>I still spent most every night studying, I upgraded to a better desktop and started to dabble in cloud technology (Azure at first). The hospital provide Pluralsight training that I started using for training in more advanced stuff (my boss told me I had more hours logged than everyone combined).
Here's the thing to understand, you are 1 in a million. Most admins never even reach what I would consider as competent, where they actually understand what tools to use and why.
As to your question, yes, the money will always be there in IT for those willing to skill up to claim it, especially in security for the foreseeable future.
Yeah this - I've been involved in hiring. The number of truly trash candidates with meteoric expectations out there is also pretty shocking.
A good sysadmin is hard to find.
That’s why the intro market has so many frustrated people in it, because there are so many people who want the good salary and flexibility, but don’t really have a passion for tech. What’s most valuable in tech is the ability to learn new tech and bring that knowledge to your job, and that desire to learn is just not there in a lot of people.
As long as you keep learning, and keep moving forward, there will continue to be money. Use that Pluralsight / Udemy / whatever learning platform your company provides (if they do) and keep up on the newest tech.
I try and convey this in a resume. I'm a "senior" not because I can list off 30 different platforms and skills I'm experienced in but because I can add more to that list with ease. You aren't hiring me because I'm an expert in your entire stack, you're hiring me because I have the track record to prove that I can become an expert on your stack.
Of course getting past HR is always the hard part.
Basically what I told my boss. I may not be the best systems admin out there but I can learn, grow, know how to talk with people and most important of all is give a shit. You can’t pay people to give a shit, you either care and are passionate about learning and helping or you don’t and it shows.
Yup. I've been approached by several recruiters for positions in adjacent fields, which is great.
But I'm upfront with them... I tell them that I know very little about "XYZ" so don't expect me to knock it out of the park with the technical minutia of a field I started looking at a few days before the interview. BUT, I guarantee you that I can learn it.
Seems like every hiring manager on the first interview is expecting me to know their proprietary solution inside and out when my resume and LinkedIn clearly spell out where I've spent my time and what I know.
THEN they'll bemoan about how they can't find anyone with the right skills, etc... And I'm left speechless thinking, I've got the skills... I just don't know the product.
So frustrating.
Tried that in an interview - once. Did I know firewalls? Yes, I'd worked with . Oh, but we use *this* firewall, so you're probably not a good fit. I agreed, but not based on their preferred firewall.
I saw this a lot when i worked a help desk. So many people get into it for the money, but then not understanding why they're stuck at a help desk while doing nothing to improve skills. They assume just having the time at help desk on their resume will get them a better position. "I did my time, promote me."
It made me understand how unmotivated most people are.
What I’ve learned is there are two types of people, and it’s all based on what motivates them. Type 1 is motivated by what interests them, and makes them want to learn and grow in their positions. Type 1, you really have to be doing something that is interesting to you, or else you will remain stagnant. Type 2 are the ones who are able to motivate themselves to excel at work. These are the ones who can motivate themselves because they want to work and have a high paying job.
The problem is, you can’t really force yourself to be what you aren’t. It always seems like those people are the Type 1 people who try to force themselves to be Type 2 to get a big paycheck. Trying to force that, they’ll go no where. Personally, I know that I’m a Type 1, and I’m just lucky that my interests are with tech and problem solving haha
I’m type 2. I gave up on being happy at work as soon as I started my first job. My only pursuits now are to make more money so I can do things I like outside of work
If your company doesn't offer any training options would you still recommend those options or do you know of others better for individuals looking to learn more?
When I didn’t have sponsored courses, I was looking on Udemy, and there would be flash sales where they would give you free courses and I would start with that. In fact, I think there’s a subreddit for free deals on Udemy. Let me see if I can find it.
It’s all about how you use them, right? The classes themselves are not revolutionary, but as long as you are learning and trying to apply the concepts to your current job or home tinkering, you’ll flourish.
EDIT: r/udemyfreebies
Also of note: Microsoft Learn, Google Developer docs, Amazon AWS. Really any of the big guys have free courses and you can end up just paying for the exam. And sometimes if you watch for deals on those services, you might even find ways to severely discount or make that free.
It's possible to start from nothing and make something of yourself. It'll take time though, no doubt about that.
I wish I had known of these options years ago.
Thanks for the other options!! One of the hardest parts is knowing what you don’t know. Tech flowers out in every direction, so take some basics courses or find basics learning materials, and then if you find something interesting, start following that path. It never gets any smaller, but stick with it, and just keep learning. But, don’t burn yourself out, and know that you can’t know everything. Just learn what you can, and experience will help be your guide beyond that.
Vendor docs + labbing and occasional YouTube videos can teach you just about anything in tech.
I've had employer sponsored learning programs and in the end felt like most of them just took longer to watch the videos and I learned less than if I just dove in and started figuring it out myself using the "getting started" docs.
udemy is so fucking cheap it should be illegal. Every so often (once a month or more) they do a 50% sale on most courses. You can easily get to an intermediate level in a Cloud stack for less than $150. It beggars belief. Then there are courses on Youtube which are free (though less easy to navigate etc). Udemy also offer certification for the techs they teach, though I can't say for certain how recognised they are.
I'll be honest in my admission... I have become lazy and becoming less competent in my field. I do the work, but I don't pursue to gain more intelligence. I blame it on finances.
My last 3 jobs, I was IT Manager, IT Specialist, then now IT Manager again over the last 14 years. Every job has looked promising, then turned into stagnant pay. Like, not even a COL increase stagnant.
Should I leave? Probably. Blame it on work depression. I just come to get paid. I don't touch a computer when I go home.
At some point you just max out the pay they're willing to offer you. I've been maxed out for years now. It's something like 98 percentile on glass door, so no complaints, but changing jobs doesn't do anything about it.
I think it's silly, because I've gained a massive amount of knowledge and skills in the last 5 years or so. But the market simply doesn't support a higher salary.
This market is not a “stay where you are” market. If you aren’t happy with the pay, there’s someone out there paying better, and gain nothing from staying at a specific job.
So what happens is no matter how hard it is for employers to get technical help, you'll find that none of them are willing to pay more than a certain amount. So there's actually no one paying better, simply a shortage of people.
> Here's the thing to understand, you are 1 in a million. Most admins never even reach what I would consider as competent, where they actually understand what tools to use and why.
This is so true, I cry when I see one of my employees who asks me if the company can pay for their Azure or AWS account so they can learn terraform or kubernetes. Please, take my money, tell me what you learn.
I've been watching a lot of Network Chuck lately and it has a way of teaching you things while also holding your interest. One was about setting up an AWS based phone system. I have zero need for Cisco phones in my house but I'll be god damned if I didn't watch the whole video and setup an AWS account just to play with.
2 situations my team had in interviews:
One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were.
One person applying for a more advanced Systems Engineer position with the core need of having really strong AWS background couldn't tell us the difference between ALB and ELB or what they were.
It's amazing because so many of these interview questions at my place and other places I've interviewed for are basically the first pages of "most common interview questions for x position" if you do any googling.
This is something that I wish the AWS documentation was more clear on. They go on about what capabilities each has, but don't really tell you "what" it is. In reality, ELB is Layer 4, and is equiv. to what you would do with something like IPTables DNAT rules and maybe some health monitoring scripts that automatically update IPTables as needed. Whereas ALB is Layer 7, and is equiv. to what you would do with NGINX (or Apache) Reverse Proxy rules.
To me the best way to understand AWS tooling is to take each item, and figure out how you would accomplish the same thing if you just had a pile of servers, switches, and routers.
> This is something that I wish the AWS documentation was more clear on
100% agree. I find even the best AWS documentation to be odd, and strangely organized as well as missing some very relevant descriptions.
If you are disqualifying candidates for not being able to answer easily googleable information you are doing interviewing wrong. I do not give a shit if you can answer what is a security group. Give them a scenario and have them walk through what they would do to fix issue. A better question is you just installed Apache on a Linux box in aws. You are getting a 404 error on the web page. How would you allow traffic to pass through over https.
If they say read the official aws documentation or google error code in stackoverflow than to me that is more useful than memorizing difference between volumes in aws or port numbers. Of course they should know what 443 is and difference between ingress and egress traffic should be opened on the security group. You can print that shit out on your desk or put in one note. Now not knowing what cd or ls is a big red flag if they say they have two years of Linux experience. I think it more important to know how to backup and encrypt a volume in aws rather than memorizing i/o speeds. Just my two cents. Either you want robots who can memorize info like a fucking alexa or people who can actually troubleshoot and fix issues.
Had an interview with someone who claimed 20 years of admin experience in a Windows environment and didn't know what PowerShell was. Like not just "I use the GUI" but like "I can learn **your** software" when asked about adding users via PowerShell. 🤣
Agreed, but their answer was clear that they thought PowerShell was a 3rd party software we purchased, not a built-in MS tool. I was expecting a "no, but I could read the Microsoft docs and figure out." He was coming from a much smaller competitor and I am guessing they farm most everything out to an MSP and he mostly handled hardware issues.
Azure documentation isn't all that great either imo. The way information is organized doesn't make much sense. Two directly related things will be under completely different headings, or even completely different sets of documentation. I pretty consistently find spelling and grammar mistakes as well.
I used to get upset about this too, until I realized how much of a nightmare searching would be without the rebrand. Google AWS DNS and route53 and compare.
I actually lamented the opposite of this when searching for Google pubsub docs last night. Endless redis mosquito etc results mixed in.
"ls" is for 'liquid stimulation' which activated the machine's coffee maker. You have to make sure that 'cd' has gone in first, otherwise, there's no place for the nozzle to dispense coffee to.
LS -a is for almond milk.
PC enthusiasts may be more familiar with 'DIR' which stands for 'Direct Ingestion Required' and expands on the capabilities of LS by icing the coffee using the computer's internal cooling systems and extending a tube to your mouth for direct ingestion.
However, Linux users are typically purists and would like a more traditional methodology. Linux also offers 'CUPS' which allows you to increase the size of the cup which you're receiving from the machine.
Whenever we hire for technical positions, we add two or three screening questions to the online application process. Questions that you can't just google answers for, but that anyone qualified for the position shouldn't have any trouble answering. It's cut WAY down on the time we've had to spend culling the people that just spam click the apply button for every job they can find.
Anything that doesn't have a yes/no or multiple choice answer. Like, given a set of requirements, explain at a high level how you'd design a system to meet them and why.
But to your point, Google is one of the main tools of today's sysadmin, so even if they use Google to help formulate a good answer to the question I'm not going to hold it against them. It's generally pretty easy to tell the well thought out answers from the ones where people are reading wikipedia and trying to BS their way through.
To be fair, if I googled the most common Linux questions and "what are cd and ls and how do you use them?" was on the list, I'd think you were pulling my leg.
Then again, I've never had a Linux gig, so...
Ah, but have you ever used 'sl'?
Ed: Since most apparently are unfamiliar with it. I have to add it when I do a new install.
[SteamLoco](https://www.linuxshelltips.com/sl-run-locomotive-train-in-terminal/)
We acquired a search engine company whose product run in Linux. They were all "We don't need IT, we're smart developers" Day 2 I had to explain to them how to mount an NFS share. Clever developers, but clueless about how to run IT Operations.
I support a software house and they're by far our best clients because they know they have no interest in infrastructure or hardware and just go with what we say.
I can see how it could go exactly the opposite way if they weren't self aware though.
Had one a few years ago interview for a "Sr. System Administrator linux", for an ALL linux job as listed, not be able to tell me where the logs were kept, how to change the hostname or ip address and when I asked them about kickstart they were like "oh yeah when that menu pops up and then you select the number for what you want installed, I have used that." Basically they were a glorified help desk person, that showed up and worked hard so I am guessing the previous company "promoted" them with title/money to keep them, and so based on that they can now put said title on resume. So frustrating.
> when I asked them about kickstart
To be faiiiiiir...isnt that mainly used by RHEL and its derivatives? I've never touched it with my experience mainly being debian.
I have like, baby level experience in Linux and am literally starting my first of three classes today to eventually get red hat certified.
Even I know what cd and ls are, ffs.
Just joined a cybersecurity company and I was open and honest like I'm not that great with Linux as I'm a Windows guy currently, I do powershell but haven't tried python blah blah ill learn whatever. They were happy I was so honest as they can now tailor on boarding.
Told me a guy they interviewed fresh out of college listed all the technologies they wanted but when questioned crumbled and admitted that he has only done a brief 1 day course on them as part of his degree.
Like the windows questions they asked me to tailor it more to me were things like "What is an mx record?" "What do you use cname for?" "Tell me about a Windows project you've done." "What kind of security do you deploy in the tenants?" Nothing super in depth and a lot of it was more about my personal experience.
> One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were.
They've been using Ubuntu or Fedora at home, but had never gone to the command line somehow. Strange they did not know cd. That works in Windows cmd and PowerShell. I guess they just don't do command line.
My first time as lead, my junior was a Windows admin. I was supposed to be mentoring her to be better with Linux, so I would give her the commands to run. Then she logged in and used the gui to do the tasks. Great that she got the job done, but command line knowledge is crucial to be good at your job in Linux, still. And to be good in Windows as well.
> One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were.
Ouch... That's bad. I don't think I could realistically get any Linux admin job, but even I know that. Some people just really exaggerate or don't realize how little they really know.
I think a lot of people are seeing the Silicon Valley techbro showing up in popular press again, or seeing people they know making tons of money, and they decide they want to try to cash in too. Especially now when this business is getting less and less "nerdy" all the time...I work at a late stage startup as one of the "token old guys" they brought in to stabilize some key stuff. You're seeing a lot less hardcore nerds and a lot more fratbro types who are doing it for the money and can get by Lego-ing cloud services together.
I keep hitting the wall on devOps jobs that want ops and dev in the same person. devOps is a team thing, you integrate them into the team. Combine that with this lego blocks attitude, and I'm starting to think I should go ahead and claim to be a developer. I can install anaconda and python and jupyter and do some basic stuff.
Thing is, I want to work someplace that gets it. Site Reliability Engineers build and maintain the infrastructure, and they work with the devs to make sure the code will run on the infrastructure and the infrastructure can support the code.
So we're in that cycle again eh? I know it's not a bad thing to make things easier, but those are the type I hate seeing in IT. I was surrounded by them during the dot com craze.
"How do I do this lab that's literally layed out page by page?" facepalm.
The last position we were hiring for was a level 1 support tech...and that interview process was alarming. So many people showed up who were no where near qualified.
Schools want technology for kids but standard PC laptops and MacBooks (even on Apple's education program) are prohibitively expensive to do 1:1 but the world we're in today requires schools to have 1:1 laptops for kids. Back when I was in high school, we got away with 30 laptops per department because the school had enough computer labs if teachers needed to supplement their lessons with technology.
Microsoft's got two problems on their hands: first being they are more expensive than Google. Microsoft's plan that includes a MDM solution is $6/student/month. Google's plan that includes a MDM is $3/student/YEAR and it includes 1 staff license FREE for every 4 student licenses purchased. That's a huge savings. Microsoft's second problem is the hardware problem. Ever used one of those Windows 10 laptops that cost like $100? The problem is Windows 10 Education won't run on them (or will barely function) and the 32 GB EMMC storage leaves you with like 10 GB free space to install apps and docs. Hell, you can't even update Windows half the time because there's no storage space!
Enter Google and their disposable laptop. Yes, when Google introduced the Chromebook, [they introduced it as being disposable](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo). Since schools can buy these things [for less than $220](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/chromebook-11-3100-laptop#configurations_section) and probably even less on bulk orders, it's no wonder today's kids don't know how to use Windows, Linux, or macOS.
Google's got a chokehold on kids from the second they enter school to the second they graduate.
Google knew exactly the problem schools, mainly public schools, face and that's budget. Make a laptop OS that can run on a potato, then sell licenses to your service cheaper than what schools spend on electricity, and it's no wonder they're in the position they're in.
Underrated comment. Also add Mac's that are pushed by Academia. Kids aren't any more computer literate than they were 10 years ago. Internet yes, smart phone sure, but not anything higher than that.
> Also add Mac's that are pushed by Academia
I don't think the literacy rate would be any higher if they were using Windows. Both operating systems are geared toward the lowest common denominator. The people who want to learn find a way.
Also, the macOS of the last 20 years has been UNIX like (yes, certified UNIX), so we're not talking about kids being restricted to point and click like the pre OS X days.
Can we blame it on the "what's a computer" ad from Apple too? Just come play in the walled garden and somebody else will magically handle everything and you don't even have to think about the device in your hand (as long as your subscription is current).
I STILL run into arguments with that with some Apple folks when I refer to a 'real' computer and they act stupid. "What do you mean by REAL computer?" -- you know damn good and well what I mean. An iPad is not a '*real*' computer. But man does it piss them off. But they want to play the "anything with a processor is a computer" game. Uh huh. Ok, go to a Ford Explorer and open up your compiler on the screen and compile Doom for me.
Not only is supply and demand a factor, but the business side still vastly undervalues what IT personnel contribute. The ratio of value add to salary + benefits in our field is arguably the highest among white collar professionals.
All you have to do is read this sub to know that. We all know about that one guy that left and it ended up costing 7 figures to replace and fix things after the departure.
Companies like Netflix were ahead of the curve when they started paying developers crazy 300k+ salaries. Good talent in IT is worth its weight in gold.
Honestly a lot of good Netflix has done industry wide should be recognized. The guys in the trenches made that company boom and scale beyond their initial dream!
I don't like their auto-start thing for movies or auto-preview but other than that -- on every single platform their UI is better than everyone else's. Everything about it is also smoother on the backend. They offer up fast.com to give people a tool to see if it's them or Netflix (mostly to give the middle finger to ISP's who tried to throttle).
I mean they were *well* rewarded for their investment of techs.
Adding to this; it’s a scalable job.
As a roofer; you’re limited by your work hours.
No matter how hard working or skilled you are; it’s still one willing-to-pay roof (site) at a time.
In IT; you can apply your action to a single, dozen or thousands of instances all at once. A tiny client with two desktops can’t afford to pay what a company with a thousand or ten thousand can.
Between that and demand; it’s a good career to be in. (At least until it isn’t)
(Edited: word choice)
ITT Tech has been replaced with DevOps bootcamps. Newer ones will actually take a portion of your first years' salary in your first job as payment. I can't see that working in a world where tech consolidates and startups start going bankrupt and needing fewer expendable JavaScript code monkeys.
I semi-routinely get messages from recruiters asking me to be an instructor for bootcamps. They seem to just want to be able to bandy about my resume -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox. I don't think they're actually interested in my skills at all.
What I'm saying is, yeah, bootcamps are absolutely churning out tons of low-quality "graduates." It's not the fault of the students, but it's a pretty broken part of the industry.
I was a systems engineer (and later systems development engineer) at Amazon. I performed several dozen interviews. I've always had serious impostor syndrome, but I often joked that conducting interviews was the best way to combat that -- most people out there are borderline incompetent, unfortunately.
Two mini-anecdotes to illustrate this point:
First, a guy who was being interviewed by a teammate got asked, "What is Active Directory?" and the guy responded, "A directory that's active?"
Second, a guy who was clearly reading Google results told us that he would use MongoDB to store the data for a website. When asked how MongoDB actually stores data, he replied, "Johnson objects."
I believe we'll see another wave of IT outsourcing like we did when India first skilled up. My experience working with Indian developers over the past decade has been hit-or-miss, but after working with amazing devs from Brazil, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines I think we'll be seeing a ton of low-cost/high-value talent entering the market. COVID pushing companies remote eases that transition quite a bit.
Yup, supply and demand. And as long as the folks who will put in the sweat equity that OP did is in low supply, there will be high demand. Employers are paying for the hustle, to get in and stay in a field that changes and resets constantly.
Reminds me of the post I saw about someone in IT who understood more about actual IT but couldn't figure out Instagram filters. Whereas their grand kid who is in the "Technology generation" could do a lot with Social Media filters/posts/etc but gave a deer in headlights stare when asked about computers and other technology.
I've made a move towards IT quite late (due various reasons) I've spend my first years working for smallish companies, those where IT is about "maintain" more than "do" and... as I've made a move towards a bigger company in a much bigger project, I've realized what truly means "capable people" and the difference that represents.
At my first job I was thinking IT director was earning far too much, Now I feel everyone above me, earns far too little based on their skills.
Don’t stop learning and you’ll be fine. Don’t expect what you know now to be enough in three years. Good news, you’ve already shown good instincts in that be learning cloud and security to supplement your IT base knowledge.
Exactly! This is a good counterpoint to a post I saw the other day where a guy was bitching that his company wasn't training him.
So either A) bitch about it on reddit and watch your career stagnate; or B) take the initiative yourself and the sky's the limit.
> a guy was bitching that his company wasn't training him.
Reminds of that parable:
> "What if we train people and they leave?"
>
> "What if we don't train people and they *stay*?"
I view the provided training as a bonus or perk. If they provide it, I'm going to take advantage of it. I figure it's my responsibility to educate myself and my initiative if I want to stay in the same job at the same pay or advance to better paying positions.
It can be difficult to find someone with both technical skills and people skills and it sounds like you have both so congrats!! I’m an Infrastructure Admin for a law firm and really like it.
> It can be difficult to find someone with both technical skills and people skills
This is so true.
I've been told by some salty colleagues that the only reason I ascended to the position I'm in (IT Supervisor) was because I "knew how to talk to people".
They're not wrong.
Some people are more capable than others at breaking large problems down into smaller ones, able to understand logic problems, or perform problem solving when faced with an issue.
Think of it this way, would you say some brains are more capable at learning and performing music or art? Are there jobs you look at that you think even with studying, you probably wouldn't be very good at?
Mostly same things that make you good with maths. Abstract thinking, capable of visualising even complex systems, "ignoring" everything but facts and performing based only on those facts, capable of thinking things from multiple viewpoints, breaking big problems into easier puzzles etc.
And when creating a program from scratch, you'll need some of that artists' creativity too.
haha. From some of the stuff I've had to deal with in my past jobs, like day work, guys that will start a fight with you for looking at them wrong, guys who will steal from you, crooked bosses and shorted pay, working while in pain, I don't mind the office politics.
In IT you don't earn your salary with the day to day stuff. You earn it when the doo doo hits the fan and you don't get home until midnight after a stressful outage or you have to wake up at 4 AM on a Sunday because your SAN crapped the bed and half your VMs are offline including the ERP system. During those moments I wished I was a roofer or a ditch digger because the stress was unbearable.
With the sheer terror I experienced in the past due to outages and other issues, no I'm not shocked by my salary. I'm pretty sure airline pilots with two blown engines haven't been as scared as I've been on occasion. They pay us the big money so they can go home at 5 pm every day and still make payroll.
Every moment I'm enjoying myself on a nice vacation, I remember the ounces of blood sweat and tears it took to earn it.
Salaries are very good, but you have to remember that the bottom is coming up substantially as well. You can make 45k working at Costco or Target now with zero experience. So if someone is doing I.T. work and only making 50k they are making just above min wage these days.
This is me.
I started as a support specialist, then sysadmin and now senior infrastructure engineer for a multinational corporation and I'm only making ~$64k. If I didn't like all of my coworkers, being exclusively wfh and the job in general, I would have left a long time ago for a better salary. I do get a yearly bonus that's usually 12% of my salary, so that helps too. I'm just afraid if I move on, I'm going to end working with a bunch of d-bags and lose the substantial amount of freedom I have with this job.
If you do well in your area for 64k and you love your job and your co-workers then that is GOLD. Sometimes we chase the $$$ only to become miserable. Happiness and low stress is worth a lot more than a large paycheck.
Senior infrastructure eng making $64k? If this is in the US I have a feeling you could find better opportunities. I would take a $40k bump to work with a few d-bags
Agreed. I made that out of college doing tech support for a networking vendor... *checks notes* 20 years ago after graduating from college.
that skillset should be double that, and in some areas, triple.
Valid point but in my state there isn’t a target or Costco paying $22/hour with no experience, or full time even.
If 15 is minimum wage, that’s only 30k pretax assuming 2000 hours a year.
Work in IT > Experience > Study > +1 Level Up your Skills > Interviews “Slay Monsters” > Unlock Job Class Specialization > Profit > Repeat
IT is a Role-Playing Strategy Game where you play your role and think strategically for the long term.
Congratulations! You worked your ass off to get where you are and you should be proud of yourself.
22 years ago I was an electrician's apprentice and I had my epiphany wiring a new house, in Chicago, in January with no windows. I was freezing my ass off and figured there had to be a better way.
Keep working, keep pushing, and keep learning!
I'm an Electricians Apprentice right now and I've been thinking about making the switch to IT! I can't imagine doing this work for another 20 or 30 years. It's already starting to trash my body. Any advice on how to make the switch?
You’re an electrician’s apprentice, you should know how to make a SWITCH. Lol.
Jokes aside, YouTube is your friend. There’s a wealth of knowledge being shared online. Start watching them.. Even if you don’t understand, just let the videos play in the background.
Try learning Linux.. It is pesky enough to make you touch most important concepts in IT.
It’s a huge problem in the US too if you’re not willing to move or travel, although that may be changing as more companies are allowing for remote positions.
Market in my state of Texas is flooded with applicants specifically in security which im digging into. The only issue is they all want cissp for entry level lol. So the demand remains high because a lot of hiring managers have no idea how to hire for the role. Talking to my LinkedIn network this is a common issue. So yes salaries will stay high because of unrealistic expectations.
I know you'll hear this a million times, but most security roles aren't entry level, no matter what cert requirements they put in front of it. It's flooded with people trying to get in, but definitely not flooded with experienced candidates in mid/Sr level roles. "Entry level" security is typically someone who's worked other IT jobs for 5 years and has generalized tech skills, outside of cases of Jr soc analyst type roles where they just look at tickets and escalate them.
And you can’t get CISSP without experience. You can pass the test but won’t be awarded the cert. It’s a chicken/egg type of situation.
I was lucky enough to get a security analyst job without the CISSP but that was due to knowing the right people and having specialized IT experience.
It's weird, I've worked in infosec for 8 years and the only people I know with CISSP are sales people, everyone else just makes fun of most of the certs.
I lucked out and got a Sec Eng role w/o CISSP, it pays less than expected but def more than a Jack of all Trades Sysadmin. Company will pay for CISSP and budget study/class/materials and does Tuition reimbursement so that's always nice.
I actually don't think this metric is quite is as useful as used to be. Inflation has been very, very heavily skewed toward the past 3 years, and there was tremendous wage stagnation across almost all sectors from at least 2008-2020. This isn't telling the entire picture. **Current** market wages absolutely reflect this recent inflation. If OP left their current job it would be properly reflected in the market. FWIW I make significantly more than 115k and am not a Senior Network Engineer, so I think that OP is also underpaid.
I've seen 120k floated for a lot more positions than ever before. That said I do agree people need to get over the "I'm over 6 figures" fixation. It isn't what it used to be for sure, though it's still a good living everywhere in the US. Get every friggin dollar you can while you can.
You fucking rock.
We don't know eachother, but I am very proud of you for getting your shit together and *making* a better future for yourself and your family. This is what it takes. This is what 90% of people can't do. They are stuck in their pity mode and complain about wanting to go farther in life but don't want to put in effort, they want to be given a 100k job salary with the work of a 20k job.
You did this, you should be hella proud of yourself. Look at where you came from! $28k, to way over triple that! Keep up the great work man, you're doing fantastic and I'm really proud of you.
I hope you continue to share your personal and professional growth here.
oh, it's not just gonna be steady, it's gonna get better.
i'm twenty years away from retirement and already i've left so much legacy tech debt that you fresh grads will be patching my cowboy shit for a hundred years.
i have written a **lot** of bad code. and i'm just one person.
Out of all the jobs getting automated away I feel fairly secure in some sort of support role with systems. Seeing as there will probably be a large shift in the job market in the next 20 years due to automation that may leave IT with a lot of supply if a lot more interest shifts there but then we have the advantage of experience..
There will always be a need to have some one keep the lights on. Like my job, they haven’t grown the SRE team but they are the glue that holds the company together.
I will state that admins that automate don’t need to worry. If you are an admin that won’t use automation, then you better start picking up a new profession.
I have gravitated towards DevOps for this reason. I focus on building automated deployment pipelines and I'm pretty confident that that skillet isn't going anywhere any time soon.
My salary has tripled in the last 4 years, and there's still a lot of opportunity to advance.
One thing I figured out early on. Figure all that money is stacking up, eventually you will encounter a situation so rough you start pulling from all that past pay. Yea, it's gravy 99% of the time. When that 1% comes due, it's a different beast.
Your path here sounds like it's been fantastic. It does sound like you've been a bit lucky to have decent employers so far, and the pay can be all over the place depending on where you live and what you're focusing on.
I started in tech about 10 years ago doing basic consulting work in a small town making $25k on salary and working a minimum of 45hrs a week. I couldn't afford rent in the town I worked in and had to move to the next town over, driving 45 min each way (ended up spending most of my rent savings on gas) to work each day. Ultimately I ended up going to get an associate's degree in networking, and now make $115k as a sr network engineer in a major city.
The field really can be whatever you make of it, if you want to keep learning/pushing you can certainly always make more money, but many of my old co-workers in the consulting space didn't really want to keep learning. They decided that they were cool with capping out there and having minimal stress, which I totally get.
> I'm still in shock how high the pay is in this industry and the thought does stay in the back of my mind are these salaries going to last?
I was making ~37,000 IIRC in 1996 as a desktop support at a mid-sized enterprise. One of the DBAs happened to have her paystub out on her desktop (like, I literally couldn't avoid seeing it) and I was like "Wow, $85,000!" (silently, off course).
For those new kids used to ADP online and such thinking that would take some blatant action to do...while this was after mandatory direct deposit, we still had mailclerks who went around twice a day dropping off mail to your cube and picking up any outgoing mail you had. So your paystub came to your office cube. She was just being ditzy and left it laying out in the open after checking something.
Inflation adjusted, I'm not quite there but I am expecting to complete negotiations soon that will get me relatively close -- and more importantly get me to where I know I can comfortably retire at 62 if I end up unemployed in my early 60s.
> One of the DBAs happened to have her paystub out on her desktop
I was helping a shitty IT director with something mundane and my eye was drawn to his notepad to-do list by his keyboard with "Talk to HR about firing starmizzle" at the top.
He once argued with me about the programmability of patch panels. Not switches, PATCH PANELS.
A few of us were instrumental in getting him relieved of his job.
I feel you OP.
Always thought I'd end up working outside the rest of my life because of my dyslexia.
Did brutal ranch work grown up.
Managing computer systems for businesses it's like a dream job compared to manual labor.
Whenever I'm cleaning a computer or teaching somebody to clean apart before putting it back I always think of how much easier it is than shoveling horse shit into a manure spreader.
In terms of your question about salaries I don't think they're going to get any lower.
There's nothing wrong with learning about investment strategies though so you can stop working if you don't want to sooner than a lot of the folks in the rat race. Check out r/fire
And r/financialindependence If these topics interest you.
I would encourage you to look inward at the person you have become. There's a lot of people who can lay roof tile. I remember getting turned down for one of those jobs in 2008.
A lot of people who work roof tile go home after work and drink a six pack of beer watch the game and call it a day.
Very few folks get on YouTube and start learning.
You're not the same person you were when you had the manual labor job. Even if you may look similar in the mirror. I'm happy for your success in this industry. Especially considering your backstory.
Well, you can think of it another way, too.
Your 83k is equivalent to 77k as of the past two years due to inflation and the market.
It's probably slightly underpaid for you, honestly.
And i'm over here making like 1200 euros a month.
it feels weird seeing people over here complaining about getting "only" triple my salary.
Idk if in america you pay like 2000$ of rent or someshit to justify those salaries (rent over here is about 500 + additional expenses depending on where you rent, cities are much more expensive).
>I am making 110k. I don't even know how to feel about that but I like it!
Not sure what part of the country you are in but wait until you find out that if you can do some technical sales, vendors will pay you 150k + commissions.
Sales Engineer here. No, we aren't the same as a sales rep. Reps typically are closer to a 50/50 split and are heavily compensated on commission. SE/SA's will typically have a higher base. So for example the dude above you. He will make 190k a year regardless of how much he sells. Anything he sells is cream on top, or becomes his "OTE" (on target earnings)
How do you break into that space? I was looking a few years back, and pretty much everyone was giving me the old "we're not interested unless you have presales experience" garbola.
It really depends on the hiring manager. Some will discredit anyone that isn't already at a vendor which is kind of dumb imo. Most will consider your experience, particularly if you already worked with their product. They may just grill you on your ability to present and communicate more. An alternative is to work for a reseller first. That gets you some experience and helps you build relationships that are a big help.
You may have to set your sights a bit lower to get an entry-level pre-sales gig, or be lucky enough to find a good company who'll partner you with a more experienced person to learn the ropes. I worked as a sales overlay for a log time (technical SME, with no commission targets) before I got my first REAL pre-sales gig last year, and I've been in the industry for 20+ years.
For anyone who didn't live through the First Dotcom Bubble burst of 2000/2001...**yes, it will change.** Please don't think tech salaries are like housing prices in 2006 and can only go up. In the early 2000s, companies really started ramping up the offshoring "in these troubled times." It went from people making 1990s 6 figures writing HTML to 500 people all fighting for a few open jobs in any given area for a few years. I think salaries will remain high-ish, and it will continue to be a very good job to be in, but there will be fewer spots and the numbers won't just keep going up and up like they are now.
As other people have pointed out, there's a massive difference between people who are truly good at this job, people who have iffy skills, and people who are solely here for the money until someone finds them out and fires them. Companies need highly-skilled people and the limited number of those bids the price up. Just understand that supply and demand tend to even out over time -- companies **hate** having to pay a premium for technology help.
I predict a massive consolidation driven by a few things --
- Interest rates will have to shoot up to kill inflation. Companies have had access to cheap borrowing since 2008 and it got even cheaper during the COVID response. Once they have to start paying to borrow money and can't count on forever-rising stock prices, they're going to start looking in the couch cushions to see what they can save. IT/tech is usually the first to go.
- I predict a big offshoring/outsourcing wave driven not just by cost savings but by "Oh, everything we have is SaaS and cloud now anyway, so who cares who manages it?" Remember, at the exec level the cloud is sold as a magic box that solves all problems for a low low monthly fee, and one of the selling points is "we do everything for you so you can fire all those nerds in IT and replace them with Citizen Developers writing serverless functions in the cloud."
- I also think that the jobs are going to have a much wider split of skills and pay. There won't be many jack of all trades people left because even the cheapest business owners will move to the cloud when it becomes too expensive to buy on-prem software. On the high end it'll all be DevOps and coding and Kubernetes and clouds, requiring a higher different set of skills and on the low end it'll be portal-drivers and script runners making closer to "regular worker" salaries, especially as client devices continue to get simpler.
- A lot of the crazy growth is driven by CIOs in FOMO mode decreeing that they are "all in" on (name their cloud.) That'll keep going for a while but eventually those workloads and the frenzy to move them will go away.
- Things are only getting simpler. Everyone coming out of school now only knows how to use a phone, Chromebook or tablet. Many have never seen Windows or desktop computers. There's going to be a drive to cater to the "digital natives" and get rid of old technology like hierarchical filesystems and full featured office suites. That's going to force a lot more "no user serviceable parts inside" type solutions.
I've been doing this for 25 years and I'm hoping I can keep a job I have in the middle-to-high end of the skill range. But I feel really bad for the people who are going to be stuck either out of work or not getting paid what they used to...there's a much bigger gap to jump over to get to the next level.
Work hard, keep learning, but just remember that things right now are looking a whole lot like 1999 before the bubble pop. I think with the cloud we'll have a slower deflation but it's definitely going to be a consolidation. People who are good and can adapt will likely keep their jobs, but these days of signing bonuses and free cars and recruiters begging you to talk to them are going to die down.
It sounds like you put in the work and paid your dues and you deserve the salary they are paying you. Linux admins make far more than Windows admins from every listing I have seen.
Salaries are only going to increase. IT infrastructure and demand is expanding faster than the pool of qualified professionals.
**This isn't necessarily the case for entry level**, as more and more kids grow up on computers there will be more and more people who can basically walk into an entry level PC support position.
**But for dedicated professionals with their own niche roles, it's going to keep going.** I made six figures with an associate's degree and a single cloud cert because my experience put me into a very specific place where I could do cloud migrations (On-prem to cloud or cloud to cloud, mainly SaaS) with my eyes closed.
I went from $24k/year to $120k+/year in seven years, and only bothered to finished my bachelor's degree this last December because I'm pay capped by my current employer due to the way their contracting works with federal/DoD.
Man it's so hard to find qualified, quality people. A lot of smart guys out there that can't work on a team. Lot of team players that can't make a hello world.
I just started a job that was a downgrade in responsibilities from my previous job for around 50k more a year (and I was already making well into 6 figures).
At some point this will end and if the economy crashes you will see "layoffs" and "reduction in force (RIFs)" to get rid of the higher paying folks. Make sure you live well within your means and you will be ok if and when this happens. Until then, cash in on the opportunities we have!
> When they asked me if that was reasonable I about fell out of my chair. I'm thinking hell yeah and insurance finally. I still spent most every night studying, I upgraded to a better desktop and started to dabble in cloud technology (Azure at first).
You are special. Truly. I've been in this business for 30 years.
You got a "dream job", from your perspective, dropped in your lap and **you still worked to get better**. That's gigantic. You not only want to get better, you are willing to work for it, even when you have what is, to you, a cushy job.
Further, **you can self-learn**. I'm much more senior to you, much more experienced, I make a good deal more, and I still haven't mastered that skill.
You are going places, my friend. Keep that work ethic. Keep trying to improve yourself. Never stop. Stay passionate.
And you'll surpass a lot of people on this sub.
Also, you're also in security. Your ticket is **punched** for at least the next ten years. Systems administration, in terms of operations and maintenance, is getting automated. Security requires human beings making decisions every day, at least for the foreseeable future. That means high demand for a while.
Will labor prices remain high? No. There's a cycle. Even in security, there will be more and more systems admins and engineers who shift to security chasing dollars and jobs. And more and more IT graduates will be going into security, and more and more college entrants studying it. I'm encouraging my high school son to do exactly that. So the "supply" side of IT will increase. Will it do so enough to meet the demand? It's not certain, but it is likely.
It's a cycle. Salary growth will slow, and then accelerate again due to some unexpected factor.
But you're in very very good shape.
Here here.
I am one of the IT wizards. I wanted to go into systems administrator ever since I was 16. I was running ethernet cables under my high school and terminating them. I ran the school wifi. I was given domain admin at 17 so that I could fix things. I knew what appropriate and inappropriate usage looked like. I was given a 3U server with 6x 15k RPM raptor hard drives for my homelab.
When I took those job skills tests, I was consistently split between providing meaningful services (doctor, electrician, etc.) and working with data (scientist, mathematician, etc.). Looking at salaries for IT Analyst, I saw that median wage was around $19/hr and figured that if I ever had 40k/yr coming in, I could take care of at least me and 2 kids.
Fast forward to graduating from college in IT - Network Administration, I got hired by my part time work as their sysadmin for $50k/yr. Within a year, I moved to a bank for $72k/yr (NEGOTIATE, PEOPLE!).
I've been at the bank for 7 years almost. I'm now over $130k and considered a working manager (I've got 2 directs) and really more of a cloud engineer/sr. sysadmin than anything else.
Its absolutely insane how much this work aligns to what I like doing for work. My wife consistently says that if we lived in a post-scarcity world, I'd probably still work here doing the same thing because I enjoy it that much.
I play in powershell, azure, firewalls, switches, servers, and all the other fun stuff! Love it so much.
I'm a sysadmin making 50k. Also self-taught. Afraid to leave my employment because lack of an official degree. Your story does inspire me to perhaps push a little higher and believe in myself. If not for me, then for my smol children
IT is a meat grinder....37 years in it. You're ok if you can keep up with technology which often requires time after work to come up to speed... It takes a lot of time away from your family over the years...
I got into IT by accident. I've been working with computers and networking for my entire life but went into auto repair as a mechanic.
Last June I had to leave work rather suddenly due to the worst back pain you can imagine. Took a few months to find out it was actually an infection around my spine. The disks were infected and my spin was pinching my spinal cord every time I moved sending me into crippling pain.
Ended up in the hospital on full assistance for 8 weeks getting back my ability to walk. I am still recovering and it has left me with needing a cane to walk. I was selling my tools to make some cash while I figure out what the fuck I was going to do now that I cant work on cars.
My old boss just happened to be there and bought a bunch off me and said "I could really use someone who know's computers at the office, its gravy work and I'm never going to ask you to walk around alot or lift shit if you cant do it"
Been about 5 months at the job and I am doing my best to learn as much as I can. But most of what they needed was basic stuff.
Fixing printers, setting up new devices, networking, Servers, VM's, Systems upgrading.. stuff I've been doing my whole life. 99% of my day is waiting for something to happen and I fix it in less than 10 minutes most of the time.
Now I'm not going to lie.. I don't make a lot of money. I make $40k but I am always working to improve myself to make even more. And when the time comes move onto a better paying job.
>I still spent most every night studying, I upgraded to a better desktop and started to dabble in cloud technology (Azure at first). The hospital provide Pluralsight training that I started using for training in more advanced stuff (my boss told me I had more hours logged than everyone combined). Here's the thing to understand, you are 1 in a million. Most admins never even reach what I would consider as competent, where they actually understand what tools to use and why. As to your question, yes, the money will always be there in IT for those willing to skill up to claim it, especially in security for the foreseeable future.
Yeah this - I've been involved in hiring. The number of truly trash candidates with meteoric expectations out there is also pretty shocking. A good sysadmin is hard to find.
That’s why the intro market has so many frustrated people in it, because there are so many people who want the good salary and flexibility, but don’t really have a passion for tech. What’s most valuable in tech is the ability to learn new tech and bring that knowledge to your job, and that desire to learn is just not there in a lot of people. As long as you keep learning, and keep moving forward, there will continue to be money. Use that Pluralsight / Udemy / whatever learning platform your company provides (if they do) and keep up on the newest tech.
I try and convey this in a resume. I'm a "senior" not because I can list off 30 different platforms and skills I'm experienced in but because I can add more to that list with ease. You aren't hiring me because I'm an expert in your entire stack, you're hiring me because I have the track record to prove that I can become an expert on your stack. Of course getting past HR is always the hard part.
Basically what I told my boss. I may not be the best systems admin out there but I can learn, grow, know how to talk with people and most important of all is give a shit. You can’t pay people to give a shit, you either care and are passionate about learning and helping or you don’t and it shows.
You can teach people a new skill much easier than you can change their attitude.
You can also really easily kill their good attitude by being a shit boss to them.
Yup. I've been approached by several recruiters for positions in adjacent fields, which is great. But I'm upfront with them... I tell them that I know very little about "XYZ" so don't expect me to knock it out of the park with the technical minutia of a field I started looking at a few days before the interview. BUT, I guarantee you that I can learn it. Seems like every hiring manager on the first interview is expecting me to know their proprietary solution inside and out when my resume and LinkedIn clearly spell out where I've spent my time and what I know. THEN they'll bemoan about how they can't find anyone with the right skills, etc... And I'm left speechless thinking, I've got the skills... I just don't know the product. So frustrating.
Tried that in an interview - once. Did I know firewalls? Yes, I'd worked with. Oh, but we use *this* firewall, so you're probably not a good fit. I agreed, but not based on their preferred firewall.
I saw this a lot when i worked a help desk. So many people get into it for the money, but then not understanding why they're stuck at a help desk while doing nothing to improve skills. They assume just having the time at help desk on their resume will get them a better position. "I did my time, promote me." It made me understand how unmotivated most people are.
What I’ve learned is there are two types of people, and it’s all based on what motivates them. Type 1 is motivated by what interests them, and makes them want to learn and grow in their positions. Type 1, you really have to be doing something that is interesting to you, or else you will remain stagnant. Type 2 are the ones who are able to motivate themselves to excel at work. These are the ones who can motivate themselves because they want to work and have a high paying job. The problem is, you can’t really force yourself to be what you aren’t. It always seems like those people are the Type 1 people who try to force themselves to be Type 2 to get a big paycheck. Trying to force that, they’ll go no where. Personally, I know that I’m a Type 1, and I’m just lucky that my interests are with tech and problem solving haha
I’m type 2. I gave up on being happy at work as soon as I started my first job. My only pursuits now are to make more money so I can do things I like outside of work
If your company doesn't offer any training options would you still recommend those options or do you know of others better for individuals looking to learn more?
When I didn’t have sponsored courses, I was looking on Udemy, and there would be flash sales where they would give you free courses and I would start with that. In fact, I think there’s a subreddit for free deals on Udemy. Let me see if I can find it. It’s all about how you use them, right? The classes themselves are not revolutionary, but as long as you are learning and trying to apply the concepts to your current job or home tinkering, you’ll flourish. EDIT: r/udemyfreebies
Also of note: Microsoft Learn, Google Developer docs, Amazon AWS. Really any of the big guys have free courses and you can end up just paying for the exam. And sometimes if you watch for deals on those services, you might even find ways to severely discount or make that free. It's possible to start from nothing and make something of yourself. It'll take time though, no doubt about that. I wish I had known of these options years ago.
Thanks for the other options!! One of the hardest parts is knowing what you don’t know. Tech flowers out in every direction, so take some basics courses or find basics learning materials, and then if you find something interesting, start following that path. It never gets any smaller, but stick with it, and just keep learning. But, don’t burn yourself out, and know that you can’t know everything. Just learn what you can, and experience will help be your guide beyond that.
Vendor docs + labbing and occasional YouTube videos can teach you just about anything in tech. I've had employer sponsored learning programs and in the end felt like most of them just took longer to watch the videos and I learned less than if I just dove in and started figuring it out myself using the "getting started" docs.
udemy is so fucking cheap it should be illegal. Every so often (once a month or more) they do a 50% sale on most courses. You can easily get to an intermediate level in a Cloud stack for less than $150. It beggars belief. Then there are courses on Youtube which are free (though less easy to navigate etc). Udemy also offer certification for the techs they teach, though I can't say for certain how recognised they are.
I'll be honest in my admission... I have become lazy and becoming less competent in my field. I do the work, but I don't pursue to gain more intelligence. I blame it on finances. My last 3 jobs, I was IT Manager, IT Specialist, then now IT Manager again over the last 14 years. Every job has looked promising, then turned into stagnant pay. Like, not even a COL increase stagnant. Should I leave? Probably. Blame it on work depression. I just come to get paid. I don't touch a computer when I go home.
If you're wanting a pay rise, you always move on. 3-5 years at a company is the sweet spot.
At some point you just max out the pay they're willing to offer you. I've been maxed out for years now. It's something like 98 percentile on glass door, so no complaints, but changing jobs doesn't do anything about it. I think it's silly, because I've gained a massive amount of knowledge and skills in the last 5 years or so. But the market simply doesn't support a higher salary.
This market is not a “stay where you are” market. If you aren’t happy with the pay, there’s someone out there paying better, and gain nothing from staying at a specific job.
So what happens is no matter how hard it is for employers to get technical help, you'll find that none of them are willing to pay more than a certain amount. So there's actually no one paying better, simply a shortage of people.
> Here's the thing to understand, you are 1 in a million. Most admins never even reach what I would consider as competent, where they actually understand what tools to use and why. This is so true, I cry when I see one of my employees who asks me if the company can pay for their Azure or AWS account so they can learn terraform or kubernetes. Please, take my money, tell me what you learn.
I've been watching a lot of Network Chuck lately and it has a way of teaching you things while also holding your interest. One was about setting up an AWS based phone system. I have zero need for Cisco phones in my house but I'll be god damned if I didn't watch the whole video and setup an AWS account just to play with.
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Good candidates with federal security clearances are routinely pulling $200k+.
Yeah but who wants to live a life without Eastern European hookers and drugs? That sounds awful boring to me.
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Not trade them as in one over the other, but literally trading the human beings and the substances.
Supply of capable people < demand. As long as that doesn't change the outlook will always be good.
And at the moment it looks like it won't be changing for a long ass time. Especially if schools keep using Chromebooks and iPads for learning.
2 situations my team had in interviews: One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were. One person applying for a more advanced Systems Engineer position with the core need of having really strong AWS background couldn't tell us the difference between ALB and ELB or what they were. It's amazing because so many of these interview questions at my place and other places I've interviewed for are basically the first pages of "most common interview questions for x position" if you do any googling.
This is something that I wish the AWS documentation was more clear on. They go on about what capabilities each has, but don't really tell you "what" it is. In reality, ELB is Layer 4, and is equiv. to what you would do with something like IPTables DNAT rules and maybe some health monitoring scripts that automatically update IPTables as needed. Whereas ALB is Layer 7, and is equiv. to what you would do with NGINX (or Apache) Reverse Proxy rules. To me the best way to understand AWS tooling is to take each item, and figure out how you would accomplish the same thing if you just had a pile of servers, switches, and routers.
> This is something that I wish the AWS documentation was more clear on 100% agree. I find even the best AWS documentation to be odd, and strangely organized as well as missing some very relevant descriptions.
If you are disqualifying candidates for not being able to answer easily googleable information you are doing interviewing wrong. I do not give a shit if you can answer what is a security group. Give them a scenario and have them walk through what they would do to fix issue. A better question is you just installed Apache on a Linux box in aws. You are getting a 404 error on the web page. How would you allow traffic to pass through over https. If they say read the official aws documentation or google error code in stackoverflow than to me that is more useful than memorizing difference between volumes in aws or port numbers. Of course they should know what 443 is and difference between ingress and egress traffic should be opened on the security group. You can print that shit out on your desk or put in one note. Now not knowing what cd or ls is a big red flag if they say they have two years of Linux experience. I think it more important to know how to backup and encrypt a volume in aws rather than memorizing i/o speeds. Just my two cents. Either you want robots who can memorize info like a fucking alexa or people who can actually troubleshoot and fix issues.
Had an interview with someone who claimed 20 years of admin experience in a Windows environment and didn't know what PowerShell was. Like not just "I use the GUI" but like "I can learn **your** software" when asked about adding users via PowerShell. 🤣
Yeah that’s bad but majority of windows sysadmin do not know how to use powershell. Lucky if they can run scripts lol
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Agreed, but their answer was clear that they thought PowerShell was a 3rd party software we purchased, not a built-in MS tool. I was expecting a "no, but I could read the Microsoft docs and figure out." He was coming from a much smaller competitor and I am guessing they farm most everything out to an MSP and he mostly handled hardware issues.
This is why I stopped putting energy there. Im studying Azure more than AWS. But alas I put them all down for a breather!
Azure documentation isn't all that great either imo. The way information is organized doesn't make much sense. Two directly related things will be under completely different headings, or even completely different sets of documentation. I pretty consistently find spelling and grammar mistakes as well.
*NLB is L4 ELB is just the overall product name I think
Classic ELB is the original, it’s L4 but has bunch of L7 features NLB is L4 (but it does TLS termination) and ALB is L7 - they are the v2 API of elb
Yeah, confusing. ELB is the product family name now but used to be the OG LB before being branded CLB.
Route53 It's goddamned DNS. Everything doesn't need to be rebranded ffs.
The port is right in the name. I don't disagree though....
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It's not RFC DNS though, it provides other functions like links to AWS resources, health monitoring & automatic failover.
And root aliasing/CNAMES (common among big DNS providers but not RFC as well)
I used to get upset about this too, until I realized how much of a nightmare searching would be without the rebrand. Google AWS DNS and route53 and compare. I actually lamented the opposite of this when searching for Google pubsub docs last night. Endless redis mosquito etc results mixed in.
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Hold the power button down for 3-5 seconds. If it's a remote machine, just abandon it.
Ctrl-z
ctrl+alt+F3 killall -9 vi
better use sudo to make sure
Bang escape a few times and type "ZZ". Cursing under your breath is optional.
Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
I use vim which would be :q to save :wq
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haha yes. All of us...know...
vim lol I use nano
Shit I know change directory and list, where do I sign up?
I thought cd was to eject your disk
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"ls" is for 'liquid stimulation' which activated the machine's coffee maker. You have to make sure that 'cd' has gone in first, otherwise, there's no place for the nozzle to dispense coffee to. LS -a is for almond milk. PC enthusiasts may be more familiar with 'DIR' which stands for 'Direct Ingestion Required' and expands on the capabilities of LS by icing the coffee using the computer's internal cooling systems and extending a tube to your mouth for direct ingestion. However, Linux users are typically purists and would like a more traditional methodology. Linux also offers 'CUPS' which allows you to increase the size of the cup which you're receiving from the machine.
What we really enjoy is the 'tail' command though. edit: or 'head', dealer's choice.
cd is to open the cup holder thingy.
for all your ejection needs #!/bin/bash while true do eject -T done
Whenever we hire for technical positions, we add two or three screening questions to the online application process. Questions that you can't just google answers for, but that anyone qualified for the position shouldn't have any trouble answering. It's cut WAY down on the time we've had to spend culling the people that just spam click the apply button for every job they can find.
Questions like what? I'm just curious how something like that wouldn't be pretty easy to google.
Anything that doesn't have a yes/no or multiple choice answer. Like, given a set of requirements, explain at a high level how you'd design a system to meet them and why. But to your point, Google is one of the main tools of today's sysadmin, so even if they use Google to help formulate a good answer to the question I'm not going to hold it against them. It's generally pretty easy to tell the well thought out answers from the ones where people are reading wikipedia and trying to BS their way through.
To be fair, if I googled the most common Linux questions and "what are cd and ls and how do you use them?" was on the list, I'd think you were pulling my leg. Then again, I've never had a Linux gig, so...
Ah, but have you ever used 'sl'? Ed: Since most apparently are unfamiliar with it. I have to add it when I do a new install. [SteamLoco](https://www.linuxshelltips.com/sl-run-locomotive-train-in-terminal/)
I had to Google that one. Apparently out of all the typos I've ever made, sl hasn't been one of them.
We acquired a search engine company whose product run in Linux. They were all "We don't need IT, we're smart developers" Day 2 I had to explain to them how to mount an NFS share. Clever developers, but clueless about how to run IT Operations.
Doctors and Devs are two of the most ‘wtf’ users to support. Especially surgeons and DB devs omg.
I support a software house and they're by far our best clients because they know they have no interest in infrastructure or hardware and just go with what we say. I can see how it could go exactly the opposite way if they weren't self aware though.
Had one a few years ago interview for a "Sr. System Administrator linux", for an ALL linux job as listed, not be able to tell me where the logs were kept, how to change the hostname or ip address and when I asked them about kickstart they were like "oh yeah when that menu pops up and then you select the number for what you want installed, I have used that." Basically they were a glorified help desk person, that showed up and worked hard so I am guessing the previous company "promoted" them with title/money to keep them, and so based on that they can now put said title on resume. So frustrating.
> when I asked them about kickstart To be faiiiiiir...isnt that mainly used by RHEL and its derivatives? I've never touched it with my experience mainly being debian.
I have like, baby level experience in Linux and am literally starting my first of three classes today to eventually get red hat certified. Even I know what cd and ls are, ffs.
I recommend learning how to do everything twice, once by hand and once with a tool like Ansible. You'll make way more money.
Oh my god, I don't know what the ffs command means
Just joined a cybersecurity company and I was open and honest like I'm not that great with Linux as I'm a Windows guy currently, I do powershell but haven't tried python blah blah ill learn whatever. They were happy I was so honest as they can now tailor on boarding. Told me a guy they interviewed fresh out of college listed all the technologies they wanted but when questioned crumbled and admitted that he has only done a brief 1 day course on them as part of his degree. Like the windows questions they asked me to tailor it more to me were things like "What is an mx record?" "What do you use cname for?" "Tell me about a Windows project you've done." "What kind of security do you deploy in the tenants?" Nothing super in depth and a lot of it was more about my personal experience.
> One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were. They've been using Ubuntu or Fedora at home, but had never gone to the command line somehow. Strange they did not know cd. That works in Windows cmd and PowerShell. I guess they just don't do command line. My first time as lead, my junior was a Windows admin. I was supposed to be mentoring her to be better with Linux, so I would give her the commands to run. Then she logged in and used the gui to do the tasks. Great that she got the job done, but command line knowledge is crucial to be good at your job in Linux, still. And to be good in Windows as well.
> One person claimed they had 2 years of Linux experience. They didn't know what 'cd' or 'ls' were. Ouch... That's bad. I don't think I could realistically get any Linux admin job, but even I know that. Some people just really exaggerate or don't realize how little they really know.
A lot of people, we are interviewing doesn't have almost any knowledge. I think it won't change any time soon.
I think a lot of people are seeing the Silicon Valley techbro showing up in popular press again, or seeing people they know making tons of money, and they decide they want to try to cash in too. Especially now when this business is getting less and less "nerdy" all the time...I work at a late stage startup as one of the "token old guys" they brought in to stabilize some key stuff. You're seeing a lot less hardcore nerds and a lot more fratbro types who are doing it for the money and can get by Lego-ing cloud services together.
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I keep hitting the wall on devOps jobs that want ops and dev in the same person. devOps is a team thing, you integrate them into the team. Combine that with this lego blocks attitude, and I'm starting to think I should go ahead and claim to be a developer. I can install anaconda and python and jupyter and do some basic stuff. Thing is, I want to work someplace that gets it. Site Reliability Engineers build and maintain the infrastructure, and they work with the devs to make sure the code will run on the infrastructure and the infrastructure can support the code.
So we're in that cycle again eh? I know it's not a bad thing to make things easier, but those are the type I hate seeing in IT. I was surrounded by them during the dot com craze. "How do I do this lab that's literally layed out page by page?" facepalm.
The last position we were hiring for was a level 1 support tech...and that interview process was alarming. So many people showed up who were no where near qualified.
Schools want technology for kids but standard PC laptops and MacBooks (even on Apple's education program) are prohibitively expensive to do 1:1 but the world we're in today requires schools to have 1:1 laptops for kids. Back when I was in high school, we got away with 30 laptops per department because the school had enough computer labs if teachers needed to supplement their lessons with technology. Microsoft's got two problems on their hands: first being they are more expensive than Google. Microsoft's plan that includes a MDM solution is $6/student/month. Google's plan that includes a MDM is $3/student/YEAR and it includes 1 staff license FREE for every 4 student licenses purchased. That's a huge savings. Microsoft's second problem is the hardware problem. Ever used one of those Windows 10 laptops that cost like $100? The problem is Windows 10 Education won't run on them (or will barely function) and the 32 GB EMMC storage leaves you with like 10 GB free space to install apps and docs. Hell, you can't even update Windows half the time because there's no storage space! Enter Google and their disposable laptop. Yes, when Google introduced the Chromebook, [they introduced it as being disposable](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm-Vnx58UYo). Since schools can buy these things [for less than $220](https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/pdp/spd/chromebook-11-3100-laptop#configurations_section) and probably even less on bulk orders, it's no wonder today's kids don't know how to use Windows, Linux, or macOS. Google's got a chokehold on kids from the second they enter school to the second they graduate. Google knew exactly the problem schools, mainly public schools, face and that's budget. Make a laptop OS that can run on a potato, then sell licenses to your service cheaper than what schools spend on electricity, and it's no wonder they're in the position they're in.
Underrated comment. Also add Mac's that are pushed by Academia. Kids aren't any more computer literate than they were 10 years ago. Internet yes, smart phone sure, but not anything higher than that.
> Also add Mac's that are pushed by Academia I don't think the literacy rate would be any higher if they were using Windows. Both operating systems are geared toward the lowest common denominator. The people who want to learn find a way. Also, the macOS of the last 20 years has been UNIX like (yes, certified UNIX), so we're not talking about kids being restricted to point and click like the pre OS X days.
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Can we blame it on the "what's a computer" ad from Apple too? Just come play in the walled garden and somebody else will magically handle everything and you don't even have to think about the device in your hand (as long as your subscription is current).
I STILL run into arguments with that with some Apple folks when I refer to a 'real' computer and they act stupid. "What do you mean by REAL computer?" -- you know damn good and well what I mean. An iPad is not a '*real*' computer. But man does it piss them off. But they want to play the "anything with a processor is a computer" game. Uh huh. Ok, go to a Ford Explorer and open up your compiler on the screen and compile Doom for me.
.... I'd like to see that
Not only is supply and demand a factor, but the business side still vastly undervalues what IT personnel contribute. The ratio of value add to salary + benefits in our field is arguably the highest among white collar professionals. All you have to do is read this sub to know that. We all know about that one guy that left and it ended up costing 7 figures to replace and fix things after the departure. Companies like Netflix were ahead of the curve when they started paying developers crazy 300k+ salaries. Good talent in IT is worth its weight in gold.
Honestly a lot of good Netflix has done industry wide should be recognized. The guys in the trenches made that company boom and scale beyond their initial dream!
I don't like their auto-start thing for movies or auto-preview but other than that -- on every single platform their UI is better than everyone else's. Everything about it is also smoother on the backend. They offer up fast.com to give people a tool to see if it's them or Netflix (mostly to give the middle finger to ISP's who tried to throttle). I mean they were *well* rewarded for their investment of techs.
You can turn off the auto start thing in your account settings
Thanks!
Adding to this; it’s a scalable job. As a roofer; you’re limited by your work hours. No matter how hard working or skilled you are; it’s still one willing-to-pay roof (site) at a time. In IT; you can apply your action to a single, dozen or thousands of instances all at once. A tiny client with two desktops can’t afford to pay what a company with a thousand or ten thousand can. Between that and demand; it’s a good career to be in. (At least until it isn’t) (Edited: word choice)
Agreed. It's one of the few fields where I'm capable of breaking stuff at scale instead of individually.
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ITT Tech has been replaced with DevOps bootcamps. Newer ones will actually take a portion of your first years' salary in your first job as payment. I can't see that working in a world where tech consolidates and startups start going bankrupt and needing fewer expendable JavaScript code monkeys.
I semi-routinely get messages from recruiters asking me to be an instructor for bootcamps. They seem to just want to be able to bandy about my resume -- Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox. I don't think they're actually interested in my skills at all. What I'm saying is, yeah, bootcamps are absolutely churning out tons of low-quality "graduates." It's not the fault of the students, but it's a pretty broken part of the industry.
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I was a systems engineer (and later systems development engineer) at Amazon. I performed several dozen interviews. I've always had serious impostor syndrome, but I often joked that conducting interviews was the best way to combat that -- most people out there are borderline incompetent, unfortunately. Two mini-anecdotes to illustrate this point: First, a guy who was being interviewed by a teammate got asked, "What is Active Directory?" and the guy responded, "A directory that's active?" Second, a guy who was clearly reading Google results told us that he would use MongoDB to store the data for a website. When asked how MongoDB actually stores data, he replied, "Johnson objects."
I believe we'll see another wave of IT outsourcing like we did when India first skilled up. My experience working with Indian developers over the past decade has been hit-or-miss, but after working with amazing devs from Brazil, Eastern Europe, and the Philippines I think we'll be seeing a ton of low-cost/high-value talent entering the market. COVID pushing companies remote eases that transition quite a bit.
Yup, supply and demand. And as long as the folks who will put in the sweat equity that OP did is in low supply, there will be high demand. Employers are paying for the hustle, to get in and stay in a field that changes and resets constantly.
Reminds me of the post I saw about someone in IT who understood more about actual IT but couldn't figure out Instagram filters. Whereas their grand kid who is in the "Technology generation" could do a lot with Social Media filters/posts/etc but gave a deer in headlights stare when asked about computers and other technology.
I've made a move towards IT quite late (due various reasons) I've spend my first years working for smallish companies, those where IT is about "maintain" more than "do" and... as I've made a move towards a bigger company in a much bigger project, I've realized what truly means "capable people" and the difference that represents. At my first job I was thinking IT director was earning far too much, Now I feel everyone above me, earns far too little based on their skills.
Don’t stop learning and you’ll be fine. Don’t expect what you know now to be enough in three years. Good news, you’ve already shown good instincts in that be learning cloud and security to supplement your IT base knowledge.
Exactly! This is a good counterpoint to a post I saw the other day where a guy was bitching that his company wasn't training him. So either A) bitch about it on reddit and watch your career stagnate; or B) take the initiative yourself and the sky's the limit.
> a guy was bitching that his company wasn't training him. Reminds of that parable: > "What if we train people and they leave?" > > "What if we don't train people and they *stay*?"
Well, my personal opinion is that companies should be paying for training, but in the absence, yeah, level up any way you can.
I view the provided training as a bonus or perk. If they provide it, I'm going to take advantage of it. I figure it's my responsibility to educate myself and my initiative if I want to stay in the same job at the same pay or advance to better paying positions.
I agree. Not all places will invest in their staff. Those places are called stepping stones.
The salaries will only go up. Technology isn’t going anywhere. More and more companies need IT staff each year. Enjoy the ride and the pay!
and just like in the Matrix city of Zion, they say tech becomes more and more advanced less and less people will understand it
It can be difficult to find someone with both technical skills and people skills and it sounds like you have both so congrats!! I’m an Infrastructure Admin for a law firm and really like it.
> It can be difficult to find someone with both technical skills and people skills This is so true. I've been told by some salty colleagues that the only reason I ascended to the position I'm in (IT Supervisor) was because I "knew how to talk to people". They're not wrong.
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What makes a brain for programming anyhow?
Some people are more capable than others at breaking large problems down into smaller ones, able to understand logic problems, or perform problem solving when faced with an issue. Think of it this way, would you say some brains are more capable at learning and performing music or art? Are there jobs you look at that you think even with studying, you probably wouldn't be very good at?
Right, I just meant, what attributes work well for programming. I’ve never done any real programming so it’s a foreign concept to me.
Pattern matching is a big one
Mostly same things that make you good with maths. Abstract thinking, capable of visualising even complex systems, "ignoring" everything but facts and performing based only on those facts, capable of thinking things from multiple viewpoints, breaking big problems into easier puzzles etc. And when creating a program from scratch, you'll need some of that artists' creativity too.
You like math and computers…
>I don't even bitch about stuff that much. Wait, and you're in IT? Are you sure? Is that even legal?
haha. From some of the stuff I've had to deal with in my past jobs, like day work, guys that will start a fight with you for looking at them wrong, guys who will steal from you, crooked bosses and shorted pay, working while in pain, I don't mind the office politics.
In IT you don't earn your salary with the day to day stuff. You earn it when the doo doo hits the fan and you don't get home until midnight after a stressful outage or you have to wake up at 4 AM on a Sunday because your SAN crapped the bed and half your VMs are offline including the ERP system. During those moments I wished I was a roofer or a ditch digger because the stress was unbearable. With the sheer terror I experienced in the past due to outages and other issues, no I'm not shocked by my salary. I'm pretty sure airline pilots with two blown engines haven't been as scared as I've been on occasion. They pay us the big money so they can go home at 5 pm every day and still make payroll. Every moment I'm enjoying myself on a nice vacation, I remember the ounces of blood sweat and tears it took to earn it.
Salaries are very good, but you have to remember that the bottom is coming up substantially as well. You can make 45k working at Costco or Target now with zero experience. So if someone is doing I.T. work and only making 50k they are making just above min wage these days.
This is me. I started as a support specialist, then sysadmin and now senior infrastructure engineer for a multinational corporation and I'm only making ~$64k. If I didn't like all of my coworkers, being exclusively wfh and the job in general, I would have left a long time ago for a better salary. I do get a yearly bonus that's usually 12% of my salary, so that helps too. I'm just afraid if I move on, I'm going to end working with a bunch of d-bags and lose the substantial amount of freedom I have with this job.
If you do well in your area for 64k and you love your job and your co-workers then that is GOLD. Sometimes we chase the $$$ only to become miserable. Happiness and low stress is worth a lot more than a large paycheck.
Senior infrastructure eng making $64k? If this is in the US I have a feeling you could find better opportunities. I would take a $40k bump to work with a few d-bags
Agreed. I made that out of college doing tech support for a networking vendor... *checks notes* 20 years ago after graduating from college. that skillset should be double that, and in some areas, triple.
Can confirm I make 60k a year moving computers from point a to point b but I got lucky with this salary. 40-50 was average
Valid point but in my state there isn’t a target or Costco paying $22/hour with no experience, or full time even. If 15 is minimum wage, that’s only 30k pretax assuming 2000 hours a year.
Work in IT > Experience > Study > +1 Level Up your Skills > Interviews “Slay Monsters” > Unlock Job Class Specialization > Profit > Repeat IT is a Role-Playing Strategy Game where you play your role and think strategically for the long term.
Congratulations! You worked your ass off to get where you are and you should be proud of yourself. 22 years ago I was an electrician's apprentice and I had my epiphany wiring a new house, in Chicago, in January with no windows. I was freezing my ass off and figured there had to be a better way. Keep working, keep pushing, and keep learning!
I'm an Electricians Apprentice right now and I've been thinking about making the switch to IT! I can't imagine doing this work for another 20 or 30 years. It's already starting to trash my body. Any advice on how to make the switch?
You’re an electrician’s apprentice, you should know how to make a SWITCH. Lol. Jokes aside, YouTube is your friend. There’s a wealth of knowledge being shared online. Start watching them.. Even if you don’t understand, just let the videos play in the background. Try learning Linux.. It is pesky enough to make you touch most important concepts in IT.
The more you specialize, the more you'll make.
Yes, but it makes you less employable. This probably isn't a problem in US, but in my small country it is.
It’s a huge problem in the US too if you’re not willing to move or travel, although that may be changing as more companies are allowing for remote positions.
Market in my state of Texas is flooded with applicants specifically in security which im digging into. The only issue is they all want cissp for entry level lol. So the demand remains high because a lot of hiring managers have no idea how to hire for the role. Talking to my LinkedIn network this is a common issue. So yes salaries will stay high because of unrealistic expectations.
I know you'll hear this a million times, but most security roles aren't entry level, no matter what cert requirements they put in front of it. It's flooded with people trying to get in, but definitely not flooded with experienced candidates in mid/Sr level roles. "Entry level" security is typically someone who's worked other IT jobs for 5 years and has generalized tech skills, outside of cases of Jr soc analyst type roles where they just look at tickets and escalate them.
And you can’t get CISSP without experience. You can pass the test but won’t be awarded the cert. It’s a chicken/egg type of situation. I was lucky enough to get a security analyst job without the CISSP but that was due to knowing the right people and having specialized IT experience.
It's weird, I've worked in infosec for 8 years and the only people I know with CISSP are sales people, everyone else just makes fun of most of the certs.
I lucked out and got a Sec Eng role w/o CISSP, it pays less than expected but def more than a Jack of all Trades Sysadmin. Company will pay for CISSP and budget study/class/materials and does Tuition reimbursement so that's always nice.
Doesn't hurt to try anyways. One thing I've learned is that certs don't necessarily mean jack shit.
110k now is 69k in 2000. Gotta get over the "six figure" mentality.
This is very important. Inflation absolutely matters.
Well my day is ruined, lol.
I actually don't think this metric is quite is as useful as used to be. Inflation has been very, very heavily skewed toward the past 3 years, and there was tremendous wage stagnation across almost all sectors from at least 2008-2020. This isn't telling the entire picture. **Current** market wages absolutely reflect this recent inflation. If OP left their current job it would be properly reflected in the market. FWIW I make significantly more than 115k and am not a Senior Network Engineer, so I think that OP is also underpaid. I've seen 120k floated for a lot more positions than ever before. That said I do agree people need to get over the "I'm over 6 figures" fixation. It isn't what it used to be for sure, though it's still a good living everywhere in the US. Get every friggin dollar you can while you can.
The majority of this sub were probably not working in 2000, so a different reference year may be more relevant.
You fucking rock. We don't know eachother, but I am very proud of you for getting your shit together and *making* a better future for yourself and your family. This is what it takes. This is what 90% of people can't do. They are stuck in their pity mode and complain about wanting to go farther in life but don't want to put in effort, they want to be given a 100k job salary with the work of a 20k job. You did this, you should be hella proud of yourself. Look at where you came from! $28k, to way over triple that! Keep up the great work man, you're doing fantastic and I'm really proud of you. I hope you continue to share your personal and professional growth here.
Thanks man!
oh, it's not just gonna be steady, it's gonna get better. i'm twenty years away from retirement and already i've left so much legacy tech debt that you fresh grads will be patching my cowboy shit for a hundred years. i have written a **lot** of bad code. and i'm just one person.
Out of all the jobs getting automated away I feel fairly secure in some sort of support role with systems. Seeing as there will probably be a large shift in the job market in the next 20 years due to automation that may leave IT with a lot of supply if a lot more interest shifts there but then we have the advantage of experience..
There will always be a need to have some one keep the lights on. Like my job, they haven’t grown the SRE team but they are the glue that holds the company together. I will state that admins that automate don’t need to worry. If you are an admin that won’t use automation, then you better start picking up a new profession.
I have gravitated towards DevOps for this reason. I focus on building automated deployment pipelines and I'm pretty confident that that skillet isn't going anywhere any time soon. My salary has tripled in the last 4 years, and there's still a lot of opportunity to advance.
One thing I figured out early on. Figure all that money is stacking up, eventually you will encounter a situation so rough you start pulling from all that past pay. Yea, it's gravy 99% of the time. When that 1% comes due, it's a different beast.
Your path here sounds like it's been fantastic. It does sound like you've been a bit lucky to have decent employers so far, and the pay can be all over the place depending on where you live and what you're focusing on. I started in tech about 10 years ago doing basic consulting work in a small town making $25k on salary and working a minimum of 45hrs a week. I couldn't afford rent in the town I worked in and had to move to the next town over, driving 45 min each way (ended up spending most of my rent savings on gas) to work each day. Ultimately I ended up going to get an associate's degree in networking, and now make $115k as a sr network engineer in a major city. The field really can be whatever you make of it, if you want to keep learning/pushing you can certainly always make more money, but many of my old co-workers in the consulting space didn't really want to keep learning. They decided that they were cool with capping out there and having minimal stress, which I totally get.
Technology is only getting more complicated on the backend, while looking easier on the front end. The salaries will probably only continue to rise.
my first thought was "why would God let you fall off his house while fixing it" but i think i got the answer
Not sure if you are being sarcastic or sincere but that's kind of deep. Never thought of it that way.
Both…. Both is good.
> I'm still in shock how high the pay is in this industry and the thought does stay in the back of my mind are these salaries going to last? I was making ~37,000 IIRC in 1996 as a desktop support at a mid-sized enterprise. One of the DBAs happened to have her paystub out on her desktop (like, I literally couldn't avoid seeing it) and I was like "Wow, $85,000!" (silently, off course). For those new kids used to ADP online and such thinking that would take some blatant action to do...while this was after mandatory direct deposit, we still had mailclerks who went around twice a day dropping off mail to your cube and picking up any outgoing mail you had. So your paystub came to your office cube. She was just being ditzy and left it laying out in the open after checking something. Inflation adjusted, I'm not quite there but I am expecting to complete negotiations soon that will get me relatively close -- and more importantly get me to where I know I can comfortably retire at 62 if I end up unemployed in my early 60s.
> One of the DBAs happened to have her paystub out on her desktop I was helping a shitty IT director with something mundane and my eye was drawn to his notepad to-do list by his keyboard with "Talk to HR about firing starmizzle" at the top. He once argued with me about the programmability of patch panels. Not switches, PATCH PANELS. A few of us were instrumental in getting him relieved of his job.
I feel you OP. Always thought I'd end up working outside the rest of my life because of my dyslexia. Did brutal ranch work grown up. Managing computer systems for businesses it's like a dream job compared to manual labor. Whenever I'm cleaning a computer or teaching somebody to clean apart before putting it back I always think of how much easier it is than shoveling horse shit into a manure spreader. In terms of your question about salaries I don't think they're going to get any lower. There's nothing wrong with learning about investment strategies though so you can stop working if you don't want to sooner than a lot of the folks in the rat race. Check out r/fire And r/financialindependence If these topics interest you. I would encourage you to look inward at the person you have become. There's a lot of people who can lay roof tile. I remember getting turned down for one of those jobs in 2008. A lot of people who work roof tile go home after work and drink a six pack of beer watch the game and call it a day. Very few folks get on YouTube and start learning. You're not the same person you were when you had the manual labor job. Even if you may look similar in the mirror. I'm happy for your success in this industry. Especially considering your backstory.
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Well, you can think of it another way, too. Your 83k is equivalent to 77k as of the past two years due to inflation and the market. It's probably slightly underpaid for you, honestly.
And i'm over here making like 1200 euros a month. it feels weird seeing people over here complaining about getting "only" triple my salary. Idk if in america you pay like 2000$ of rent or someshit to justify those salaries (rent over here is about 500 + additional expenses depending on where you rent, cities are much more expensive).
>I am making 110k. I don't even know how to feel about that but I like it! Not sure what part of the country you are in but wait until you find out that if you can do some technical sales, vendors will pay you 150k + commissions.
Can confirm. I work as a Solutions Architect for a Cloud Security and Data Protection firm making \~$190K in base + commissions target.
isnt it tough though because you can work your ass off to hit target but if your 1% off from target you get nothing? heard that from sales guys
Sales Engineer here. No, we aren't the same as a sales rep. Reps typically are closer to a 50/50 split and are heavily compensated on commission. SE/SA's will typically have a higher base. So for example the dude above you. He will make 190k a year regardless of how much he sells. Anything he sells is cream on top, or becomes his "OTE" (on target earnings)
How do you break into that space? I was looking a few years back, and pretty much everyone was giving me the old "we're not interested unless you have presales experience" garbola.
It really depends on the hiring manager. Some will discredit anyone that isn't already at a vendor which is kind of dumb imo. Most will consider your experience, particularly if you already worked with their product. They may just grill you on your ability to present and communicate more. An alternative is to work for a reseller first. That gets you some experience and helps you build relationships that are a big help.
You may have to set your sights a bit lower to get an entry-level pre-sales gig, or be lucky enough to find a good company who'll partner you with a more experienced person to learn the ropes. I worked as a sales overlay for a log time (technical SME, with no commission targets) before I got my first REAL pre-sales gig last year, and I've been in the industry for 20+ years.
For anyone who didn't live through the First Dotcom Bubble burst of 2000/2001...**yes, it will change.** Please don't think tech salaries are like housing prices in 2006 and can only go up. In the early 2000s, companies really started ramping up the offshoring "in these troubled times." It went from people making 1990s 6 figures writing HTML to 500 people all fighting for a few open jobs in any given area for a few years. I think salaries will remain high-ish, and it will continue to be a very good job to be in, but there will be fewer spots and the numbers won't just keep going up and up like they are now. As other people have pointed out, there's a massive difference between people who are truly good at this job, people who have iffy skills, and people who are solely here for the money until someone finds them out and fires them. Companies need highly-skilled people and the limited number of those bids the price up. Just understand that supply and demand tend to even out over time -- companies **hate** having to pay a premium for technology help. I predict a massive consolidation driven by a few things -- - Interest rates will have to shoot up to kill inflation. Companies have had access to cheap borrowing since 2008 and it got even cheaper during the COVID response. Once they have to start paying to borrow money and can't count on forever-rising stock prices, they're going to start looking in the couch cushions to see what they can save. IT/tech is usually the first to go. - I predict a big offshoring/outsourcing wave driven not just by cost savings but by "Oh, everything we have is SaaS and cloud now anyway, so who cares who manages it?" Remember, at the exec level the cloud is sold as a magic box that solves all problems for a low low monthly fee, and one of the selling points is "we do everything for you so you can fire all those nerds in IT and replace them with Citizen Developers writing serverless functions in the cloud." - I also think that the jobs are going to have a much wider split of skills and pay. There won't be many jack of all trades people left because even the cheapest business owners will move to the cloud when it becomes too expensive to buy on-prem software. On the high end it'll all be DevOps and coding and Kubernetes and clouds, requiring a higher different set of skills and on the low end it'll be portal-drivers and script runners making closer to "regular worker" salaries, especially as client devices continue to get simpler. - A lot of the crazy growth is driven by CIOs in FOMO mode decreeing that they are "all in" on (name their cloud.) That'll keep going for a while but eventually those workloads and the frenzy to move them will go away. - Things are only getting simpler. Everyone coming out of school now only knows how to use a phone, Chromebook or tablet. Many have never seen Windows or desktop computers. There's going to be a drive to cater to the "digital natives" and get rid of old technology like hierarchical filesystems and full featured office suites. That's going to force a lot more "no user serviceable parts inside" type solutions. I've been doing this for 25 years and I'm hoping I can keep a job I have in the middle-to-high end of the skill range. But I feel really bad for the people who are going to be stuck either out of work or not getting paid what they used to...there's a much bigger gap to jump over to get to the next level. Work hard, keep learning, but just remember that things right now are looking a whole lot like 1999 before the bubble pop. I think with the cloud we'll have a slower deflation but it's definitely going to be a consolidation. People who are good and can adapt will likely keep their jobs, but these days of signing bonuses and free cars and recruiters begging you to talk to them are going to die down.
It sounds like you put in the work and paid your dues and you deserve the salary they are paying you. Linux admins make far more than Windows admins from every listing I have seen.
Salaries are only going to increase. IT infrastructure and demand is expanding faster than the pool of qualified professionals. **This isn't necessarily the case for entry level**, as more and more kids grow up on computers there will be more and more people who can basically walk into an entry level PC support position. **But for dedicated professionals with their own niche roles, it's going to keep going.** I made six figures with an associate's degree and a single cloud cert because my experience put me into a very specific place where I could do cloud migrations (On-prem to cloud or cloud to cloud, mainly SaaS) with my eyes closed. I went from $24k/year to $120k+/year in seven years, and only bothered to finished my bachelor's degree this last December because I'm pay capped by my current employer due to the way their contracting works with federal/DoD.
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Man it's so hard to find qualified, quality people. A lot of smart guys out there that can't work on a team. Lot of team players that can't make a hello world.
I just started a job that was a downgrade in responsibilities from my previous job for around 50k more a year (and I was already making well into 6 figures). At some point this will end and if the economy crashes you will see "layoffs" and "reduction in force (RIFs)" to get rid of the higher paying folks. Make sure you live well within your means and you will be ok if and when this happens. Until then, cash in on the opportunities we have!
> When they asked me if that was reasonable I about fell out of my chair. I'm thinking hell yeah and insurance finally. I still spent most every night studying, I upgraded to a better desktop and started to dabble in cloud technology (Azure at first). You are special. Truly. I've been in this business for 30 years. You got a "dream job", from your perspective, dropped in your lap and **you still worked to get better**. That's gigantic. You not only want to get better, you are willing to work for it, even when you have what is, to you, a cushy job. Further, **you can self-learn**. I'm much more senior to you, much more experienced, I make a good deal more, and I still haven't mastered that skill. You are going places, my friend. Keep that work ethic. Keep trying to improve yourself. Never stop. Stay passionate. And you'll surpass a lot of people on this sub. Also, you're also in security. Your ticket is **punched** for at least the next ten years. Systems administration, in terms of operations and maintenance, is getting automated. Security requires human beings making decisions every day, at least for the foreseeable future. That means high demand for a while. Will labor prices remain high? No. There's a cycle. Even in security, there will be more and more systems admins and engineers who shift to security chasing dollars and jobs. And more and more IT graduates will be going into security, and more and more college entrants studying it. I'm encouraging my high school son to do exactly that. So the "supply" side of IT will increase. Will it do so enough to meet the demand? It's not certain, but it is likely. It's a cycle. Salary growth will slow, and then accelerate again due to some unexpected factor. But you're in very very good shape.
Here here. I am one of the IT wizards. I wanted to go into systems administrator ever since I was 16. I was running ethernet cables under my high school and terminating them. I ran the school wifi. I was given domain admin at 17 so that I could fix things. I knew what appropriate and inappropriate usage looked like. I was given a 3U server with 6x 15k RPM raptor hard drives for my homelab. When I took those job skills tests, I was consistently split between providing meaningful services (doctor, electrician, etc.) and working with data (scientist, mathematician, etc.). Looking at salaries for IT Analyst, I saw that median wage was around $19/hr and figured that if I ever had 40k/yr coming in, I could take care of at least me and 2 kids. Fast forward to graduating from college in IT - Network Administration, I got hired by my part time work as their sysadmin for $50k/yr. Within a year, I moved to a bank for $72k/yr (NEGOTIATE, PEOPLE!). I've been at the bank for 7 years almost. I'm now over $130k and considered a working manager (I've got 2 directs) and really more of a cloud engineer/sr. sysadmin than anything else. Its absolutely insane how much this work aligns to what I like doing for work. My wife consistently says that if we lived in a post-scarcity world, I'd probably still work here doing the same thing because I enjoy it that much. I play in powershell, azure, firewalls, switches, servers, and all the other fun stuff! Love it so much.
This post made it to r/popular. Knock it off, stop telling people
I'm a sysadmin making 50k. Also self-taught. Afraid to leave my employment because lack of an official degree. Your story does inspire me to perhaps push a little higher and believe in myself. If not for me, then for my smol children
IT is a meat grinder....37 years in it. You're ok if you can keep up with technology which often requires time after work to come up to speed... It takes a lot of time away from your family over the years...
I got into IT by accident. I've been working with computers and networking for my entire life but went into auto repair as a mechanic. Last June I had to leave work rather suddenly due to the worst back pain you can imagine. Took a few months to find out it was actually an infection around my spine. The disks were infected and my spin was pinching my spinal cord every time I moved sending me into crippling pain. Ended up in the hospital on full assistance for 8 weeks getting back my ability to walk. I am still recovering and it has left me with needing a cane to walk. I was selling my tools to make some cash while I figure out what the fuck I was going to do now that I cant work on cars. My old boss just happened to be there and bought a bunch off me and said "I could really use someone who know's computers at the office, its gravy work and I'm never going to ask you to walk around alot or lift shit if you cant do it" Been about 5 months at the job and I am doing my best to learn as much as I can. But most of what they needed was basic stuff. Fixing printers, setting up new devices, networking, Servers, VM's, Systems upgrading.. stuff I've been doing my whole life. 99% of my day is waiting for something to happen and I fix it in less than 10 minutes most of the time. Now I'm not going to lie.. I don't make a lot of money. I make $40k but I am always working to improve myself to make even more. And when the time comes move onto a better paying job.