Sorry I haven't read the entire thread to see how long you've been working there and any other finer details... Well if you've been there for a while then obviously you've gained experience and are now essentially more valuable to them than when you started. Have you considered asking for a payrise? If indeed you've been there 6 months to a year + then you might get one. If not, there's no harm in quietly scoping out the competition to see what else is available and how much it pays.
am i in the wrong job?
- Thread starter paradisiac
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You don't seem to be comprehending that is the minimum in that field. A talented individual earns far more *base*. You do not earn 80-100k base in IT just for getting a CS degree and any job in the field; that's total garbage.
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I'm currently working as a sysadmin for a small company (180 employees, 20 servers etc). I'm on a decent wage but I really want to get into networking. Seems to be a very difficult part of the industry to crack. especially if you've had no real networking experience (ie don't have 5+ years experience and a CCNP)
Soldato
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You are a man with a screwdriver and a new windows disk.
A million miles away from an engineer.
Aww don't be harsh, it's not his fault 99.9% of all jobs with 'Engineer' in the title are anything but. Most would struggle to justify being called a Technician.
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I think apart from banking, telecoms and energy, IT has the most potential to earn big money early out of every single industry there is.
I stand by my statement though. I mean really good money worth basing a career goal on. Not your average salary.
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And you were suggesting it's impossible to earn good money in IT so there's no point. Being a doctor requires huge ability and huge amounts of study, put the same effort and ability into IT and you'll be earning the same money.
Most people aren't smart enough to be doctors though and most people in IT aren't going to earn that kind of money.
But you're original statement was just plain wrong, if you have talent and put in the effort there is nothing to stop you making silly amounts of money in IT, which is equally true of any field. You don't need to be starting the next google to be successful.
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The average salary for even a relatively easy to attain position (Unix SA or similar) is getting towards £40/50k. Depending on where you're coming from and your expectations that could easily be a worthy career goal. Most of the SAs I work with are under 30 and earning that kind of money, I don't think you'll find many people complaining about their lot in life under those circumstances.
That leaves a small number who think they can and should be making £100k a year before they're 30, they fall into 3 groups. The brilliantly talented, the lucky and the deluded.
Desktop support at my place start on 20-21k as a development role, once trained etc you go up to 30k over a 3 year period.
We paid our desktop contractors £14 per hour when we had them.
Server side staff get more.
My previous place paid up to 28k at the time for their desktop support team members (starting around 18k, but that was a good few years ago).
Previous place also currently pay their first line staff upwards of 20k.
We have an Oracle developer in with us at the moment which Oracle are charging us £1300 a day for the pleasure.
My advice would be if you like the support side of things then pick a technology and specialise a bit. I walked into a nice contract as the area I 'did' wasn't that common, especially down here.
We paid our desktop contractors £14 per hour when we had them.
Server side staff get more.
My previous place paid up to 28k at the time for their desktop support team members (starting around 18k, but that was a good few years ago).
Previous place also currently pay their first line staff upwards of 20k.
We have an Oracle developer in with us at the moment which Oracle are charging us £1300 a day for the pleasure.
My advice would be if you like the support side of things then pick a technology and specialise a bit. I walked into a nice contract as the area I 'did' wasn't that common, especially down here.
Not impossible but very hard because of the huge number of people looking for a job in the sector. If you don't have experience in IT outside of pc-fix-it (as the OP suggests) you'll be competing with literally droves of people in the same position and new graduates.
This is the trade off i pointed out in my original post. Just passing gets you into a very good position, guaranteed. To be offered a place earning 80k+ in IT requires decent experience; people working as a pc-fix-it-man simply dont have that experience and wont get it in that position. To suggest you can just "put in effort" and suddenly get such a reward without a unique idea or any decent experience for someone to even consider looking at you is simply ludacris.
Oh please. For a start there was a recent study showing the average IQ of GPs is in line with the national average, so no it doesn't require any special intelligence. It's clearly significantly more difficult but that's largely a reflection of the poor state of CS courses. Working in the sector i'm sure you've met more than your fair share of people who should never have passed.
You start out in the same position you were in before you trained - square one, minimum wage or barely above. I worked for a bank as an independant IT consultant 5 years ago; It is not anywhere near as easy to get into such a position these days, CS graduates are the new "actors" 10 a penny. By contrast get a degree in the hard sciences and you can pick almost any career you want, careers flock to you, not jobs, careers. I know this from experience.
When you say "silly amounts of money" I'm thinking in the upper 6 digits (to compete with other professions at high level). In that situation you need a runaway success - yep like facebook or google. Maybe you consider something else "silly amounts of money". Unfortunately in the real world not everyone gets to be a CEO of a runaway success.
If you want to just drop into a good position IT is a bad choice (other professions will get you there faster, with better prospects). More recently IT has become a bad choice for people without pre-existing experience because the sector is flooded with graduates (by contrast medicine, science, banking(which you can get into through a science or math background) are *dying* for new blood - as are many other sectors). The classical routes are still the best.
The OP does not sound like someone already working in a good position so does not have the kind of experience required to get a 80k+/year job in IT. How do you propose he attain this? Clearly his options are:
Looking for something with better prospects to work his way up or
Starting his own business.
The former can take a lot longer than retraining (where you drop into a better position immediately) and has zero guarantee of working and the latter is a huge gamble, especially in a recession.
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Soldato
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I'm just curious -- with the higher-end jobs going to people such as the aforementioned Unix Admins, Oracle DBAs etc. (who can also command Consultant wages) - how does one get into this sector?
Anyone here work in these positions? If so, how did you get there? Would you say you were lucky in getting a job somewhere without experience that gave you the chance to get where you are?
Is it possible to learn these methodologies in your own time and not get laughed at on application forms?
Anyone here work in these positions? If so, how did you get there? Would you say you were lucky in getting a job somewhere without experience that gave you the chance to get where you are?
Is it possible to learn these methodologies in your own time and not get laughed at on application forms?
Start at the bottom, work your way up, getting training paid for by the company (if you are permanent) or by your umbrella company (if you are a contractor)
Yes. Worked my way up. No. I ensured I had both experience and qualifications before applying. Experience was gained at Uni (sandwich course).
No, if you did it in your own time you would need to have some formal accreditation to put down, even if it's something as basic as a Microsoft MCP (or whatever the modern equivalent of their basic certs are).
Soldato
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lol if dreams come true
theres not much choice now at all, if you want money then you will have to bite the bullet and take anything.
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I was lucky, my first graduate job was with an IT Consultancy. They sent me to loads of big clients doing little, easy bits of work for them.
They sent me to about 5 clients in 6 months, I had done a little bit of Oracle, Unix and other stuff. I then found out direct from the client of the day I was going out on a daily rate of £400 per day (and being paid £14,800 a year!). Within literally about 4 minutes I thought 'I'm basically being pimped. I want that £400 all for myself'. 15 odd years ago £400 a day, aged 24, was just mind-blowing.
Firstly I 100% specialised my CV. I thought 'what have I done most' and it was system testing. Looked at the rate .. yup, £400 was the going rate. I changed my CV so that everything I had ever done had basically been based around 'testing' that thing (honest guv). The fact I had 5 clients helped .. made the casual reader think I had a lot more experience then I did.
Through the consultancy if I spent 4 days on client site literally just copying word diagrams to visio diagrams because the boss liked Visio (!), according to my CV I was 'single-handedly given System test planning and Test Analyst responsibility for Thames Water central invoicing system, and presented my complete analysis and recommendations to upper management, who agreed all my suggested principles and extended my responsibilities (gave me some more diagrams to copy!!)' etc etc yadda yadda.
By the time I finished my CV made me look like a blimin' testing god if I say so myself. No lying, but goodness the truth got stretched. Got my first contract (hard to get .. mainly confidence, smiling, portreying yourself as awesome at interview, and acting like a contractor not a permy (god don't talk about your career aspirations or hobbies!!).).
Now Im' used to it but at the time it really was like living in a dream world. Before then I was getting after tax in my only ever permy job about £920 a month. My first invoice, worked 1 month age 24, inc Vat was for £9800. I am probably no technically better than anyone reading this text. I think it's just knowing how to play the game, and oozing self confidence which seems to pacify the client and make them trust you.
Get your permy boss to put you on as much training as he'll possibly agree to by the way. And specialise specialise specialise. Wanna be a contract developer? EVERYTHING you have done .. you should talk about the 'developer' work it involved that you did/planned/daydreamed about. Even if you didn't write a single line of code!
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