Minimum salary for IT Helpdesk support?

Stolly said:
I've just interviewed a helpdesk chappy for 17k and he was happy to take the offer.

He'll be on 18k when he gets his first MS exam, and then if he's keen he'll be out there with car/phone/laptop 20k+ within a year.
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Where abouts are you based and have you got any more vacancies? lol

That sounds right up my street :cool:

G
 
our IT helpdesk guys wage ranges from 18-25k (and we have a few contractors), but that's the higher end of the spectrum. I started on a helpdesk at 12k, moved into system admin and a few years later am on more than double that (having moved company). It can be a good way to start, it depends on what you take from the experience and how you turn it to your advantage.
 
glitch said:
Nine grand? Nine?! How many hours a week do they work?
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£9k cannot be full time unless they are apprentices on day release or something. Thats below minimum wage, and miles less than youd even get at waitrose pushing cages of vegetables around.
 
Well that's what I thought at first, but when you look at Splodge's reply it does seem like he's saying that's for a full week's work. He even goes on to say that you could expect 'anywhere from 8-9k all the way up to the mid twenties depending on knowledge and experience' and that's in response to the OP's question.

But I hope you're bloody right about it being apprentices or suchlike. As you rightly say, shelf-stackers get paid more than that.
 
HangTime said:
Depends on the role. I'd say minimum helpdesk salary is around £12k.

Obviously with your experience you should be able to get more than that, but you may struggle to find many places offering over £20k.



Is that actually £14.5k or £14.5k pro rata?
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I work as an i.t technician at a school in Stoke, earning 14.8k for 37 hours a week - classed as full year. Take the same job but doing term time only and its 9.8k per year.

Wouldnt exactly call my job taxing on the brain as it is far from that, but it's a foot in the door.
 
Money aint always someones solution to life. If the jobs easy then money is nothing.
 
When I started as an IT Assistant for a local accountancy company as an apprentice (just over 3 years ago), I was on 9k -20% due to the day release for the course.

Soon after I stopped the apprenticeship as I decided to go to Uni was back on solid 9k, but as I had nothing better to do I stuck around for the 9k a year.

More than half way through my stay, I found out that one of the high turnover roles that we had, which required practicaly only a license to drive a car (to go to the bank once a day or something) was getting paid a 10k a year.

Needless to say I was thoroughly annoyed. Had a chat with the partner in charge and got bumped up to 11k (although it took a short while for that to kick in).

Upon my leaving, the poor sap that replaced me started on 9k too :p
 
penski said:
If you're acting as a helpdesk supervisor, AD admin et cetera and third line support then £20-25k.

*n
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I've been doing that from no experience 3 years ago to pretty much total systems administration, hardware and software support, even dipping my fingers in a little VB programming now, and I'm on just over half the upper band... :(
 
Mr.Clark said:
I've been doing that from no experience 3 years ago to pretty much total systems administration, hardware and software support, even dipping my fingers in a little VB programming now, and I'm on just over half the upper band... :(
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Then do some searching and find a better job... you easily have the experience to command a higher salary now... pull your finger out!
 
glitch said:
Nine grand? Nine?! How many hours a week do they work?
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37.5 hours a week, 40 weeks a year.

You get your out of school (or out of work for years) no experience almost brain dead dude for that. They stick around 6 months to get "experience" and then run off for a better job.

The mother of all pay rises happened to the Technician that worked for me when he applied for and got my job.

11k - 28K over night.


Best thing is he knows nothing about the work I do/did and I refused to train him up. He is going to have to run a complex server environment and a large network - his only experience of this is running a few servers at home. Then he has to manage a team of techs.

Up a certain creek without a padle methinks! :D

Thank god start my new job on Monday.
 
Where I am kinda goes like this:

1st line - £12k - £15k
More advance 1st line - £20k
Specialist role - £30K
Team Leader £45K
Manager £60K
IT Director / Partner - £250Kish ... !!!
 
thelonecrouton said:
The real question is, why on earth would you want a job in IT support? :p

Ten hours a day dealing with the stroppy and the clueless... soul destroying.
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If you start out in Admin and get into a good company/council, its much more than dealing with stroppy customers, i often have to receipt/invoice Events, saying that im Admin/Clerical type worker just starting to use Oracle.

Its a bit like saying why would someone become a Psychiatrist dealing with other peoples problems, or a Dentist looking into some peoples rat infested teeth. You either accept and like that part of work or you dont.

I quite like the work i do as i get to meet interesting people and as i am a touch typist i can get on with my work while talking to others.

however you do get the downsides, Im quite self concious person and the first thing i got told today was "Morning Sam, wow you look awake....NOT!". I sometimes really feel like setting some sort of Logic bomb on her account sometimes :p. But im not that cruel ;)
 
our helpdesk guys get between 20 and 25k basic, we don't hire without experience though. I think thats pretty reasonable for london. Then again, I wouldn't do it for any money, I'd find it soul destroying....
 
Sinny said:
however you do get the downsides, Im quite self concious person and the first thing i got told today was "Morning Sam, wow you look awake....NOT!". I sometimes really feel like setting some sort of Logic bomb on her account sometimes :p. But im not that cruel ;)
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That's what the half-hour nap at lunchtime is for, don't you know anything? ;)

Personally I started as a trainee below minimum wage when it kicked in (about 10 years ago) and was then on £13k as a technician as I was promoted when minimum wage started. Due to the way university pay structure works I'm now on £19k about to move up to £24k as I'm due a senior technician promotion.

Job functions are just about anything management team dubs "IT support". For example, my day-to-day duties are the student labs running Windows XP/Netware OES server, then an Ubuntu Linux lab and various other labs with expensive Ni-DAQ experiment cards in the machines. Also, I work with our Win2k3 server/domain, do regular backups and now the uni has decided to do away with paper ordering and force everyone to use Agresso so that's more fun. This year I've also started to help out support our video conferencing setup and the SUPA conferencing as well.

Not the greatest money in the world but there's a lot to get involved in for experience and only gets boring in the summer when most of the students are away. That was starting out on a trainee technician role without a degree or experience (other than Adv. Diploma in Software Engineering).
 
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My first job in IT support was first line £6 an hour.
Then at Convergys on the Microsoft campaign with Penski and co I was 2nd line so £8 an hour.
Moved to another first line support and moved from 14.5k pa to 19k pa and recently promoted to Technical Lead on 23k.

Money is alright for the North East.
 
LordSplodge said:
The mother of all pay rises happened to the Technician that worked for me when he applied for and got my job.

11k - 28K over night.
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That's a helluva rise. You sure the figures are right (he may be on less than you were)?

Very rare you see people more than double their salary within the same department in one jump - normally that requires a change in company.
 
Energize said:
Way too high. Support is the lowest of the low.
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Depend on what kind of support you do :P Loads of different levels, I know Unix SysAdmins on over £100k, DBAs on even more. That stuff is still support though.

I don't know what that area is like, but for large scale helpdesk/desktop support style stuff in London, £25k would be decent. If think if you were at a blue chip company in Bucks, £20k ish wouldn't be unreasonable. But then again, if you're doing similar at the moment, you'll know the rates more than any of us. Is the company bigger than your current? environment more technical? If it's the same, then I wouldn't expect more than a 10% variance either way.
 
Generally it goes something like:
1st line = 14-17k
2nd line = 18-23ish

If its a 1st/2nd with a specialty (eg oracle, active directory etc) and you have relevant qualification add about 5k.
If its contract work the basic will be about 2-4k more and the specialty stuff getting on for double.
I do second line oracle DBA on 28k salaried, the contractors working with me (same job/responibilties etc) are on closer to 50 (oracle OCA) or 65 if fully qualified (oracle OCP).
 
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