IT workers, what was your first job?

doublehelix2 said:
Is there any upward mobility left for you, or is your only option contracting?
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Working for a bank, or a bigger ISP or some other multinational would get me more money. Seniority wise there's not much further to go, I report directly to the technical director where I am...

So I'll probably go for contracting and work 9 months a year and enjoy the easy life...
 
First job title: IT Technician
First job salary: 16,000
Second job title: systems and network admin
Second job salary: current, so won't say
First job description: first job after uni. small firm of 3 other staff, we provided IT support to local businesses. Often resolving issues over the telephone, remotely, or visiting the site. I was based in the office learning from the other technicians as well as obviously providing support to our clients.
Second job description: working for a legal firm in the city. Came in as the understudy to a colleague, but ended up with his job and now on my own. Provide support to our users based in 2 sites. Work can range from fixing printer paper jams to more in depth server issues.
 
First job title: Computer Sales
First job salary: £7k
Second job title: Technical Support
Second job salary: £12k
First job description: Selling PC's & accessories in the showroom of Evesham Micros.
Second job description: First line technicall support for Evesham Micros Cambridge branch - customer facing.
Current job: IT Manager
 
First job title: Software developer
First job salary: £22k + freelance projects on the side
Second job title: Senior software developer
Second job salary: 34k
First job description:
Worked for a start-up IT company, so while I did desktop/web development, I pretty much did the analysis, development, testing etc on each project. Also met with clients, and did some infrastructre stuff on the side (setting up networks, configuring servers etc).
Second job description:
Senior developer over a team of developers. Mainly enterprise portal development and bespoke system development.
Current job: eLearning Consultant
 
First job title: PC Engineer
First job salary: 10k
Second job title: Network engineer
Second job salary: 18k
First job description: building PC and repairs
Second job description: Building server and 1st / 2nd line support
Current job: IT Consultant
Current Salary: 25k
 
bigredshark said:
Working for a bank, or a bigger ISP or some other multinational would get me more money. Seniority wise there's not much further to go, I report directly to the technical director where I am...

So I'll probably go for contracting and work 9 months a year and enjoy the easy life...
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Are jobs at your level of network exp easy to come by/plentiful, or are they limited to around london?
 
First job title: Windows Domain Administrator
First job salary: Absolutely nothing. Was only doing it to get a years experience and get my foot through the door. No1 will touch you without experience now.
Second job title: FLO Advanced UNIX administrator
Second job salary: earnt 30k last year and going to hit just over 40k this year
First job description: General support of all the desktops and laptops in the office, server side stuff such as racking and configuration, did a project to roll out over 100 laptops to staff all correctly configured with the right apps.
Second job description: Support all the servers and applications accross 700 UNIX boxes in a live environment.
Current job: Still doing the UNIX admin one.
 
doublehelix2 said:
Are jobs at your level of network exp easy to come by/plentiful, or are they limited to around london?
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For me it's pretty much London, there are jobs outside of London in the UK but they're fewer and generally not as well rewarded. That said, it's expected in a role like mine you'll be workign from home a fair amount of the time.

Plentiful? Well I seem to lead a charmed life (I've been offered every job I've ever interviewed for) and I've always picked and chosen what sounded interesting. There are always a selection on the job sites, I get a few calls a week from recruitment agents who have my CV on file and the pool of people with the skills isn't huge so while not plentiful they're easy to get if thats your line of work.
 
edgedemon said:
I did first line for 2 yrs before moving up - its horrible, but a good grounding and served me well for the future
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If there's anything I've picked up in this industry it's that experience is key. I struggle to find staff with good experience for some more junior roles. Many folks with degrees who know very little of an enterprise environment want to jump the queue (I was the same). Some will get lucky and move into good positions quickly, others will have to put in a little graft lugging printers around etc. With time and hard work the better positions will arrive.
 
Dist said:
Can some of the people who started off in first line support say (if you dont mind that is), how long you had to be first line support before you left and managed to get a decent paying job. I ask because if i dont manage to get into the army after my degree, im pretty much stuck with a first line support job.
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First job:
IT Support Operator (1st line) - Promised a promotion after 3 months, left job after 8 because it never came.
Salary:
13k

Second Job
2nd Line Support (3 months)
Salary:
13k

Third Job:
Software Engineer (same company, 2.5 years in total)
Salary:
13k - 24k

Left over money. See my location for the location. :)

Current Job:
IT consultant, it's my 6th job in 6 years.
 
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First Job - Junior WebDeveloper
Salary - £10K - £14K when I moved up

Second Job - Analyst Programmer
Salary - £20K

Current Job - Group ICT Project Manager for a Land Owner Company in Papua New Guinea
Salary - $100K AUD NET working 4 weeks on and 2 weeks off. Oh and I live in thailand ;)

First Job - was a good learning experience and whilst the job title was Web Developer - I ended up doing so much more

Second Job - Working for financial services institution and doing lots of OT and out of hours support so actual annual take home was abit higher

Current Job - Very challenging dealing with FIBRE, point to point radio networks in a remote location in the south pacific.
 
First job title: IT Co-ordinator
First job salary: 10k (1994)
Second job title: IT Manager
Second job salary: 40k (2000)
Third job title: SAP Data Migration Consultant
Third job salary: 70k (2007)

First job description: General IT maintenence and support for a small company, PC's. Servers, Network etc. Pretty much did everything from building PC's and wiring the network to server installation/backups, programming and supporting their ERP system etc etc. Also ended up running the accounts dept in the end.
Second job description: Managing all IT and telecom's related software/hardware/support and people etc for a large production company based on several sites. Main things of note were SAP implementations and large infrastructure projects etc.
Third job description: SAP Data migration Manager, managing teams (and doing) data migration projects from legacy ERP systems into SAP. Various database and ETL solutions and of course LSMW and ABAP Programming etc.
Current job: I'm now an SAP CO Consultant I travel around Europe doing projects. CO is the controlling (management accounting) part of SAP (worlds largest ERP system)
 
brainchylde said:
If there's anything I've picked up in this industry it's that experience is key. I struggle to find staff with good experience for some more junior roles. Many folks with degrees who know very little of an enterprise environment want to jump the queue (I was the same). Some will get lucky and move into good positions quickly, others will have to put in a little graft lugging printers around etc. With time and hard work the better positions will arrive.
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That used to be the point of a junior role for people to gain some extra knowledge and experience.

This is what annoys me at times a lot of places wont even look at you if you haven't worked for another comapny well how is anyone suppose to find a job then?

I agree about degree i know some many people that have them and don't have a clue about computers yet some people that don't have any can do the job but never get looked at.
 
First job title:Computer sales advisor saturday boy
First job salary:£2,535
Second job title: Computer sale advisor full time
Second job salary: £12,675
Current job:Computer sales advisor store supervisor (store mabager without the pay or title)
Current job salary: £14,000 (£16,000 possible with comision)

A JOKE

I want to get into a proper IT job and ditch joe public

Then i got the pyro side of things
 
First Job - Field Engineer (contracting)
Salary - Around £500 p/w (brilliant pay but few contracts and company eventually went bust!)
Desc - Travelling around country doing hardware swaps in retailers fitting new screens, EPOS systems, PC's and networking.

Second Job - First Line Support for NHS
Pay - £15k
Desc - General helpdesk for NHS, doing some second line stuff too! Learnt tons of stuff here though and very much grateful for the experience.
Left due to uncertain PCT future and went travelling for 4 months.

Third Job - IT Support Analyst
Pay - £17k
Desc - Basically 1st line and some 2nd line, really soul destroying helpdesk stuff.
Left due to it being a trek from home.

Fourth Job - IT Support Technician
Pay - £17.5k
Desc - All 1st line and 2nd line duties and some field work.

Fifth Job - IT Systems & Social Media Administrator (Current role)
Pay - Not much more than the last.
Desc - Look after entire company IT and network infrastructure over 3 sites on my own, basically responsible for everything IT based within the company.
Also do the majority of the design/media work for them if they need banners, posters, artwork designing.
Finally, also responsible for their social media networks and website, publishing new content to them etc.

At first it sounded like a great job allowing me to draw on several areas of interest for me with it being quite diverse, but now I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a mug by doing effectively 3 different jobs and only being paid for one as the IT side of things is much bigger than they made out.
 
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First job title: Lifecycle Services Build Engineer
First job salary: 13k Starting

Second job title: Supportnet Engineer
Second job salary: 17.5k Starting

First job description: Just standard Lifecycle services on desktops and laptops. Few other little bits thrown in but that's essentially it
Second job description: Standard 1st & 2nd line support with bits of 3rd line and project thrown in here and there (towards the end)
Current job:Network Engineer

All with the same company :D

- GP
 
What is it with this sub and epic thread bumping? This one was 5 years old when it was bumped yesterday!

But what the hell, ill play

1st - volunteer IT grunt at a school, £0
2nd - IT Administrator/Helpdesk, £15k
3rd - Infrastructure analyst - £26k
4th - Senior network admin - £30k
5th (now) - IT manager/systems administrator -£enough :p
 
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