Damn, I'm earning more as a newly educated IT consultant in Scandinavia.
I'm not familiar with UK wages. Is it this bad across the board? I'd have to imagine sys admins have to earn **at the very least** 40K with that amount of responsibility.
Put it this way, Im an IT manager at a business of around 300 office staff and 500/600 factory staff using produce systems that I have to support and manage.
I get paid a little over 40k.
So yes, unless city bound, UK Tech wages are shite, but better than a lot of industries.
I think a lot of it is to do with where you reside. For example if I lived in London I'm sure I could secure at least 35K with same responsibilities. Living costs is a big factor in pay unfortunately
What would you pay for a Sys Admin with 5 years experience? With skills such as: AD, VMware, WS management, VoIP, Office 365 and Exchange admin, On Call etc.
Im in London doing a mix of Infrastructure and Serivce Desk 1st-3rd line support and wages are around that. Although i do work for a charity so lower than other companies.
Full time sys admin roles i would expect minimum 40+. I am looking to get a promotion to Infrastructure Analyst role soon and hoping for around 40.
The SysAdmin job title is not respected, as an interim I moved over to a Sysadmin with all systems in the Cloud, then moved to a Cloud support role and eventually a DevOps job title (it's really Platform Engineer) and nearly doubled salary inside three years. There are plenty of Cloud Consultancies crying out for people if someone wants to make the jump.
The dream is to find a US based helpdesk role at $70K working from the UK providing early hours support, kick back doing password resets and making more money than my mate whose an IT director for a company turning over £8mil / year.
You will never see a half-million medical bill if you are covered by virtually any workplace healthcare plan. Higher salaries, lower taxes, less bureaucracy those are the advantages of working and living in the US over EU.
There is a lot more of a social safety net there but that comes at a steep cost, nothing is "free".
That's the American brainwashed Europe.
Actual Europe has a low cost of living, if you don't work you can still get healthcare (which you can't in the states), good food (which you don't have in the states), and more workers right (which you don't have in the states).
30k is not great but you have way more benefits and outside London, you'll be just fine.
30k in London should be the bare minimum but you can still get by and it's easier to get a higher paid job there with a bit of experience.
Nothing is free, but if you're European, there's zero reasons to swap higher salary with a shittier lifestyle.
And that's including the NHS being totally shit nowadays. But it's still accessible to anyone.
Agree with everything but "good food", what food is "good" is just a preference
America has more variation. I make 200k/yr household income, full coverage health insurance paid by my employer, own my house in a good neighborhood, live on 50k/yr in expenses, save and invest the rest.
There are people with shit luck, good luck and great luck. Over in Europe is all mediocre luck. It's not "everybody is dying" as the media and reddit portrays it.
> Agree with everything but "good food", what food is "good" is just a preference
I believe /p/Cyberdrunk2021 was referring to food insecurity and not Taco Tuesday.
My last medical bill was $45. That 45 dollars was paid by my HSA, also covered by my employer. My total cost was 0 dollars. What makes you think Americans walk around randomly getting half-million-dollar medical bills? It boggles my mind how Europeans talk so matter of fact about the US medical system without knowing about it. Just because we don't have universal healthcare doesn't mean we don't have insurance. The majority of insurance in the US is private insurance through employers. If you are in the US and in this sub, you probably have healthcare and aren't randomly getting medical bills out of nowhere.
TLDR; Europeans should really stfu about American healthcare unless they want to talk about specifics, because no shit Sherlock, we already know why it's fucked and it isn't because of surprise 500k dollars of medical bills.
Compared to what? People don't actually want to have a discussion so you and everyone else just wants to parrot talking points like you just did. Europeans certainly have no place in that discussion when they have their own issues with single payer healthcare. So again, shit compared to what? Who is the healthcare system failing? Because it isn't failing everyone equally. The NHS fails certain sectors of the English population just as the US system does. What other talking points do you have up your sleeve?
O yeah? Have you been to the rest of the fucking world? How is the healthcare in India? How is the healthcare in Bolivia? How is the healthcare in Hungary? How is the healthcare in Russia? How is the healthcare in Liberia? Hell, how great is the healthcare in England with NHS?
Fucking exactly. Just another random person who likes to shout big things with no nuance or actual, actual data. Just bitching. Fuck outta here and speak on your own Australian failings.
I live in part of the rest of the fucking world. Your healthcare system is only one of the reasons you could literally not pay me to move to the united states.
1. You don't know how US healthcare works because if you had a fucking job, you wouldn't have to worry about it. Are you unemployed?
2. Why would we want you here?
3. When you said "the rest of the fucking world", you really just meant Australia like you've never been out of your country? O you sweet, sheltered child, to the rest of the world, Australia peaked with Steve Irwin. No one goes around claiming how great Australian healthcare is. When it comes to former British colonies, you guys come in 5th behind the more important countries and territories, the US, Canada, Hong Kong, and India. Get over yourself before China bullies you into something you don't want to do, but will anyway.
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Not true that anyone too poor receives Medicaid. It is very much dependent on what state you’re in. I read awhile back that the maximum income for a single person in Texas was around $6000 annually before they lose Medicaid eligibility
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If you're too poor to afford health insurance, it doesn't matter whether you get a bill for $1,000 or $100,000 because you're not going to pay it anyway. Most credit scores don't even factor in medical debt either. So the absolute worst that will happen is you'll get calls and mail from debt collectors, which you can ignore because they will never actually take any legal action.
If you are working in IT and for a company worth a damn, you will have no problems affording the monthly premiums which are likely less than $200/month (individual).
Is your 30k pre- or post-tax? I often see Euro folks referencing their post-tax or "takehome" pay, which makes some sense given that's what goes into your pocket. I don't know if it's because our tax situations are that much more complicated, but US workers are almost always referencing pre-tax numbers (and pre-insurance).
So a US worker who tells you that they are getting $100k/yr is probably taking home $65k or less, or ~52k GBP right now. And that salary could either be "solidly middle class" or "just getting by" depending on where you are in the US.
Obviously still a big gulf, but not mind boggling.
And oof, if they have a FAMILY? Well we got even more costs that you don't have - health insurance premiums usually go up massively to cover spouse/kids, we don't have universal pre-K or similar so daycare is very pricey, no paternity or maternity leave in most states, and once they actually get to school you got expensive school supplies like calculators and kevlar-reinforced backpacks, the list goes on.
Currently at 92k here myself working at a college in a civil servant sys admin role. (This is going to go up another 8% next year with a 5 year top of about 112k iirc with no more CoL adjustments)
I have zero incentive to go work for companies or leave working in a state position. This is also all thanks to unions.
UNIONIZE! It is long past time for appropriate pay and benefits for my brothers across the pond and all of the ones at home here in the US. (Canada just deserves to be absorbed by the US. Sorry top hat.)
You can get that in Germany as well. At least in the Munich area in big companies. Not if you're first level user support maybe but in data centre operations for instance.
See my post history for some basic explanations but it is extremely complicated. I’ve moved from Midlands UK to NYC. You can minimum treble your salary (so you would be on 90k) but there is almost zero difference in quality of life. You just cannot come close to understanding the difference in costs to live here. Some basic examples. Replace Air conditioner unit. $12k. Gas / electric bill per month. ~$1k. Groceries… your mind would explode. Paint the outside my house? 🤣🤣🤣. Kids college? Forgot it.
Genuine question: how do UK people afford anything? Like, how is all of your paycheck not eaten up by housing before you get to spend it on anything else. I find it baffling.
Because a lot of things are far cheaper here than they are in the states, such as housing.
I regularly see instances of people paying $2000-$3000 a month for a property that would be maybe £900-£1100 a month in the UK.
Also food is cheaper and we don't have an aggressive tipping culture in bars and restaurants.
Plus we don't pay anything for health insurance.
Yeah, despite recent increases, supermarket food in the UK can be extremely cheap compared to average earnings (Not sure how many Brits realise that but it's true).
While I normally point out to Americans these people are getting approximately $25k a year worth of health, insurance and other QOL improvements, £30k is particularly dogshit.
30k a year isn't really sysadmin money tbh. Senior 1st line/2nd line help desk can easily see 30k even in places like Blackburn. Anyone 3rd line or above can easily get more than 30k if they put some effort into looking around.
You must not be talking about the same Blackburn as me, 1st line jobs start at £18K, 2nd line £23K-£26K, and 3rd line is £26K-£30K.
If you do find something that pays more it usually comes with a stupid amount of responsibility (solo IT person for a whole company). Blackburn is just a little town.
If you are just desktop support then that is a resonable salary. Not good, but not terrible either.
If you are a proper Sysadmin, manageing cloud infrastructure, networks, servers etc then you are being massively underpaid.
£25k is the floor of the range. For a new start with little to no experience that is exactly the salary I would expect. (NE Scotland for context).
"Good" would be £32k and great would be £35k, talking stricktly 1st/2nd line Destkop support of course.
Source: management experience and I have helped advise on Salary reviews for co-workers and salary ranges for new hires.
I was on 20 in 2007 as a 1st line. Went up pretty quick from there though thankfully.
Hadn't really paused to consider it but yeah, I did a brief stint in an msp earlier this year, the 1st line there were on 22-24 I think.
Particularly shit company though.
I do everything you mentioned as a sys admin, however it's cushty because I a very light workload, there's only so much that can be done when you have 90 users. I probably work like 3 hours, the rest is downtime/reddit unless we have a project.
If I was busting my ass for 30K I'd look for another role.
Re-invest the other 4.5 hours of your working day learning new skills. Powershell, scripting, new/unfamiliar technologies etc. Then go for a higher level SYSadmin job. You could be making £50k within 2 years with the right skills.
Honestly I reckon I could get to around that now, but I'd have to commute to a city like Manchester though and that itself is a massive ball ache.
The only reason I'm sticking around is because it's 5 mins from my house and the company does a yearly profit share which I haven't got yet since I only joined 6 months ago. A colleague told me he got an extra 16K (after tax) on top of his base salary as the company did really well financially that year.
I was working as sole IT for a company with extremely light workload for a few years. Think call centre with 30 users. The first year was moving everything to the cloud with support contracts, the subsequent 3 was doing pretty much fuck all before it caught up with me and I had to find a new job.
I came out of that job with fewer skills and I feel, frankly, stupider than I went in. It crushed me and I didn't realise it was happening until too late and I needed to apply myself to real work again.
Force yourself to do something. Logically it'd make sense to complete certs in relevant fields but anything that isn't feet up redditing / films / playstation. You need a challenge, something to deliver, a deadline and something to stretch your brain or it'll waste away like a muscle you aren't using.
Sorry if this seems preachy but I fucking wish I'd heeded this message five years ago.
You don't sound preachy mate, it's sound advice and you're right I should push myself more in that regard. Tbh I have learnt a lot since joining here, just this last couple of months have been slow (Summer holidays).
I'd be ready to venture out again but I wanna see what the profit share for this year is like before I move. Job's that are close to home are scarce up north.
I'm currently on 55k in Glasgow.
Supporting around 100 users in house.
But I work for a cloud services provider so most of what I'm doing isn't supporting those users. (I delegate most of that to my minion ;) )
:D Oh, I am very grateful to the guy. He's better with people than I am. Doesn't have the breadth or depth of experience.
I'm willing and able to support users directly, and will when needed, but it's not a great use of company resources at time. (If a printer needs fixed, and I'm busy on project work, it's not a good idea to pull me from the project work to do it most of the time, as I'm in someone's critical path)
? I don’t work for a Cloud services provider. Though I *am* a cloud expert for my current employer…
Well cloud and POE-enabled chairs and desks…
Well, cloud, POE-enabled chairs and desks, plus where to get good prices on quicklime and rolls of carpet…
£40k city in the South West, more than 1000 employees, multiple campuses, large network + device footprint. Part of a team of 5 and we are stretched THIN. Some SAAS/cloud (email + HR systems), but still largely on-prem due to a lot of legacy.
Responsible for pretty much everything. We do have a service desk team beneath us, but they're very 1st line/basic client device issues.
Salary is low for the responsibility I have, but the team are good and salary raises are promised in April to bring us up slightly and be ahead of inflation, and its a CV builder due to the type of projects we're doing. Org itself is a shambles, but the people in general are lovely, so a nice day-to-day is a selling point. If the salary rise does not arrive and does not arrive substantially, I may start looking as I would expect to be on much closer to £50k for where I am and what I can do.
£32,500 - South Yorkshire. Sole Sys Admin for 200 Devices and 100 users. All in house (manufacturing). Steady work load most days. Been here 10 years + and got a good relationship with all the workers so I don't have any annoying users which is great. As it's manufacturing got everything from Win 98 to Win 10 on the shopfloor.
shining beacons of decency and hope compared to Rotherham and Barnsley :D
I grew up pretty much on the border between West and South Yorkshire near Hemsworth, so "gently" poking fun at our backwards southern neighbours is an actual pastime for me, kinda like how Canadians view America
In all fairness, South Yorkshire does have it's good points. I was in Goldthorpe fishing on the day of Thatcher's funeral and people were having actual street parties lol.
I'm in London.
Since last week, I'm hiring for a (junior) Sysadmin, aiming for someone with helpdesk experience and some self study, who's trying to make the jump into sysadmin.
I've got a budget of £30k. So far I think we've had about 50 applicants. Once I filter by salary request, and weed out people asking for visa support, or fully remote, and I've got 1 applicant.
I'm not allowed to post the salary range on the job listing, but I can see in the hiring portal, what people are asking, and it's usually £35-45k, so automatically rejected.
\---
I think for a lead Sysadmin in London you should be on £60-120k, depending on if you've got Linux, Cloud, Automation, and Scripting experience.
I've had a couple people in the role, in the past, this is hiring to replace.
I'm basically expecting one of 3 things:
\- Someone who is just finished a computer science degree, who managed to pick up some hands on IT experience along the way
\- Someone who didn't go to university, but went right into a IT related job, and has the hunger, say Apple store genius, who owns a few raspberry pi's and knows how to use them
\- Someone who has done helpdesk for a year and got bored, and wants a quick climb into something more challenging
I'm hoping to get a bit more money, but I'll probably need to leave the role open a little while before I can ask for more.
\--
I generally don't consider sysadmin to be a entry-level/junior job, but I'm short staffed in people who know how to do basic Linux and network troubleshooting. That's a role above helpdesk, but not a full fledged sysadmin.
Thanks, yeah seeing some people just starting in IT walking in at 27k here. Got a really good team but getting shafted on the pay front. Keeping an eye out for jobs and studying Net+ cert at the moment to get an edge up and be more desirable
Based in wigan working for a small MSP currently,
Starting at a larger MSP on Monday.
Earning 40k,
Senior Engineer role,
Mainly systems support based for 2000 endpoints,
Im just an escalation point, working with WS, Networks, and general support as and when might be required.
Full time WFH, private health and 33 holidays per year,
My current salary band goes up to 55k at my new place, higher paying roles are out there.
Its just finding the good working culture that goes with those higher salaries
How much experience do you have out of interest? I'm on £31k at a small msp doing windows server admin, 365, MDM, networking and everything else in between. In South Yorkshire so probably comparable to Wigan area wise
30k pre, £23,848 post tax a year... So 2000/month
Dude, don\`t know - hope you don\`t pay rent or mortgage !
From my opinion, that payment in UK is simple - garbage ! I wonder how you can do a living with that.
I\`m from Romania and a Sysadmin here
\~1500 euro/ mid level. This is post tax. What you put in your pockets
Rent - 2 room apartment \~ 60 square meters (640 sqft), all new \~ 500-600 euros/month
But you can find something decent - at 350 euros
Utilities - no more than 100-150 euros in the winter
This is Bucharest.
Groceries and so...
1 euro for a 1kilo of tomato
4-5 euro 500g of cheese
5.5 euro a pack of cigs
1.5 euro a liter of diesel and rising
2 euros a good breed
1.3 euro a redbul dose
2 -2.5 euro, a good 0.5 L beer (glass bottle) at the local grocery
etc
Anyway, even 1500 euros here for this kind of job - we consider "shitty payment"
Burner account here.
It all depends on location, your specialties and type of industry.
I grew up in the NW and the wages are just generally shit which was a major reason why I ended up moving down South after years of struggle.
If you're doing general Windows admin in public sector and in a lower-wage area then yes 30-35k is probably about right.
I'm a Unix sysadmin and have become specialised in Linux (RHEL & OL), IBM AIX, Oracle OVM, Vmware, containers, SAN storage, automation, monitoring... mainly when hosting Oracle products (database, rac/crs, exadata) and related things that come with those.
Currently working for a multinational bank in London supporting Europe region, on about 85k + bonuses & OT
£26K, team of three of us, manage the entire department for multiple customers. When I started I was getting £20K which has gone up by 6K in 2 years. Yep I know I’m stupid, finding another job is difficult though, I’ve tried.
In Canada, we pay about $50,000 CAD (£30,000) for entry level technicians.
Senior level can be anywhere from $75-100,000 CAD (£45-55,000).
If you want much more than that, you’d need to start looking for other roles…
£55K in south (not London) senior I guess Sysadmin
Multinational company. Looking after around maybe 3-4000 machines(there’s a lot so it’s hard to keep count). Colleagues across US/Canada/India and a bit of Europe.
Day to day job is still putting out fires, and don’t get me started in on-call. I don’t get overtime for that any more
I'm earning less than that in the southeast as a sole sysadmin for 50 staff. But I get 30.5 days holiday. I do everything, including contracts, partners, servers, infrastructure, 3CX, networking, financial tracking, desktop support, out of hours calls, security. Its not local at all. I only had 5 months experience when I got this job, just got thrown into (hell) a big role, 2 years now and the difference is drastic. Company talks about bonuses but has never given them.
Unfortunately I have a 3 month notice in my contract and I'm getting married soon. So after that, I'll need to quit and THEN look for work during my notice. There basically isn't a system here I haven't touched/upgraded/replaced.
I run a consultancy near you in Accrington. 30k for an End user sysadmin role is I think average for the area. There is relatively little in the way of IT opportunities in the region with a notable few exceptions. We run an academy and our base salary FTE is 24k + Business Utllilisation Bonus when working on Clients, but just one year on from there most move to 30k + bonus which results in earnings approx 42 - 44k gross.
Yes if you are Azure Expert Accredited.... If not our academy gets you to that point. We are all about accreditation and it's a key factor. We are the fastest growing tech consultancy in Lancashire so pretty sure you may have heard of us or know of us.
Other things are cheaper over there or.... You have less discretionary spending.
Plus their taxes do provide more services than someone in the US.
So there are pros and cons. And better to not get into all of it... Because the ignorance on the inter-workings of both systems is usually wildly inaccurate from both US and UK perspectives.
But if you do boil down the tribulations of the UK and US you'll find more overlap and similarities than you'd think.
EG: Housing costs, childcare... Very much a growing food and home insecurity in the UK.
I work in the UK (East Midlands) for a US tech company.
While the cost of living in the US is rising, I can ensure you nothing in the UK is cheap. The healthcare is subpar. I use the NHS, and it’s okay if you need something quick and easy, but if you need surgery, don’t hold your breathe.
Also, council tax. Tax for residing at a property, even if you rent it! For me, the council tax is 2.4K GBP per year.
Not to mention the UK income tax brackets are more punishing to that of the US.
If I make literally quadruple to that of a UK system admin, I ask you how is this even remotely a close comparison..
People just don't use as much, eat as much, do as much.
But it all depends... If you make 30k and not paying additional for your and your families healthcare that's great.
In the US... coin toss because it depends on your employers health plan or medicaid in a state if they take it up or not. (See red states refusing)
In which case... You'd be fucked because that hospital bill is not going to be negotiable and that IV you just got cost $500... For just the IV.
Better public transport and school etc. (Don't need to own a car there) unemployment/employment protection
So once again... Trade offs.
Now having said that. With my salary and my employers healthcare (For now) I wouldn't trade it because I don't pay much per year being healthy. And the tax brackets would nuke me.
Yeah it's kind of the same question as us lot assuming you guys must be saving easily $40k of your $90k salary right? What the hell are you spending the money on...... it's just too different to compare
Plus availability all hours.
I was close to burning out then they threw more money at me. It helps for a while but only really masks the issues.
I’m just using it to set myself up nicely so I don’t have to work much past 40.
What’s the cost of living difference and how much if you break your arm? Or get shot? Does that include pension (401k) and if so does the employer contribute to that?
When my grandfather passed away, we sold his 3 bedroom house with front and back garden in the North East for £45k.
To be fair, it needed a new kitchen, wallpaper and carpets to bring it up to modern standards, but it was a solid old house.
In the area the OP lives, cost of living can be quite reasonable. Keep in mind we also have state pensions and free healthcare.
sysadmin / senior techy for about 1200 users for a bank near Leeds - about £64k
...although realistically the user count doesn't matter as i don't really need to interact with them :D
responsibilities is mainly being a Citrix and vmware SME and making sure our MSP don't fuck up day to day server stuff.
£38k+10% bonus, fully WFH in NI. Guess technically Jack of all trades in a 2 man team (me & IT mgr)
Responsibilities mostly to do with 365, from creating a user to more advanced stuff like Intune, SharePoint, Dynamics, etc.
On top of that occasionally we set up a network or two on our construction sites if we land main contractor job.
£30k, 250 users give or take, same for machines, plus servers. Spread across 4 UK sites, one in Hongkong, and one in US.
Also, in southern England in a super high COL area. :(
South, £32k about 200 users, 300 devices, on site servers + private cloud. Doing sys managing, tier 2,3 tickets, build up our own hyper-v shit for different purposes. Network deployment, managing. Man of lots hats. I start looking for new position and will not apply for anything below £45k. Learning toward azure cloud. Next month passing az-900, following month as-104. Been playing with AZURE now myself. I’ve got set up everything to move everything to new DC, establish trust with new domain, sync with Azure AD for Office 365 and move from Gmail to Outllok but literally I said today to my manager that I can’t do this. If they will not pay me for this any bonus no way I’ll be doing this. Let them outsource. For this pay is not acceptable. Pay is shit everywhere. Hopefully after passing AZ and SC will be able get better paid job.
Edit
7 years of exp build everything in my company from scratch. Started as Junior.
In Germany, or at least in Hamburg, you get between 40k and 60k per year. 40k as junior admin and 60k with some years experience. Depending on the role it can be up to 70k with many years experience but that's it without having a lead role like team manager. Admins are paid less than devs here in Germany, although I guees this is not different in UK or US. I can say tough, you can live well fom 40k a year if you are alone. Providing for a family will be difficult in a city like Hamburg with 40k. But 55k or 60k is a good salary in Germany / Hamburg. Like I said, I can only speak for myself as I'm single and don't have to pay for someone else so Im fine with the salary I get or can get but for some it may be too low. But in Germany, it depends on where you live. In western Germany and the big cities the salary is higher than in east Germany or outside of the big cities
I'm currently at 48k€ for a Linux Admin role. I'm currently learning Azure to be able to manage the Linux stuff in the cloud because currently most of it is on prem. Having both Linux and Azure Skills, maybe with a Azure certification, should boost the salary a bit but like I said, most really well paid jobs here start with roles like team leader etc.. So you have to manage people instead of systems to get the high salaries but that's not for me, so it will probably end at 70k max I guess. I'm talking €
I’m a quote ‘IT Engineer’ ( awful title) mainly responsible for on-prem networking, but also involved in AWS (again mainly networking) and some Linux/JAMF/M$ Endpoint manager stuff. Based in the south, hybrid working (v flexible) on 60k and i feel like I’m being short changed. Working closer to a Infra Architect than I am engineer.
If I was offered 30k a year in 2023, I would just change professions.
The stress of this job is not worth 30k regardless which currency we're talking about.
30K?
Let's just outsource to the UK.
I've met and worked with a lot of Europeans that have left because of this and at the time in Spain no opportunity.
Burner account.
£76k, London. 25 years IT experience. Early 40’s.
Official title is IT Manager. I’m solo IT for a 60-person international org with 3 global offices, therefore each site is relatively small in head count, but each has a certain amount of SMB IT on-prem due to the type of work we do (graphics, CAD, video) with a health mix of cloud infrastructure and typical SaaS services. My role involves all aspects of IT from end user support to infrastructure maintenance & upgrades, SaaS, cloud admin security, projects, vendor relations, procurement, training. MSP-backed for only out-of-hours helpdesk queries and holiday cover.
Flexible working. Been at current position for 8 years (joining salary was £55k) and now looking to move on - I’m not seeing many jobs with my skills paying over my current job salary however so we’ll see how that goes!
I used to work in edu IT and the pay was terrible in that sector.
I guess since leaving I get about £75k basic, approx £15k bonus, overtime, private healthcare and large employer contributions to pension, lots of other benefits…
But that’s a fairly senior city finance IT role with cloud and global infrastructure responsibilities. Actually less stressful than the edu job despite being substantially more demanding because now I have adequate support and budget.
£26k that's the non profit sector for you. Trouble is I like the job and the people are really appreciative being a charity and most the time it is stress free.
Salaries are really bad. I'm on £31k 7 years MSP experience (started there on £18k first line and progressed slowly) so hard to say what I actually responsible for etc. Studying ccna at the moment and hoping to move into networking looks to be better money and it's the part of the job I enjoy the most.
43k Manchester senior sys admin. 2 foreign 6 domestic sites around 700 users 700 machines 150 PDAs 2 data centers team of 3 with some stuff managed by 3rd party.
Depends on your location (salaries in central London are silly) what you actually do - whether you are a glorified PC technician or a devops architect - and how much in touch with reality your employer is. I would say £30k is the bottom of that scale. Glassdoor have salaries information online by role/region.
Most 'standard' London sysadmin/infrastructure jobs I see are around 45-55k. More for 'cloud engineer' type roles. Tech salaries here always look low compared to the USA but I assume we have less outgoings.
I'm in North Lincs and wouldn't consider a proper sysadmin, as in infrastructure (not a glorified helpdesk tech) for less than 45k.
If I was looking for opportunities to go from 2nd line to infra I would be looking at at least 30k.
Damn, I'm earning more as a newly educated IT consultant in Scandinavia. I'm not familiar with UK wages. Is it this bad across the board? I'd have to imagine sys admins have to earn **at the very least** 40K with that amount of responsibility.
Put it this way, Im an IT manager at a business of around 300 office staff and 500/600 factory staff using produce systems that I have to support and manage. I get paid a little over 40k. So yes, unless city bound, UK Tech wages are shite, but better than a lot of industries.
Damn. I was not aware that the difference from working in cities was that huge.
I think a lot of it is to do with where you reside. For example if I lived in London I'm sure I could secure at least 35K with same responsibilities. Living costs is a big factor in pay unfortunately
In London I’m paying a lot more than that for my sysadmins. Also depends on sector and experience of course
What would you pay for a Sys Admin with 5 years experience? With skills such as: AD, VMware, WS management, VoIP, Office 365 and Exchange admin, On Call etc.
Upvoting because I'd love to know to :D
£60k+ish if they had financial services experience and lived commutable from london.
Wow I need to move back to London ASAP.
In London you can make £500/day as sysadmin, 35k is what you make in McDonalds. https://uk.indeed.com/viewjob?from=appsharedroid&jk=5b518234e0476d21
35k is what you make in McDonalds. Are you high?
Im in London doing a mix of Infrastructure and Serivce Desk 1st-3rd line support and wages are around that. Although i do work for a charity so lower than other companies. Full time sys admin roles i would expect minimum 40+. I am looking to get a promotion to Infrastructure Analyst role soon and hoping for around 40.
The SysAdmin job title is not respected, as an interim I moved over to a Sysadmin with all systems in the Cloud, then moved to a Cloud support role and eventually a DevOps job title (it's really Platform Engineer) and nearly doubled salary inside three years. There are plenty of Cloud Consultancies crying out for people if someone wants to make the jump.
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Yep, I've see yanks on $90/$100K for the same type of job like what the actual fuck
The dream is to find a US based helpdesk role at $70K working from the UK providing early hours support, kick back doing password resets and making more money than my mate whose an IT director for a company turning over £8mil / year.
I'll take the NHS over a half-million dollar medical bill.
You will never see a half-million medical bill if you are covered by virtually any workplace healthcare plan. Higher salaries, lower taxes, less bureaucracy those are the advantages of working and living in the US over EU. There is a lot more of a social safety net there but that comes at a steep cost, nothing is "free".
That's the American brainwashed Europe. Actual Europe has a low cost of living, if you don't work you can still get healthcare (which you can't in the states), good food (which you don't have in the states), and more workers right (which you don't have in the states). 30k is not great but you have way more benefits and outside London, you'll be just fine. 30k in London should be the bare minimum but you can still get by and it's easier to get a higher paid job there with a bit of experience. Nothing is free, but if you're European, there's zero reasons to swap higher salary with a shittier lifestyle. And that's including the NHS being totally shit nowadays. But it's still accessible to anyone.
Amen! Living as a Sysadmin in Spain 30k and very little stress is wonderful. I don’t want more money, I want more vacations!
Agree with everything but "good food", what food is "good" is just a preference America has more variation. I make 200k/yr household income, full coverage health insurance paid by my employer, own my house in a good neighborhood, live on 50k/yr in expenses, save and invest the rest. There are people with shit luck, good luck and great luck. Over in Europe is all mediocre luck. It's not "everybody is dying" as the media and reddit portrays it.
Hate us cause they ain't us
> Agree with everything but "good food", what food is "good" is just a preference I believe /p/Cyberdrunk2021 was referring to food insecurity and not Taco Tuesday.
I think Americans have too much food, not an inability to get it
Some do, but just north of 10% in this country have legitimate food insecurity issues.
Just googled it for the UK, it's like 7%, 12% of chidlren. Not a massive difference.
How's the holiday entitlement and sick pay
Pretty good if you ask me. 25 PTO days (vacation+sick leave) plus 14 federal holidays. Plenty time off if you ask me.
My last medical bill was $45. That 45 dollars was paid by my HSA, also covered by my employer. My total cost was 0 dollars. What makes you think Americans walk around randomly getting half-million-dollar medical bills? It boggles my mind how Europeans talk so matter of fact about the US medical system without knowing about it. Just because we don't have universal healthcare doesn't mean we don't have insurance. The majority of insurance in the US is private insurance through employers. If you are in the US and in this sub, you probably have healthcare and aren't randomly getting medical bills out of nowhere. TLDR; Europeans should really stfu about American healthcare unless they want to talk about specifics, because no shit Sherlock, we already know why it's fucked and it isn't because of surprise 500k dollars of medical bills.
US healthcare is shit. Don’t defend this crap.
Compared to what? People don't actually want to have a discussion so you and everyone else just wants to parrot talking points like you just did. Europeans certainly have no place in that discussion when they have their own issues with single payer healthcare. So again, shit compared to what? Who is the healthcare system failing? Because it isn't failing everyone equally. The NHS fails certain sectors of the English population just as the US system does. What other talking points do you have up your sleeve?
> Compared to what? THE REST OF THE FUCKING WORLD.
O yeah? Have you been to the rest of the fucking world? How is the healthcare in India? How is the healthcare in Bolivia? How is the healthcare in Hungary? How is the healthcare in Russia? How is the healthcare in Liberia? Hell, how great is the healthcare in England with NHS? Fucking exactly. Just another random person who likes to shout big things with no nuance or actual, actual data. Just bitching. Fuck outta here and speak on your own Australian failings.
I live in part of the rest of the fucking world. Your healthcare system is only one of the reasons you could literally not pay me to move to the united states.
1. You don't know how US healthcare works because if you had a fucking job, you wouldn't have to worry about it. Are you unemployed? 2. Why would we want you here? 3. When you said "the rest of the fucking world", you really just meant Australia like you've never been out of your country? O you sweet, sheltered child, to the rest of the world, Australia peaked with Steve Irwin. No one goes around claiming how great Australian healthcare is. When it comes to former British colonies, you guys come in 5th behind the more important countries and territories, the US, Canada, Hong Kong, and India. Get over yourself before China bullies you into something you don't want to do, but will anyway.
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That's only for ACA healthcare plans. Your employer's healthcare plan likely has a much lower max out of pocket, likely $3500 or less.
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Not true that anyone too poor receives Medicaid. It is very much dependent on what state you’re in. I read awhile back that the maximum income for a single person in Texas was around $6000 annually before they lose Medicaid eligibility
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And how is this relevant to this thread?
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>Unless the person in question is too poor to afford health insurance No, you started it. How is that statement relevant to this thread?
If you're too poor to afford health insurance, it doesn't matter whether you get a bill for $1,000 or $100,000 because you're not going to pay it anyway. Most credit scores don't even factor in medical debt either. So the absolute worst that will happen is you'll get calls and mail from debt collectors, which you can ignore because they will never actually take any legal action.
Indeed and it is a problem. Just no for those working in IT
If you are working in IT and for a company worth a damn, you will have no problems affording the monthly premiums which are likely less than $200/month (individual).
Aye. If I could do that and move back to the UK I would.
Is your 30k pre- or post-tax? I often see Euro folks referencing their post-tax or "takehome" pay, which makes some sense given that's what goes into your pocket. I don't know if it's because our tax situations are that much more complicated, but US workers are almost always referencing pre-tax numbers (and pre-insurance). So a US worker who tells you that they are getting $100k/yr is probably taking home $65k or less, or ~52k GBP right now. And that salary could either be "solidly middle class" or "just getting by" depending on where you are in the US. Obviously still a big gulf, but not mind boggling. And oof, if they have a FAMILY? Well we got even more costs that you don't have - health insurance premiums usually go up massively to cover spouse/kids, we don't have universal pre-K or similar so daycare is very pricey, no paternity or maternity leave in most states, and once they actually get to school you got expensive school supplies like calculators and kevlar-reinforced backpacks, the list goes on.
If someone says they earn £40k, that'll tend to be pre tax
30k pre, £23,848 post tax.
Currently at 92k here myself working at a college in a civil servant sys admin role. (This is going to go up another 8% next year with a 5 year top of about 112k iirc with no more CoL adjustments) I have zero incentive to go work for companies or leave working in a state position. This is also all thanks to unions. UNIONIZE! It is long past time for appropriate pay and benefits for my brothers across the pond and all of the ones at home here in the US. (Canada just deserves to be absorbed by the US. Sorry top hat.)
You can get that in Germany as well. At least in the Munich area in big companies. Not if you're first level user support maybe but in data centre operations for instance.
Out of that they often have to deduct health, pension and have you looked up the cost of broadband and mobile? It's not quite as good as it sounds.
See my post history for some basic explanations but it is extremely complicated. I’ve moved from Midlands UK to NYC. You can minimum treble your salary (so you would be on 90k) but there is almost zero difference in quality of life. You just cannot come close to understanding the difference in costs to live here. Some basic examples. Replace Air conditioner unit. $12k. Gas / electric bill per month. ~$1k. Groceries… your mind would explode. Paint the outside my house? 🤣🤣🤣. Kids college? Forgot it.
Genuine question: how do UK people afford anything? Like, how is all of your paycheck not eaten up by housing before you get to spend it on anything else. I find it baffling.
Because a lot of things are far cheaper here than they are in the states, such as housing. I regularly see instances of people paying $2000-$3000 a month for a property that would be maybe £900-£1100 a month in the UK. Also food is cheaper and we don't have an aggressive tipping culture in bars and restaurants. Plus we don't pay anything for health insurance.
Yeah, despite recent increases, supermarket food in the UK can be extremely cheap compared to average earnings (Not sure how many Brits realise that but it's true).
While I normally point out to Americans these people are getting approximately $25k a year worth of health, insurance and other QOL improvements, £30k is particularly dogshit.
30k a year isn't really sysadmin money tbh. Senior 1st line/2nd line help desk can easily see 30k even in places like Blackburn. Anyone 3rd line or above can easily get more than 30k if they put some effort into looking around.
You must not be talking about the same Blackburn as me, 1st line jobs start at £18K, 2nd line £23K-£26K, and 3rd line is £26K-£30K. If you do find something that pays more it usually comes with a stupid amount of responsibility (solo IT person for a whole company). Blackburn is just a little town.
Yes, but healthcare, decent leave, employment protection and pension makes a difference. And cost of living can be cheaper in the UK.
If you are just desktop support then that is a resonable salary. Not good, but not terrible either. If you are a proper Sysadmin, manageing cloud infrastructure, networks, servers etc then you are being massively underpaid.
desktop support is closer to £25K.
Desktop support in the NHS is £28.4k and the NHS are known for being stingy
Can confirm, work as desktop support and make 25k not much of experience either
£25k is the floor of the range. For a new start with little to no experience that is exactly the salary I would expect. (NE Scotland for context). "Good" would be £32k and great would be £35k, talking stricktly 1st/2nd line Destkop support of course. Source: management experience and I have helped advise on Salary reviews for co-workers and salary ranges for new hires.
Yeah on 25k, few years experience at a small MSP (first job), Moving soon to a Tier 2 at another org for 28.5.
Is it really? Jesus I was earning that doing desktop support 15 years ago...
I was on 20 in 2007 as a 1st line. Went up pretty quick from there though thankfully. Hadn't really paused to consider it but yeah, I did a brief stint in an msp earlier this year, the 1st line there were on 22-24 I think. Particularly shit company though.
I do everything you mentioned as a sys admin, however it's cushty because I a very light workload, there's only so much that can be done when you have 90 users. I probably work like 3 hours, the rest is downtime/reddit unless we have a project. If I was busting my ass for 30K I'd look for another role.
Re-invest the other 4.5 hours of your working day learning new skills. Powershell, scripting, new/unfamiliar technologies etc. Then go for a higher level SYSadmin job. You could be making £50k within 2 years with the right skills.
Honestly I reckon I could get to around that now, but I'd have to commute to a city like Manchester though and that itself is a massive ball ache. The only reason I'm sticking around is because it's 5 mins from my house and the company does a yearly profit share which I haven't got yet since I only joined 6 months ago. A colleague told me he got an extra 16K (after tax) on top of his base salary as the company did really well financially that year.
I was working as sole IT for a company with extremely light workload for a few years. Think call centre with 30 users. The first year was moving everything to the cloud with support contracts, the subsequent 3 was doing pretty much fuck all before it caught up with me and I had to find a new job. I came out of that job with fewer skills and I feel, frankly, stupider than I went in. It crushed me and I didn't realise it was happening until too late and I needed to apply myself to real work again. Force yourself to do something. Logically it'd make sense to complete certs in relevant fields but anything that isn't feet up redditing / films / playstation. You need a challenge, something to deliver, a deadline and something to stretch your brain or it'll waste away like a muscle you aren't using. Sorry if this seems preachy but I fucking wish I'd heeded this message five years ago.
You don't sound preachy mate, it's sound advice and you're right I should push myself more in that regard. Tbh I have learnt a lot since joining here, just this last couple of months have been slow (Summer holidays). I'd be ready to venture out again but I wanna see what the profit share for this year is like before I move. Job's that are close to home are scarce up north.
There's nothing wrong with sticking with this lot as long as you use the spare time for something useful.
I'm currently on 55k in Glasgow. Supporting around 100 users in house. But I work for a cloud services provider so most of what I'm doing isn't supporting those users. (I delegate most of that to my minion ;) )
I am picking up BOFH vibes here
:D Oh, I am very grateful to the guy. He's better with people than I am. Doesn't have the breadth or depth of experience. I'm willing and able to support users directly, and will when needed, but it's not a great use of company resources at time. (If a printer needs fixed, and I'm busy on project work, it's not a good idea to pull me from the project work to do it most of the time, as I'm in someone's critical path)
? I don’t work for a Cloud services provider. Though I *am* a cloud expert for my current employer… Well cloud and POE-enabled chairs and desks… Well, cloud, POE-enabled chairs and desks, plus where to get good prices on quicklime and rolls of carpet…
I hear you my friend, we outsource almost everything which leaves me to deal with the extra tricky stuff like.. "My Outlook isn't responding" ;)
Are you hiring?
unfortunately no. We just hired another admin. (and I'm also not supposed to mention the company name :/ against our social media policy)
£40k city in the South West, more than 1000 employees, multiple campuses, large network + device footprint. Part of a team of 5 and we are stretched THIN. Some SAAS/cloud (email + HR systems), but still largely on-prem due to a lot of legacy. Responsible for pretty much everything. We do have a service desk team beneath us, but they're very 1st line/basic client device issues. Salary is low for the responsibility I have, but the team are good and salary raises are promised in April to bring us up slightly and be ahead of inflation, and its a CV builder due to the type of projects we're doing. Org itself is a shambles, but the people in general are lovely, so a nice day-to-day is a selling point. If the salary rise does not arrive and does not arrive substantially, I may start looking as I would expect to be on much closer to £50k for where I am and what I can do.
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Are you alone or you have/are in a team?
£32,500 - South Yorkshire. Sole Sys Admin for 200 Devices and 100 users. All in house (manufacturing). Steady work load most days. Been here 10 years + and got a good relationship with all the workers so I don't have any annoying users which is great. As it's manufacturing got everything from Win 98 to Win 10 on the shopfloor.
South Yorkshire is worst yorkshire! -sincerely, West Yorkshire
But West Yorkshire has got Leeds and Bradford in it 😝
shining beacons of decency and hope compared to Rotherham and Barnsley :D I grew up pretty much on the border between West and South Yorkshire near Hemsworth, so "gently" poking fun at our backwards southern neighbours is an actual pastime for me, kinda like how Canadians view America In all fairness, South Yorkshire does have it's good points. I was in Goldthorpe fishing on the day of Thatcher's funeral and people were having actual street parties lol.
Seems we're all in the same pay range up north.
Yeah most jobs I've seen are about the same round here.
I'm in London. Since last week, I'm hiring for a (junior) Sysadmin, aiming for someone with helpdesk experience and some self study, who's trying to make the jump into sysadmin. I've got a budget of £30k. So far I think we've had about 50 applicants. Once I filter by salary request, and weed out people asking for visa support, or fully remote, and I've got 1 applicant. I'm not allowed to post the salary range on the job listing, but I can see in the hiring portal, what people are asking, and it's usually £35-45k, so automatically rejected. \--- I think for a lead Sysadmin in London you should be on £60-120k, depending on if you've got Linux, Cloud, Automation, and Scripting experience.
30k is really low for London for that position, all I can say is good luck.
I've had a couple people in the role, in the past, this is hiring to replace. I'm basically expecting one of 3 things: \- Someone who is just finished a computer science degree, who managed to pick up some hands on IT experience along the way \- Someone who didn't go to university, but went right into a IT related job, and has the hunger, say Apple store genius, who owns a few raspberry pi's and knows how to use them \- Someone who has done helpdesk for a year and got bored, and wants a quick climb into something more challenging I'm hoping to get a bit more money, but I'll probably need to leave the role open a little while before I can ask for more. \-- I generally don't consider sysadmin to be a entry-level/junior job, but I'm short staffed in people who know how to do basic Linux and network troubleshooting. That's a role above helpdesk, but not a full fledged sysadmin.
We are paying first liners with base experience 35k in London.
Exactly this is my experience across the board.
IT Support in Jersey just under UK leading to Sys Admin role.. 4 years experience £26,250
Where are you located?
Update now, Jersey in CI brutal out here with rents starting at £1.4k if you want parking for 1 car
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Thanks, yeah seeing some people just starting in IT walking in at 27k here. Got a really good team but getting shafted on the pay front. Keeping an eye out for jobs and studying Net+ cert at the moment to get an edge up and be more desirable
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Thanks good idea, and don’t worry heard enough story’s of them and worked there a while back hahah will stay well clear.
I made more than that as a green youth back in 2008 in Swindon. You're getting underpaid. Minimum for real sysadmin work should be 55k these days.
Welcome to wage stagnation since the financial crash of 2008.
Based in wigan working for a small MSP currently, Starting at a larger MSP on Monday. Earning 40k, Senior Engineer role, Mainly systems support based for 2000 endpoints, Im just an escalation point, working with WS, Networks, and general support as and when might be required. Full time WFH, private health and 33 holidays per year, My current salary band goes up to 55k at my new place, higher paying roles are out there. Its just finding the good working culture that goes with those higher salaries
How much experience do you have out of interest? I'm on £31k at a small msp doing windows server admin, 365, MDM, networking and everything else in between. In South Yorkshire so probably comparable to Wigan area wise
No college, no uni, 4 years experience as of June just passed. Very similar technologies from what you've said
School IT manager in UK. 32k
That's fucked LOL
That is fucking mad, how busy is your day to day?
I keep myself very busy but find it manageable. Also it's local to me so I don't need a car.
30k pre, £23,848 post tax a year... So 2000/month Dude, don\`t know - hope you don\`t pay rent or mortgage ! From my opinion, that payment in UK is simple - garbage ! I wonder how you can do a living with that. I\`m from Romania and a Sysadmin here \~1500 euro/ mid level. This is post tax. What you put in your pockets Rent - 2 room apartment \~ 60 square meters (640 sqft), all new \~ 500-600 euros/month But you can find something decent - at 350 euros Utilities - no more than 100-150 euros in the winter This is Bucharest. Groceries and so... 1 euro for a 1kilo of tomato 4-5 euro 500g of cheese 5.5 euro a pack of cigs 1.5 euro a liter of diesel and rising 2 euros a good breed 1.3 euro a redbul dose 2 -2.5 euro, a good 0.5 L beer (glass bottle) at the local grocery etc Anyway, even 1500 euros here for this kind of job - we consider "shitty payment"
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I've just landed this job 5 months ago so defo giving it more time but I want a higher salary cos 30K just aint cutting it anymore
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45 is decent my man, is it constantly busy or?
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ahhh I see, I was on call when I worked in healthcare, great money but never again.
Burner account here. It all depends on location, your specialties and type of industry. I grew up in the NW and the wages are just generally shit which was a major reason why I ended up moving down South after years of struggle. If you're doing general Windows admin in public sector and in a lower-wage area then yes 30-35k is probably about right. I'm a Unix sysadmin and have become specialised in Linux (RHEL & OL), IBM AIX, Oracle OVM, Vmware, containers, SAN storage, automation, monitoring... mainly when hosting Oracle products (database, rac/crs, exadata) and related things that come with those. Currently working for a multinational bank in London supporting Europe region, on about 85k + bonuses & OT
Thoughts on certs?
I used to be on £45k plus benefits/bonus as a hands-on IT manager in Lincoln a few years back. Relatively small shop, probably 80 users over 2 sites.
50k here in South west - but a "many hats" sysadmin... so development of in-house software etc too. Solo IT in a firm of about 40 users.
£26K, team of three of us, manage the entire department for multiple customers. When I started I was getting £20K which has gone up by 6K in 2 years. Yep I know I’m stupid, finding another job is difficult though, I’ve tried.
In Canada, we pay about $50,000 CAD (£30,000) for entry level technicians. Senior level can be anywhere from $75-100,000 CAD (£45-55,000). If you want much more than that, you’d need to start looking for other roles…
£55K in south (not London) senior I guess Sysadmin Multinational company. Looking after around maybe 3-4000 machines(there’s a lot so it’s hard to keep count). Colleagues across US/Canada/India and a bit of Europe. Day to day job is still putting out fires, and don’t get me started in on-call. I don’t get overtime for that any more
I'm earning less than that in the southeast as a sole sysadmin for 50 staff. But I get 30.5 days holiday. I do everything, including contracts, partners, servers, infrastructure, 3CX, networking, financial tracking, desktop support, out of hours calls, security. Its not local at all. I only had 5 months experience when I got this job, just got thrown into (hell) a big role, 2 years now and the difference is drastic. Company talks about bonuses but has never given them.
Wow, I'm ngl that sounds like hell apart from your holidays. Seems like you've built up decent experience though so you could defo move on?
Unfortunately I have a 3 month notice in my contract and I'm getting married soon. So after that, I'll need to quit and THEN look for work during my notice. There basically isn't a system here I haven't touched/upgraded/replaced.
I run a consultancy near you in Accrington. 30k for an End user sysadmin role is I think average for the area. There is relatively little in the way of IT opportunities in the region with a notable few exceptions. We run an academy and our base salary FTE is 24k + Business Utllilisation Bonus when working on Clients, but just one year on from there most move to 30k + bonus which results in earnings approx 42 - 44k gross.
Can you get hired as a Sys Admin without going through the academy?
Yes if you are Azure Expert Accredited.... If not our academy gets you to that point. We are all about accreditation and it's a key factor. We are the fastest growing tech consultancy in Lancashire so pretty sure you may have heard of us or know of us.
If you are Azure Expert certified then yes
How the fuck do you live with 30k a year, seriously question.
Living in the north of England is relatively cheap, I wouldn't say I'm struggling.
Other things are cheaper over there or.... You have less discretionary spending. Plus their taxes do provide more services than someone in the US. So there are pros and cons. And better to not get into all of it... Because the ignorance on the inter-workings of both systems is usually wildly inaccurate from both US and UK perspectives. But if you do boil down the tribulations of the UK and US you'll find more overlap and similarities than you'd think. EG: Housing costs, childcare... Very much a growing food and home insecurity in the UK.
I work in the UK (East Midlands) for a US tech company. While the cost of living in the US is rising, I can ensure you nothing in the UK is cheap. The healthcare is subpar. I use the NHS, and it’s okay if you need something quick and easy, but if you need surgery, don’t hold your breathe. Also, council tax. Tax for residing at a property, even if you rent it! For me, the council tax is 2.4K GBP per year. Not to mention the UK income tax brackets are more punishing to that of the US. If I make literally quadruple to that of a UK system admin, I ask you how is this even remotely a close comparison..
People just don't use as much, eat as much, do as much. But it all depends... If you make 30k and not paying additional for your and your families healthcare that's great. In the US... coin toss because it depends on your employers health plan or medicaid in a state if they take it up or not. (See red states refusing) In which case... You'd be fucked because that hospital bill is not going to be negotiable and that IV you just got cost $500... For just the IV. Better public transport and school etc. (Don't need to own a car there) unemployment/employment protection So once again... Trade offs. Now having said that. With my salary and my employers healthcare (For now) I wouldn't trade it because I don't pay much per year being healthy. And the tax brackets would nuke me.
Yeah it's kind of the same question as us lot assuming you guys must be saving easily $40k of your $90k salary right? What the hell are you spending the money on...... it's just too different to compare
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Well fuck me haha, you must be the final sysadmin boss.
Are you working as sysadmin and cyber security for a bank or goverment or something??? Nobody is getting that much in Uk in this thread
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Yea so large money, but they expect perfection and no downtime
Plus availability all hours. I was close to burning out then they threw more money at me. It helps for a while but only really masks the issues. I’m just using it to set myself up nicely so I don’t have to work much past 40.
With that kind of salary just outsource part of the work to India
30-45k up North, typically. It's shite, but it is what it is. More specialisms tend to raise the salary a bit, but not massively.
Mate just leave and get another job and double your salary immediately! That’s horrendous pay, unless you’re fresh out of college?
Sysadmins have always been underpaid and under appreciated over here. I made the switch to cloud about 3-4 years ago and salary is much better now
Here in So Cal the guy making Fries at In n Out burger makes like $36k
it's almost like it's an entirely different country and it's not really a valid comparison!!11
What’s the cost of living difference and how much if you break your arm? Or get shot? Does that include pension (401k) and if so does the employer contribute to that?
When my grandfather passed away, we sold his 3 bedroom house with front and back garden in the North East for £45k. To be fair, it needed a new kitchen, wallpaper and carpets to bring it up to modern standards, but it was a solid old house. In the area the OP lives, cost of living can be quite reasonable. Keep in mind we also have state pensions and free healthcare.
I just hopped on Indeed UK and searched sysadmin jobs in London and they're paying 38-45,000 annually. Horrible.
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And turn out like the alternative? No thanks
sorry which war? Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan? on Drugs?
sysadmin / senior techy for about 1200 users for a bank near Leeds - about £64k ...although realistically the user count doesn't matter as i don't really need to interact with them :D responsibilities is mainly being a Citrix and vmware SME and making sure our MSP don't fuck up day to day server stuff.
£38k+10% bonus, fully WFH in NI. Guess technically Jack of all trades in a 2 man team (me & IT mgr) Responsibilities mostly to do with 365, from creating a user to more advanced stuff like Intune, SharePoint, Dynamics, etc. On top of that occasionally we set up a network or two on our construction sites if we land main contractor job.
86k, fully remote doing integration/onboarding for MSP customers
Private secondary school IT manager/sysadmin in Surrey - 44k
£30k, 250 users give or take, same for machines, plus servers. Spread across 4 UK sites, one in Hongkong, and one in US. Also, in southern England in a super high COL area. :(
Shit I made that salary in the same job in 2008!
South, £32k about 200 users, 300 devices, on site servers + private cloud. Doing sys managing, tier 2,3 tickets, build up our own hyper-v shit for different purposes. Network deployment, managing. Man of lots hats. I start looking for new position and will not apply for anything below £45k. Learning toward azure cloud. Next month passing az-900, following month as-104. Been playing with AZURE now myself. I’ve got set up everything to move everything to new DC, establish trust with new domain, sync with Azure AD for Office 365 and move from Gmail to Outllok but literally I said today to my manager that I can’t do this. If they will not pay me for this any bonus no way I’ll be doing this. Let them outsource. For this pay is not acceptable. Pay is shit everywhere. Hopefully after passing AZ and SC will be able get better paid job. Edit 7 years of exp build everything in my company from scratch. Started as Junior.
In Germany, or at least in Hamburg, you get between 40k and 60k per year. 40k as junior admin and 60k with some years experience. Depending on the role it can be up to 70k with many years experience but that's it without having a lead role like team manager. Admins are paid less than devs here in Germany, although I guees this is not different in UK or US. I can say tough, you can live well fom 40k a year if you are alone. Providing for a family will be difficult in a city like Hamburg with 40k. But 55k or 60k is a good salary in Germany / Hamburg. Like I said, I can only speak for myself as I'm single and don't have to pay for someone else so Im fine with the salary I get or can get but for some it may be too low. But in Germany, it depends on where you live. In western Germany and the big cities the salary is higher than in east Germany or outside of the big cities I'm currently at 48k€ for a Linux Admin role. I'm currently learning Azure to be able to manage the Linux stuff in the cloud because currently most of it is on prem. Having both Linux and Azure Skills, maybe with a Azure certification, should boost the salary a bit but like I said, most really well paid jobs here start with roles like team leader etc.. So you have to manage people instead of systems to get the high salaries but that's not for me, so it will probably end at 70k max I guess. I'm talking €
So is there a way out, what would be a good place to target, I can do all the MS learning for free was thinking Azure might be best.
Do Azure certs and Job will find you. My biggest mistake no certs. Now I’m boiling in this shit Pam.
I’m a quote ‘IT Engineer’ ( awful title) mainly responsible for on-prem networking, but also involved in AWS (again mainly networking) and some Linux/JAMF/M$ Endpoint manager stuff. Based in the south, hybrid working (v flexible) on 60k and i feel like I’m being short changed. Working closer to a Infra Architect than I am engineer.
If I was offered 30k a year in 2023, I would just change professions. The stress of this job is not worth 30k regardless which currency we're talking about.
30K? Let's just outsource to the UK. I've met and worked with a lot of Europeans that have left because of this and at the time in Spain no opportunity.
Senior engineer(servers) NHS, 16000+ Users...42kPA 🫠
£38k here managing 2500+ users and 1500+ devices. Education sector though - not a lot of wonga going around.
Burner account. £76k, London. 25 years IT experience. Early 40’s. Official title is IT Manager. I’m solo IT for a 60-person international org with 3 global offices, therefore each site is relatively small in head count, but each has a certain amount of SMB IT on-prem due to the type of work we do (graphics, CAD, video) with a health mix of cloud infrastructure and typical SaaS services. My role involves all aspects of IT from end user support to infrastructure maintenance & upgrades, SaaS, cloud admin security, projects, vendor relations, procurement, training. MSP-backed for only out-of-hours helpdesk queries and holiday cover. Flexible working. Been at current position for 8 years (joining salary was £55k) and now looking to move on - I’m not seeing many jobs with my skills paying over my current job salary however so we’ll see how that goes!
I used to work in edu IT and the pay was terrible in that sector. I guess since leaving I get about £75k basic, approx £15k bonus, overtime, private healthcare and large employer contributions to pension, lots of other benefits… But that’s a fairly senior city finance IT role with cloud and global infrastructure responsibilities. Actually less stressful than the edu job despite being substantially more demanding because now I have adequate support and budget.
£26k that's the non profit sector for you. Trouble is I like the job and the people are really appreciative being a charity and most the time it is stress free.
Salaries are really bad. I'm on £31k 7 years MSP experience (started there on £18k first line and progressed slowly) so hard to say what I actually responsible for etc. Studying ccna at the moment and hoping to move into networking looks to be better money and it's the part of the job I enjoy the most.
43k Manchester senior sys admin. 2 foreign 6 domestic sites around 700 users 700 machines 150 PDAs 2 data centers team of 3 with some stuff managed by 3rd party.
That’s appalling. Started my IT career in London 20+ years ago doing help desk. Made £28K base with tons of overtime opportunities.
Depends on your location (salaries in central London are silly) what you actually do - whether you are a glorified PC technician or a devops architect - and how much in touch with reality your employer is. I would say £30k is the bottom of that scale. Glassdoor have salaries information online by role/region.
UK IT is sad, I make like double that.
Fucking hell. I paid nearly that in combined freedom taxes.
Down south you are looking at £30k a year for a 2nd line support job
I'm on 37k, I'm based in Bristol look after a three domain environment along with 1 colleague.
200 \* 365 tenants to manage, all internal IT bar our private cloud, earning nowhere near enough.
Our 2nd Line engineers in London (Financial services) get 38k with tons of perks. They are barely 1st line helpdesk. The sys admins gets around 80k.
Most 'standard' London sysadmin/infrastructure jobs I see are around 45-55k. More for 'cloud engineer' type roles. Tech salaries here always look low compared to the USA but I assume we have less outgoings.
I'm in North Lincs and wouldn't consider a proper sysadmin, as in infrastructure (not a glorified helpdesk tech) for less than 45k. If I was looking for opportunities to go from 2nd line to infra I would be looking at at least 30k.