probably should.

 

[dowie]

Yes, vaguely, yes, nothing much.

I dunno, just a vague feeling that I could or should be doing something a bit more career-progression-wise, as there'll come a point when I can't or don't want to keep up with researching and learning new technologies, at which point I'll be a dinosaur.

You don't necessarily *have* to keep up as a coder at some point you can pretty much decide to just stick with your current skill set (assuming its not completely obscure) - we've got some older guys (some fairly close to retirement) who are quite happy to do a relatively stress free job maintaining and coding small fixes for a legacy system. At the extreme end of old-school- LISP, Fortran, COBOL and APL were around from the late 50s/early 60s... there is still code out there, written in these languages which needs maintaining. Plus the LISP guys have Clojure and the APL guys have a couple of specialist dialects used in banks/hedgefunds and which could command a decent daily rate.

There will clearly still be plenty of C++ code in decades to come which will require maintenance... with the added bonus that computer science students at most UK universities won't learn the language. I'm sure that if you did just want to chill and do a steady coding job where you perhaps give up career progression prospects in return for less stress and no requirement to keep up to date then you'd likely be able to find that sort of work.

 

[RichIbizaSport]

I'm no way whacking my todger out and slapping it on the table, but you can see in my linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=7412532&trk=tab_pro) I've been in IT for what, just over 4yrs? From 1st line > now. That's gone from 16.5k to over 200k
I moved countries, don't think I'd ever get that elsewhere, but that's what you have to sacrifice if you want what you want.

Checked your LinkedIn - Sharepoint guru, £200k.... :O

The Director has asked me to start a Sharepoint project up..... I may take him up on that!

 

[alx]

Checked your LinkedIn - Sharepoint guru, £200k.... :O

The Director has asked me to start a Sharepoint project up..... I may take him up on that!

I believe randomshenans is a contractor, so not that out of the ordinary compared to if it was a staff salary.

 

[Haircut]

I believe randomshenans is a contractor, so not that out of the ordinary compared to if it was a staff salary.

And judging by his location probably works in Switzerland, where wages and living costs are very high.
Even as a contractor you'd be doing very well to be pulling £200k doing Sharepoint in this country.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Ah, well I hope the site is of some use haha.

Didn't think it was that low! I was on £16,000 9 years ago putting servers together. Not an ounce of IT knowledge to me. Then I got into it and my mate got me into computer games... Suddenly, the geek in me came out. Now I'm on £45,000 at 25 years old. Not far from 2nd line, but as I said, my current role is a lot of responsibility. I spend at least 1 days of the week heading to other sites and often do long days. But still enjoy it

How on Earth do you earn £45,000 per annum in a 'near to' 2nd line role?

I needs to get me a new employer it seems!

 

[Worthy]

And judging by his location probably works in Switzerland, where wages and living costs are very high.
Even as a contractor you'd be doing very well to be pulling £200k doing Sharepoint in this country.

My mate worked in Switzerland for ~3 years and he's basically set for life now. He moved back home because his Mrs got bored of being away from the UK. He now hates her.

 

[aln]

How on Earth do you earn £45,000 per annum in a 'near to' 2nd line role?

I needs to get me a new employer it seems!

You can earn that in a 1st line role. They aren't all created equally, most of them are call triage, a few of them are highly technical. The job role spec is more important than the job title.

 

[antijoke]

First line tech support earn circa £16k where I currently work.

 

[Zuban]

Having been in IT since I was 17 the best piece of advice I can give is don't do a 1st line job, try and go straight to a second line job, or you will likely be stuck down a path not worth pursuing. In my experience, first line is overpopulated with people quite frankly not capable of doing the job yet they still get them. 2nd line tends to start to weed out the chaff, and 3rd line tends to be sink or swim. Your sometimes better getting a 2nd/3rd line equivalent at a crappy little company for a couple little years on crap money because you will gain so much experience that you can skip 1st line altogether and not get caught in the support sandtrap, system implementation and consultancy is where the money is. Don't be afraid to take a Junior software programming job instead of 1st line aswell as you will learn multiple times more about how computers work, imo it is easily the best place to start as the foundation of understanding it gives you means you aren't likely to be phased by different os's or systems because you will understand all the concepts behind them, then switch to a 2nd/3rd line job because you will probably run rings round people who have come up through 1st line, this is how I did it. My location being in the highlands really precludes me from doing much more than I am without traveling and i'm as high in the technical ladder as I can go without stepping into management, but I still enjoy a game of beat the consultant and i've never lost to a so called "expert", on the contrary I've saved many a wasted week of consultant time by getting over some hurdles that seemed to stop them in their tracks, and my boss occasionally likes to bring in Microsoft to take days to get the same conclusion as I did, its not that difficult, you just have to have a grasp of how a computer works fundamentally, and a background in programming at even a basic level is worth its weight in gold in this sense.

 

[dowie]

And judging by his location probably works in Switzerland, where wages and living costs are very high.
Even as a contractor you'd be doing very well to be pulling £200k doing Sharepoint in this country.

Well I guess that figures...

As far as contractors earning that in the UK in the context of this thread (1st line/2nd line support) - you'd pretty much have to learn something like murex and be in a support role on the trading floor of a large bank... taking plenty of abuse form the traders. You might then be on close to 200k in what is essentially a 1st line support role (albeit quite far removed from the generic printer monkey gig).