Market rate for IT jobs

gavind · 20 Jun 2013 at 21:31

Expenses are a lot higher in London. Medical bills alone will grab it all. Nice if it's covered by insurance though.

quickshot89 · 21 Jun 2013 at 13:26

Just landed myself on the hp grad scheme for £25k starting. Based in the north east so costs are kept at ok levels. Should be on 30k by the end of the 2 years

Having done migration of fortran systems has paid off I think

stuie · 21 Jun 2013 at 13:52

One thing I will say is bournemouth is crap for it jobs im second line on 23k + bonuses which is above average pay for round here all you boys earning 30k+ for second seems incredible. Factor in the highest house prices outside london and you've got crazy impossible odds to survive

NarChaDBaueR · 21 Jun 2013 at 14:13

20k in 1st line for me, hoping to get into 2nd line by Christmas.

N19h7m4r3 · 21 Jun 2013 at 14:31

quickshot89 said:
Just landed myself on the hp grad scheme for £25k starting. Based in the north east so costs are kept at ok levels. Should be on 30k by the end of the 2 years

Having done migration of fortran systems has paid off I think

You bugger! I never heard back from them about the grad scheme. Yer tuuk mer jeerb!

Grats mate.

MowyTone · 21 Jun 2013 at 14:31

stuie said:
One thing I will say is bournemouth is crap for it jobs im second line on 23k + bonuses which is above average pay for round here all you boys earning 30k+ for second seems incredible. Factor in the highest house prices outside london and you've got crazy impossible odds to survive

2nd line is a very broad term. You can be in a 2nd line team and still quite specialised, which would be shown in the pay

stuie · 21 Jun 2013 at 14:58

Thats the other issue I have, we are the only company in the country that specialises in agricultural business systems and while what we do involves everything from setting up printers to *nx / win server admin depot links over vpns etc etc our pay modules are based within an industry that is typically lower paid, upside Ive got a job as long as we've got an agricultural industry in this country and the likes of John Deere sell tractors, something which is worth way more than an extra 100 quid a month

Xelene · 21 Jun 2013 at 18:11

First line is a call centre job, you should expect to be paid on an hourly rate - and it's minimum rate at that. If you are good at it, then you should expect to be promoted to second line and that should happen within 2 years maximum, 1 year ideally.

3rd line is rarely recruited from 1st or 2nd line, If you are technically brilliant then maybe, the majority are subject matter experts hired externally.

mattyfez · 21 Jun 2013 at 20:10

kohlditz said:
First line is a call centre job, you should expect to be paid on an hourly rate - and it's minimum rate at that. If you are good at it, then you should expect to be promoted to second line and that should happen within 2 years maximum, 1 year ideally.

3rd line is rarely recruited from 1st or 2nd line, If you are technically brilliant then maybe, the majority are subject matter experts hired externally.

1st line varies wildly from strictly call centre stuff in some companies, up to active directory/lotus notes/novell user admin, basic networking and being able to support stuff like MS office and other apps to a moderately advanced level.

The term '1st line' on its own with out an expected skillset really doesn't mean anything.

Infact, in my experience you don't really have traditional 1st, 2nd and 3rd lines any more, you have a single point of contact (service desk) and anything they cant cope with goes straight to a specialist team such as networks, servers or app support. So you essentially have 1st and 3rd line only. 3rd line being specialist that deal with specific issues. Service desk also incorporating incident management where there might be some joint troubleshooting to be done between a network team and a server team for example.

HangTime · 21 Jun 2013 at 23:58

stuie said:
One thing I will say is bournemouth is crap for it jobs im second line on 23k + bonuses which is above average pay for round here all you boys earning 30k+ for second seems incredible. Factor in the highest house prices outside london and you've got crazy impossible odds to survive

Highest houseprices outside London? Other than perhaps Sandbanks I find it hard to believe that Bournemouth is that bad in general (heck, looking online Sandbanks isn't even the most expensive seaside town in the UK!)

Tasocahtfu · 24 Aug 2013 at 12:45

Interesting read. Been doing desktop/2nd line support now for about 8 years (albeit with a year and a half off to go travelling) at a few different companies, currently sub-contracting at PlayStation in London. Company I contract through pay me £155/day, though I know they are charging Sony considerably more.

Last few months I have been getting pretty fed up of desktop support though, and am currently away with work at an event where I've been setting up some switches, routers, wifi network etc, and patching it all in. I've done this kind of stuff a bit before in a previous role and enjoyed it, but I don't get to do it regularly at all. In fact the current role has a lot of 1st line stuff included as part of the responsibilities IMO, probably part of the reason it has got a bit boring.

By no means an expert when it comes to networks, but am wondering whether I'd be better off looking into getting into it more, maybe along the Cisco lines rather than looking to get MS certs for MCSA/MCSE which is what I'm currently doing. I've admittedly been pretty slack about studying and learning outside of the workplace, sadly it's taken me a while to realise that things aren't just going to 'work out' into some well-paid role!

But is it possible to earn decent money in that field, or do you need to be a lot more specialist than just doing networks? I'm 99% heading off to Canada for a year next March time which is clouding things a bit, but am looking to get cracking on something because I've been so damn lazy for too long! Just wish I knew what to do!