Where is the money at these days in computing?

megakid said:
Sorry should have made my comment clearer :)

By "in the city", I meant any investment bank or job in finance etc - anything from small HFT/prop houses to mahusive investment banks. My career has mainly orientated around that sort of firm, from one of the biggest investment banks as my graduate job (only 1 year spent there) to a small 70 person prop trading house.
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Prop house and buy side firms with grad schemes pay over £40k, but tech in IB pays £37-40k. Plus golden handshake etc. of course.
 
At my last job I knew all the guys in IT support as I played football with them. One day, I was doing a presentation in the room NEXT to their office and couldn't find how you turned the projector on, so I popped my head around the door and asked one of the IT guys who I knew if he could quickly show me what buttons to press.

At that point, I was told I had to 'submit a ticket' so I could get a 'reference number' for this task. Thinking he was joking I tried the old "yeah very funny guys, now come on" but they told me it was new policy and they would be disciplined if they were caught not following it.

So I had to go back up three flights of stairs to my PC, find the ticketing system, write out what I wanted help with before all the way down with my ref number, at that point they came next door and simply pressed two buttons for me and left again.

Of course it's possible they were just winding me up, or they were working to rule in protest of new rules but it also didn't surprised me based on the culture of the business I was working for.
 
off topic:

This is my biggest problem with ITIL type processes.

In my opinion you need to log calls for these reasons. Might seem obvious.

- So that you keep a track of outstanding, not fixed work, a task list, so you don't forget to do something.
- So that you can track common problems and if need be take actions based on long term trends of faults.

This is it. But in reality what we find is that call logging is not even used for these purposes which imo defeats the purpose of call logging. I had a call open that needed to be kept open for a few weeks so that i didn't forget about it and so that i could add updates to it. My ITIL obsessed boss said i should just close the call because he didn't want an open call in the queue for a few weeks as it will mess up his stats. Of course i forgot about the task and then had to do additional work in a few weeks due to this. (this was a few years ago)

Based on my experience call logging stats is never used to pin point common problems and act based on these common problems. Even when they force IT to pick these very specific and convoluted items (ie mouse category or a outlook category with 10 different sub categories) they never actually generate reports on these items and speak to IT about why we have had 10 outlook calls in one month. Thus the entire item based logging approach is a waste of time.

Why does no other department have to log everything they do? Why does it matter if we had a call about an outlook toolbar? why do i have to log someone asking for a new mouse? Sure if there is asset tracking involved that can be a reason, but generally call logging is not specificaly linked to asset hardware database they are done in seperate systems or spread sheets.

Can you imagine facilities or marketing logging everything they do?

10am, user called said blocked toilet 2nd floor. I cleaned toilet with unblocking chemical and contacts user let them know toilet was unblocked.

Marketing, 11am, i downloaded an image frmo the internet for use with a marketing image. I uploaded new details to the website for the new user... etc. just does not happen, so why should IT need to log every single waste of time activity?
 
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Problem is for 95% of organisations is that the KPI is the time to close the ticket not the customer satisfaction.
 
megakid said:
Sorry should have made my comment clearer :)

By "in the city", I meant any investment bank or job in finance etc - anything from small HFT/prop houses to mahusive investment banks. My career has mainly orientated around that sort of firm, from one of the biggest investment banks as my graduate job (only 1 year spent there) to a small 70 person prop trading house.
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Ah of course.

PITA to get into though, without business experience. I've been in Business Intelligence for seven years now, but can't get into finance as I haven't had any pure investment bank client work.
 
Freefaller said:
I sometimes wonder if I should have taken separate qualifications in IT but didn't see myself staying in the techy side of things. However, I prefer dealing with people than machines! I leave my geekery for home :p
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There is more money in IT ,amazement than in technical roles in general. Once you get to a senior engineering level then you plateau out. And you need to move to manage,ent to earn more.

E.g. Software engineers in the US in a big city big corp can hit 150k, managers that came from a technical background will hit 250k.

I hate dealing with the intricacies of development but I am. Interested in holistic solutions, software write turns, algorithms, data structure designs,novel approaches to interesting problems. The actual implementation is boring. Hence I would like to move into a more managerial role, something like a chieft technical officer but more junior.
 
kwerk said:
Where is the money these days in normal 9-5 computer jobs? I haven't really been keeping track. And where do you think the future is?

Unix admin or db admin is always pretty solid. And niche things like Peoplesoft and SAP. I remember a few years ago there seemed to be good money in setting up SharePoint.

I'm assuming MS/Cisco/"networking"/etc is still over saturated from cert mills and foreigners.

What else is there to know?
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software development
 
megakid said:
Agreed. Development has been a consistently good area to get into and doesn't go in fads such as SharePoint etc. If you're a good developer with a few years experience, you can command salaries of £75k+ if you're willing to work in London. Starting salary fresh out of a good university for London is £40k-ish.
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lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior
 
jonneymendoza said:
lol this is rubbish. no one in london walks in a 40k development role!

20-30k yes but 40k? nope.

u can however demand 60-70k if u are a senior
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Our grad scheme pays about that for devs (maybe slightly more) from a good Uni with good grades and who (obviously) interview well.

And seniors earn well into 6 figs.
 
D.P. said:
There is more money in IT ,amazement than in technical roles in general. Once you get to a senior engineering level then you plateau out. And you need to move to manage,ent to earn more.

E.g. Software engineers in the US in a big city big corp can hit 150k, managers that came from a technical background will hit 250k.

I hate dealing with the intricacies of development but I am. Interested in holistic solutions, software write turns, algorithms, data structure designs,novel approaches to interesting problems. The actual implementation is boring. Hence I would like to move into a more managerial role, something like a chieft technical officer but more junior.
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That's the thing, I got out of IT a while back before needing all the extra certs to be able to find employment. So I wasn't ever going to get to the senior engineering roles. However, fell into a big FTSE100 company at management level slowly establishing myself (it's too dog eat dog, and whilst I'm not naive or a push over, I'm not aggressive in that way). With IT there are quicker more tangible skills you can bring, management based roles require time to show your achievements. Maybe I'm wrong - though it's certainly one way to look at it. :)

Still, I still enjoy IT, and using IT, but have found other passions/expertise (lean, six sigma, change management etc...) but my engineering and IT background certainly help. I wouldn't say no to getting back into IT, but with a lack of formal IT based qualifications I'm not willing to start at the bottom again! :p

IT is, and always will be lucrative if you can get yourself in the right company, expertise, and innovative areas of the industry. It's constantly evolving and a lot of companies are still playing catch up to move with the tech, and I reckon will be doing so for a while. It's a good industry to be in if you're willing to spend a bit of time learning about it, and go through the corporate rungs and / or do it for yourself.
 
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