I said profit margins or cash flow, not revenues..........derpedia.org
Differences in Pay
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I said profit margins or cash flow, not revenues..........derpedia.org
Soldato
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Let me see if I've got this thread straight. groen is complaining about market forces and has strongly hinted that the IT profession should unionise. Have I got this right?
Groen, if you work for a service provider, how about taking time on top of your day job to take on extra responsibility... Lots of potential to do this sort of thing...
- help with sales to other accounts,
- contribute to internal activities and capability development inside your firm,
- take over some element of account management such as time and expense management - help out with stuff like invoicing
- look for new opportunities (is there somewhere else in the client your company's services could potentially be sold?)
- find out how your employers commercial model works... what are their other costs? what is your loaded cost to them? what margins do they target?
Do stuff like this without bitching and moaning, and without negatively impacting your day job and before you know it, your management and peers will see you as more valuable and you might suddenly find some better opportunities open themselves up.
Nobody owes you a living and if you are doing IT support unfortunately you are just offering a commodity service. You're not going to change and innovate and you're almost certainly never going to drive revenue. You should understand that although you do serve a purpose, you're ultimately seen as a cost. Most businesses are particularly interested in reducing cost at a time when for many revenues are down. You don't do that by handing out pay well above market rate for a commodity role.
- help with sales to other accounts,
- contribute to internal activities and capability development inside your firm,
- take over some element of account management such as time and expense management - help out with stuff like invoicing
- look for new opportunities (is there somewhere else in the client your company's services could potentially be sold?)
- find out how your employers commercial model works... what are their other costs? what is your loaded cost to them? what margins do they target?
Do stuff like this without bitching and moaning, and without negatively impacting your day job and before you know it, your management and peers will see you as more valuable and you might suddenly find some better opportunities open themselves up.
Nobody owes you a living and if you are doing IT support unfortunately you are just offering a commodity service. You're not going to change and innovate and you're almost certainly never going to drive revenue. You should understand that although you do serve a purpose, you're ultimately seen as a cost. Most businesses are particularly interested in reducing cost at a time when for many revenues are down. You don't do that by handing out pay well above market rate for a commodity role.
They are. Yes, they add value but equally their skills aren't that unique to justify crazy levels of pay.
How much of an increase in revenue have your IT systems been key in delivering? Talk us through the cost reduction projects that you're managing through IT that have reduced the businesses cost base.
Soldato
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because working hard for someone else is a real life troll thread.
And people kept telling my mate in a band to get a "real job" (Translates to become a mindless zombie and make somebody else rich so they can buy more crapp they don't need) and now hes signed with universal records just the other week.
Jokes on them.
And people kept telling my mate in a band to get a "real job" (Translates to become a mindless zombie and make somebody else rich so they can buy more crapp they don't need) and now hes signed with universal records just the other week.
Jokes on them.
Soldato
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If you don't like your job, get a better one or start a company.
Nobody got rich from whining on internet forums.
Nobody got rich from whining on internet forums.
Whilst it's true IT doesn't directly create wealth (unless you work in an IT services company), I would argue that IT is a cost saver and productivity enhancer.
Wise investment, will allow your money makers to work faster, and make more money, and if it were not the case, people would happily do their jobs without IT. Ergo, indirectly, IT helps you make more money.
Good IT employees are worth every penny, and are sadly undervalued. As a country we'd rather give billions to contractors to fail to deliver IT systems, when we could hire direct and get working systems at a fraction of the cost.
It won't change anytime soon though, as people which don't focus on IT will likely always misunderstand IT, and companies like Google, facebook, or financial services are where most of the 'pro's will be reasonably rewarded.
In any event, collectivly it's out own faults, because the majority of us are nothing more than trained monkeys.
Well, yes. However what he's talking about is systems admin and support. That's not the same thing really.
Frankly I think most companies could benefit from smarter IT, but that's far removed from wiping a dell box and sticking it all back on again.
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You force me to reply. I had given up on this topic already.
Well this is what i was trying to say, is that sysadmin/system support can be a varied role. Where i work at the moment my job involves everything IT related, procurement, invoicing, infrastructure design, upgrades, maintenance, fixing client problems, printers everything. So realy it is a IT director to first line support role and this is more common than you may think. This is where the classifications of IT sysadmins fails to truly represent the service that the IT person delivers.
Depending on the company IT may be the make or break of the organization. If you are the sole sysadmin for a graphic design company and they want X to perform their job to make money. If you delivery a good X then they can perform better and make more money etc. A bad delivery of X good destroy the business and most likely see the person lose his job.
But people who do all the IT related tasks for a business as described above, thanks to stupid IT job classifications, just get put in to the second line support classification because the IT person has to fix client problems and thus they get underpaid due to this.
Well this is what i was trying to say, is that sysadmin/system support can be a varied role. Where i work at the moment my job involves everything IT related, procurement, invoicing, infrastructure design, upgrades, maintenance, fixing client problems, printers everything. So realy it is a IT director to first line support role and this is more common than you may think. This is where the classifications of IT sysadmins fails to truly represent the service that the IT person delivers.
Depending on the company IT may be the make or break of the organization. If you are the sole sysadmin for a graphic design company and they want X to perform their job to make money. If you delivery a good X then they can perform better and make more money etc. A bad delivery of X good destroy the business and most likely see the person lose his job.
But people who do all the IT related tasks for a business as described above, thanks to stupid IT job classifications, just get put in to the second line support classification because the IT person has to fix client problems and thus they get underpaid due to this.
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In a decent sized IT organisation you'd very rarely (if ever) find a true sys admin doing any sort of procurement, invoicing etc etc. Are you a sys admin or a jack of all trades? Sounds to me like your job title is incorrect! I'd certainly not expect someone on the service desk to be involved in any kind of infrastructure design or tech arch work.
The only time I'd expect your role to encompass everything from first line to "IT Director" is if you're the sole IT person supporting a small company.
The only time I'd expect your role to encompass everything from first line to "IT Director" is if you're the sole IT person supporting a small company.
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Well yes I am the sole IT guy supporting a small company. I have to send over a recommendation to my boss at the IT company i work for, for what i recommend based on my experience on site for example the planned virtualisation of one of server farms on one of the networks. Then my boss will create a quote based on my recommendations.
But even at other sites where we have a different set up. 100 users, two "1st/2 second line" and one "3rd line". The roles of the 2nd and third line guys are broad, they do everything apart from quote for infrastructure upgrades, which is done by our boss. But design, implementation, upgrades, procurement of most things. When it comes to installing a new bt line, the second and third line guys will have to take that from start to finish as an example. So the scope of the traditional second and third line that you see in say a 1000 user company with a larger support desk is different. But yet they have the same job title and receive the same pay etc. The second line guys will have a weekly meeting where there input could be a kin to the input you would see in a larger company from the IT director. Where he makes recommendations for software/hardware etc based on all factors considered.
But even at other sites where we have a different set up. 100 users, two "1st/2 second line" and one "3rd line". The roles of the 2nd and third line guys are broad, they do everything apart from quote for infrastructure upgrades, which is done by our boss. But design, implementation, upgrades, procurement of most things. When it comes to installing a new bt line, the second and third line guys will have to take that from start to finish as an example. So the scope of the traditional second and third line that you see in say a 1000 user company with a larger support desk is different. But yet they have the same job title and receive the same pay etc. The second line guys will have a weekly meeting where there input could be a kin to the input you would see in a larger company from the IT director. Where he makes recommendations for software/hardware etc based on all factors considered.
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Welcome to IT tech support, I did that job for a while and then moved into a more general all round admin/support/everything remotely IT related role rather than just purely a telephone monkey, I came to loathe telephone tech support after a while, the other stuff was fine though. From what you have said you get paid more than I did, if you do earn 30k a year, a great deal more than I did ...and you still have your job, I do not, I was made redundant at the end of last year, as it was cheaper and made more sense for the company I worked for to simply pay another company to send someone else to do what was needed, when needed (especially now at least some of the office staff realise that you 'really' can fix many of their problems by hitting reset ... that clears a good 50% of the issues I dealt with, generally)
Anyway, my point is, IT Tech support and systems admin is just a basic 'job' ...it isn't much of a long term career choice in of it's self, it's also not that hard, sure there are good and bad people involved, but as one chap already said, a good portion of the job is just button clicking for the most part ...having said that a lot of people who do the job can't do much more than that, ask them to do some real fault finding and thinking beyond the list of solutions in HEAT and they aren't so hot (ahem
) ...basically if you want to stay in IT and make more money and be less bored, you need to specialise and move into an area where fewer people have the skills and are in demand, as several people have already said. Bear in mind that IT as an industry is fairly saturated these days, unless you are a skilled programmer or some sort of specialist developer at least.
As for me, I am glad I got out of it, I wanted to get out of it for quite some time and as it happens I was pushed in the end, as far as I am concerned it's actually a positive thing, because I am now using this opportunity to change things, to retrain and gain an entirely different set of skills so I can move into another industry, one where I can, in time hopefully become more independent and work for myself, perhaps set up my own business etc. I got so bored, and unfit sitting at a desk 8 hours a day and answering the phone. Doing what I was doing before, and what you are doing now ...you'll always be someone else's 'expense' ... and not a particularly hard one to replace at that ...thus you get paid accordingly.
That's life. As cliché as this may sound, unless you have some sort of benefactor or a rare talent that you can exploit with little effort ...you mostly only get out what you put it, you have to work hard and be good at what you do to make lots of money ...well you do if you expect someone else to pay you lots of money.
Anyway, my point is, IT Tech support and systems admin is just a basic 'job' ...it isn't much of a long term career choice in of it's self, it's also not that hard, sure there are good and bad people involved, but as one chap already said, a good portion of the job is just button clicking for the most part ...having said that a lot of people who do the job can't do much more than that, ask them to do some real fault finding and thinking beyond the list of solutions in HEAT and they aren't so hot (ahem
) ...basically if you want to stay in IT and make more money and be less bored, you need to specialise and move into an area where fewer people have the skills and are in demand, as several people have already said. Bear in mind that IT as an industry is fairly saturated these days, unless you are a skilled programmer or some sort of specialist developer at least.As for me, I am glad I got out of it, I wanted to get out of it for quite some time and as it happens I was pushed in the end, as far as I am concerned it's actually a positive thing, because I am now using this opportunity to change things, to retrain and gain an entirely different set of skills so I can move into another industry, one where I can, in time hopefully become more independent and work for myself, perhaps set up my own business etc. I got so bored, and unfit sitting at a desk 8 hours a day and answering the phone. Doing what I was doing before, and what you are doing now ...you'll always be someone else's 'expense' ... and not a particularly hard one to replace at that ...thus you get paid accordingly.
That's life. As cliché as this may sound, unless you have some sort of benefactor or a rare talent that you can exploit with little effort ...you mostly only get out what you put it, you have to work hard and be good at what you do to make lots of money ...well you do if you expect someone else to pay you lots of money.
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Well, if you're that good at the other stuff you do over and above the 2nd line support type stuff, then how about you look for another job doing just infrastructure design, tech arch or something else along those lines? You'd get paid more and probably find it less mundane. Or you could just sit on the forum bitching about it...
It's a stepping stone for most, a start in IT. It allows you to get the basic experience and knowledge to move on.
Those that stay in these sort of jobs either do so to progress to service management or because they can't/won't move for whatever reason.
Soldato
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So he can make someone else rich?
Big difference is,
You get mad vagina, you actually get rich yourself at same time (if you do well and work hard, in "real" work working hard translates to very little mostly), you do something you love (most important), you arn't a depressed suit chode.
Sounds bomb to me.
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From my (very limited) experience of IT within organisations that aren't IT based; you will never earn decent money from doing systems/admin work because you are not a core asset to the company i.e. you don't make them money; you're simply there to support their operations. You dont make them money and you are highly expendable because there's always someone else to fill your job should you decide to leave.
Soldato
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Just go self employed. Working to make others rich is a mugs game.