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NippleFloss posted:$70 an hour is very doable in IT and doesn't require cleaning up poo poo (actual, non-metaphorical poo poo) or decades or seniority. I wouldn't be doing it to do nursing duties. I'd be getting into Clinical Inforaticist position. Basically a liason between Doctors/Nurses and EMR. I'd likely have to be teaching them how to use the software, open tickets to the vendor, stuff like that. From what I can tell of our current CI, the majority of their job is telling the users "That's not my job, call I.T.!".
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Apr 2, 2015 21:34
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Tab8715 posted:Doing what exactly? I've worked with/met several IT Sec people that make that or more. btw they all hate their jobs but think the money is worth the borderline suicidal feelings they get on the way home from work
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Apr 2, 2015 21:34
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You can definitely make $70 an hour at least in the short term if you've got even moderate skills/experience. All the jobs require sacrifice of some sort and have terrible incidentals like being a consultant, living in an expensive area, lots of travel, no vacation, short contract or some combination. Basically, all the things that make a terrible job that can only attract talent by paying a crazy-good wage.
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Apr 2, 2015 21:39
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GreenNight posted:You don't understand. Just because it's protected doesn't mean they won't find another reason to fire you. Employment law is a nuanced subject and there are many protections afforded for cases like this. If you are fired for discussing your salary with your coworkers I would recommend speaking with an lawyer. Generally a consultation is free and takes little time. You could be entitled to back pay, future pay, damages for emotional distress, expenses related to medical/psychological treatment, and in some cases punitive damages. There is no reason to avoid talking about your salary for fear of being fired in the US.
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Apr 2, 2015 21:40
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TWBalls posted:I wouldn't be doing it to do nursing duties. I'd be getting into Clinical Inforaticist position. Basically a liason between Doctors/Nurses and EMR. I'd likely have to be teaching them how to use the software, open tickets to the vendor, stuff like that. From what I can tell of our current CI, the majority of their job is telling the users "That's not my job, call I.T.!". The nurses that do that make 88k here at the county jail. Their workload is ridiculously easy and yes that is exactly what they say as I stand right there in front of them
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Apr 2, 2015 21:46
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Bhodi posted:You can definitely make $70 an hour at least in the short term if you've got even moderate skills/experience. All the jobs require sacrifice of some sort and have terrible incidentals like being a consultant, living in an expensive area, lots of travel, no vacation, short contract or some combination. Pretty much this. It's probably doable in a non-terrible job as a senior engineer someplace like SF or NYC. But due to the absurd cost of living in those areas, it's not like you're making it rain in the club every night even at $150k/year  It's a very comfortable upper middle class living in the same way $90k is in Boise or something. The money doesn't go as far when the median home price in your zip code is over $1M.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:07
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Tab8715 posted:Doing what exactly? I know DBAs, storage admins, windows admins, network engineers, professional services, consultants, all who make around that 150k mark. And most were under 40. Some was contract work (w-2, long term), some was salary. Not in NOVA or California either, it's easy to go even higher there. Not everyone is going to hit that point but if you actively seek new opportunities, constantly polish your skill set, and negotiate well it's definitely in reach. The certs will help, but aren't a requirement.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:17
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Docjowles posted:It's probably doable in a non-terrible job as a senior engineer someplace like SF or NYC. It's doable in non-terrible jobs in lower cost of living areas too, I assure you. Not every market can support it, but you don't have to be in SF or NYC to make that, and seniors in those areas are often making more than that. Bhodi posted:All the jobs require sacrifice of some sort and have terrible incidentals like being a consultant, living in an expensive area, lots of travel, no vacation, short contract or some combination. This is not really true in my experience. Some jobs are like that, some aren't. If you go to every interview with the mindset that you're going to have to trade money for a sane work/life balance you're not setting yourself up very well to negotiate. You can be paid well and also have a nice work/life balance, and you can do it without needed a three hour commute or a million dollar home. It requires a certain amount of luck, but if you write off the idea completely you'll stop looking for those opportunities. YOLOsubmarine fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 22:40
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Quote is not edit.
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Apr 2, 2015 22:45
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A few minutes on glassdoor will give you a range and if they're offering a number that seems way high for the region and job, there's a hook in that bait. If the hook isn't obvious in the interview, it will probably become obvious shortly afterwards. If you're trying to demand a number way outside of that range you're very likely walking from excellent opportunities because of unrealistic expectations. And a company who actually agrees? See first sentence. I won't say you're giving bad advice necessarily but when you make comments like "I've literally never worn a suit to an interview and also only had one person wear a suit to an interview with me." I feel you're living in a bubble and your experience isn't consistent with mine or most anyone else I know working in IT. Sure, there are plenty of people making ~150k w2 w/ no strings but they are all senior level at the peak of their career and I don't think that's relevant to the audience you're giving advice to, nor should anyone compare themselves to them except as a career goal to shoot for. FTR, personally I qualify a VAR sales consultant as a gigantic hook and I wouldn't take that job even if it offered 175k+ (assuming that's still what you do) because of the travel, volatility, and performance-oriented nature of the job. You may love it but for me and many others there are serious negatives that must be offset by increased compensation. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 22:53
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Tab8715 posted:Doing what exactly? Given the amount that I make as a security engineer consultant with a CCNP, I'm estimating that our solutions architects with a CCIE probably make somewhere in the $180-200k range. To that end, a lot of the money right now it is in security and SDN (VNX, etc.). In the wake of several the several massive security incidents of the past several years, demand for security engineers has skyrocketed while the supply has stayed relatively low. There's a bit more involved beyond normal network engineering, particular a bit more programming and web development knowledge, but you'll make about 50-100% more than your peers who stayed vanilla route and switch. Staying away from drugs for a few years helps, too, because a number of your clients are guaranteed to require a clearance of some level.
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Apr 2, 2015 23:05
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Security = printing money right now Consultant = money firehose CCIE = money comes in person-sized rolls delivered by forklifts NoVA = +20% regional printing adjustment Clearance = mega money multiplier The clearance thing is especially true for senior-level people with proven certs like CCIE because of the astonishing lack of competency in the government field. You check all the boxes, you're basically a unicorn that can write your own paycheck. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 2, 2015 |
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Apr 2, 2015 23:13
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Bhodi posted:A few minutes on glassdoor will give you a range and if they're offering a number that seems way high for the region and job, there's a hook in that bait. If the hook isn't obvious in the interview, it will probably become obvious shortly afterwards. Glassdoor is all but useless for anything other than the barest of comparisons or for comparing positions within the same company with a lot of reports because IT job titles are almost completely meaningless and the same title will have vastly different roles and responsibilities between two different companies, and different pay scales to match. I don't think it's feasible for everyone in IT to make $150k a year but to say that you've gotta sell your life to do it is equally bad advice because there are plenty of counter examples. No, you're not going to do it in your first job out of help desk, but you can be "senior" in IT in half a decade if you're willing to keep learning so it's not like it's this distant unattainable goal for anyone who is still early in their career. I tend to think that this thread goes overboard "with the all jobs suck, gotta drink to survive" mentality and it creates this perception that the norm is to be underpaid, under-appreciated and over-worked. Which employers love because then if they merely do one or two of the three they look great by comparison. A little positivity seems like a nice counter-weight to the negativity and may help someone decide to stick with their career or take some chances to find something better, whether that be better money or better work-life balance. And the suit-or-no-suit thing is a dumb derail because adults should be able to figure that out on their own, but the expectations there differ wildly by region and it's got nothing to do with living in a bubble.
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Apr 2, 2015 23:15
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You're suggesting there are 150k jobs, for someone in their mid twenties who considers themselves senior, in somewhere with a low cost of living (raleigh? austin?) market doing a moderate work day with good work/life balance and benefits? And there are enough jobs out there like that that it's worth turning down offers until you find one? Okay, good luck with that.
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Apr 2, 2015 23:32
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Bhodi posted:You're suggesting there are 150k jobs, for someone in their mid twenties who considers themselves senior, in somewhere with a low cost of living (raleigh? austin?) market doing a moderate work day with good work/life balance and benefits? And there are enough jobs out there like that that it's worth turning down offers until you find one? No, I'm suggesting that there are jobs like that out there that those people will eventually be able to get with more experience, so getting a nursing degree just to get to make $70/hr isn't necessary, which is how this whole conversation started. I do know people who are in that range in their late 20s in Portland and Seattle, but it's not a common thing. But by the time you've got ten good years under your belt it's certainly possible. And why would you turn down offers to wait for a job that may not exist right now? Move jobs when it makes sense for monetary or career advancement reasons. If you take a job and a then another great one comes along a year later then take the new job. As long as you're not job hopping every six months it'll be fine.
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Apr 2, 2015 23:47
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Well, that's true. I think we can meet somewhere in the middle; you seem more like an optimist whereas I feel more of a pessimist in this sort of thing. It just sucks to have someone pass on a job because it wasn't perfect or it didn't give the extra 5k they were looking for or whatever. Dreams are important to have, but sometimes you just make the best of what you've got. Once you have a good 10 years, if money is really that important to you, you've probably already gravitated to jobs that pay more at the expense of other, less tangible benefits. It's definitely important to keep moving, in whatever direction you feel is best for your own self and personality.
Bhodi fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 02:19
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Bhodi posted:You're suggesting there are 150k jobs, for someone in their mid twenties who considers themselves senior, in somewhere with a low cost of living (raleigh? austin?) market doing a moderate work day with good work/life balance and benefits? And there are enough jobs out there like that that it's worth turning down offers until you find one? There are jobs like that in Minneapolis, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, and probably more. I know for sure Raleigh also has them. Mid-20s, no, or probably not, since you need to have expert-level knowledge of multiple problem domains, and that's just not likely until your late 20s or early 30s, assuming you've been on the ball with learning, pushing yourself, and lucky with jobs (or job changes). Or to work in a special snowflake field like health informatics
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Apr 3, 2015 02:33
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There's a tendency for IT folks to undermarket themselves and dismiss the "business" part of IT. In the past I knew of identical positions where one company paid $10/h for basic helpdesk and another $17/h with benefits. Sometimes you just got to shop.
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Apr 3, 2015 03:09
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NippleFloss posted:I know DBAs, storage admins, windows admins, network engineers, professional services, consultants, all who make around that 150k mark. And most were under 40. Tat wasn't correct but I should have said experienced Network Admins, Windows Admins, Linux Admins... From my personal experience for those making enormous sums it seems that they have a 4-Year MIS/CompSci Degree and aren't developers but know how to program well. Also, an increase in politics but I guess that's just with every job. For the more senior staff in the thread - what does your actual day-to-day look like? Is your calendar full of meetings for upgrade planning? Do you guys have tickets?
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Apr 3, 2015 03:45
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orange sky posted:Working in IT 3.0: Usually 300-400ms ping with occasionally noticeable packet loss. Holy poo poo am I learning about this. I am not an SQL expert...I'm a hardware guy who the client had to teach the basics of SQL so I could free up the more senior DBAs for other work. There is a department in this bank that is a perfect excrement storm: they are a self-admining department that designs and implements their own SQL jobs, queries and such but doesn't manage the equipment. Thus, if they design utterly moronic queries that are inefficient, non-indexed (yes, none of their tables have indexes, even if they have +1M registers) and just plain wrong, its us that have to deal with the endless whining about slow performance and storage problems (those assholes have gone from requiring 3 TB to 6 TB in less than a year, no, they don't know how much data they generate and cannot estimate growth). What's worse, they are the only department that whines about losing RDP sessions and getting disconnections from the database. I've had the telecoms people watching over them, I've hawked on them but the problems only happen when we are not watching. I used to read the BoFH stories as humor...now I'm using them for inspiration. The bank would probably get more bang for their buck if I picked up a carbon monoxide cylinder and gassed them like badgers.
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Apr 3, 2015 04:13
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Tab8715 posted:Tat wasn't correct but I should have said experienced Network Admins, Windows Admins, Linux Admins... Almost never on tickets. I do get issues escalated to me internal to our group, but more on a consultancy with the ticket owner. Same for sev 1 issues (sometimes I'll just take the ticket off Tier2/3 hands completely). Right now my day-to-day is actually anomalous. I'm in the midst of a relocation and we're taking advantage of that to re-design our backend support framework. So, I'm in almost 100% DO-NOT-KNOCK-TOP-SEKRET-WERK mode right now. Currently, I'm spinning up a bunch of Proof-of-Concept solutions on a bunch of VMs and piloting them on our internal networks and services. This also requires me to be involved in a lot of working groups since the framework touches a lot things, so I'd say my day right now is about 5-6 hours of actually doing stuff and 3-4 hours of meetings. When I get some time to breathe, I'm also developing a security framework and SOC as an additional service offering. This is something I've actually done before at a previous job and I'm currently shopping around for a company champion to try to get upper management buy-in. Now this is unusual, and the current workload won't last very long. If it did, that means I'm doing something wrong and I either need to get some minions attached to the project work, or re-evaluate my priorities. I don't mind (as a short-term thing) because I'm legit excited about these two projects right now. Plus, things like bonuses and comp-time make up for the occasional stretches of 10-12 hour days. Still manage to keep things M-F and try not to "work" on weekends. My NORMAL work-day involves some mentoring of Tier2 guys, consulting internally on issues, status meetings for various accounts and being available as an SME. Occasionally I'll work directly with customers (internal or external) to resolve an issue that doesn't seem to be progressing towards a solution. I'm not going to say what I make, but I will say it's competitive for what I do and I'm satisfied with my compensation. I don't have a degree, and while my trajectory hasn't seemed to stall, I think it did actually affect me when I starting out and I didn't have a lot experience under my belt. I probably ended up being help-desk and network technician far longer than I normally would have if I'd had a BS or something similar. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 04:35
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flosofl posted:This also requires me to be involved in a lot of working groups since the framework touches a lot things, so I'd say my day right now is about 5-6 hours of actually doing stuff and 3-4 hours of meetings. What do you actually do though? Framework of what exactly?
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Apr 3, 2015 04:39
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Tab8715 posted:What do you actually do though? Framework of what exactly? I've posted about this before in this thread. This is more or less what I did in the beginning of it. Now I'm at the stage of "let's install some small scale PoC systems" which is pretty much what you think. Installing the various systems and have them basically shadow what the current production system does, but on a smaller scale. This is done in parallel with the production systems and also with other PoC built with other vendor components, so it's a "will this new design work?" combined with a vendor showdown testing period. And it's not just me, it several people across multiple disciplines putting this together. Thank god for competent Project Managers. Otherwise we'd still be in the "Alpha Nerds hung up on definitions" phase of the project. EDIT: I'm sorry I didn't address "framework" question. Think of the "framework" as what we hang our services on. So basically, everything that is needed to deliver what the customer is asking us for. The tools, workflows, escalation paths, etc.. For internal IT, just substitute "customer" with "our company". From the customers or non IT departments, the framework is the big black box the IT departments use to allow everyone else to do their jobs. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 04:55
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Tab8715 posted:For the more senior staff in the thread - what does your actual day-to-day look like? Is your calendar full of meetings for upgrade planning? Do you guys have tickets? I'd say my time is 10% management duties (company management meetings, part time staff/contractor pay approval, etc), 70% internal IT projects, 10% handling tickets I don't trust helpdesk to handle yet, 10% other misc crap like phones and email admin. We're a small company though so it's one of those "many hats" situations. Sheep fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 04:58
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Developer land is currently mostly self-directed with a weekly upstream meeting, weekly downstream meeting, and a few planning calls (group, department, org) in the middle, plus a call with QA and business stakeholders. This is the least amount of meetings I've had at any job, and it used to be scrum, which was worse. Prior to this, in a sr admin/engineering role, it was more internal hired gun. There were a few long-term projects with weekly or biweekly calls, but I mostly got jumped into the middle of calls about projects I'd never heard of as a subject matter expert for VMware or RHEL. Meetings took probably 20% of my week. The rest was internal process improvement (devops stuff, helping our build engineering team, interfacing with on-site vendor consultants who needed a local expert, and figuring out in-place RHEL upgrades). As a general rule, I was too valuable to see a project through, both technically and financially, so I got bounced around doing research, proofs of concepts, and the like. Want server life cycle management? I'd research options, present them to business stakeholders, do a first run of the one we picked (automation, integration with the existing infrastructure, demo, and hand off after it succeeded on the first batch of production servers, staying on the calls and emails for a few weeks to make sure it went well). Usually a few at a time. Plus mentoring. This obviously needs a big company, though, and I have no idea what seniors at small shops do, though I imagine it's similar. You should be an escalation if the normal admins can't figure it out, not getting tickets or doing daily chores (server builds, etc)
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Apr 3, 2015 05:10
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TWBalls posted:I wouldn't be doing it to do nursing duties. I'd be getting into Clinical Inforaticist position. Basically a liason between Doctors/Nurses and EMR. I'd likely have to be teaching them how to use the software, open tickets to the vendor, stuff like that. From what I can tell of our current CI, the majority of their job is telling the users "That's not my job, call I.T.!". TWBalls posted:Thanks to HR leaving paperwork right out in the open, I know of at least one nurse that makes a bit more than this. Makes me want to start taking nursing classes. Come visit us in the Nurse & Nursing School Megathread: Do go, lots of jobs, die loved. As someone above mentioned, you would be cleaning up lots of poo poo. Literally. And you more than likely wouldn't land a Clinical Informatics position until you spent a year or two bedside. I'm a registered nurse and a Clinical Informatics Analyst, and I'm pretty much living the dream. 
Hughmoris fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Apr 3, 2015 |
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Apr 3, 2015 05:55
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Tab8715 posted:Tat wasn't correct but I should have said experienced Network Admins, Windows Admins, Linux Admins... There's a lot more to IT than operations. There's engineering, pre-sales, post-sales, project management, development, etc. System administration isn't the only path though most people will spend at least some time doing that. The customer to vendor/VAR pipeline can be pretty lucrative though. As far as my day to day, I'm a consultant, so some weeks I'm doing post-sales, some days I'm doing pre-sales, and some days I'm sitting at home doing nothing at all.
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Apr 3, 2015 06:02
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evol262 posted:Or to work in a special snowflake field like health informatics You rang? Still keeping my fingers overly-optimistically crossed that we get our own BA soon. I hate running client reports. My boss announced to the entire team today that I'm eligible for the merit increases this year as well (I've been here under a year). Cross your fingers please, goons. Kids' activities don't pay for themselves. Also, we've been asked to submit an honest review on Glassdoor. I'm considering how honest I can go there without basically signing it with my name.
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Apr 3, 2015 06:26
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Hey, i was the "goon in a well" last year. Where I didnt't get paid for almost a year. Like I already said back then. I quit the job. spent the following year just studying. I have gotten my money back after countless calls. Took awhile but I got paid in the end. Really wanted to thank you all for guiding me in the right direction. and I really appreciate the people who wanted to help me lawyer up. I am now doing my last internship. I'm doing so well there that they want to keep me, but they need to check their budget for the next 3 years.I'm having another meeting with my manager and the senior who runs the IT department to talk about the options that are available to working here. My colleagues are the ones who recommended me to the department manager. And a guy who is detached at the company i'm having my internship at, recommended me to his boss. Gave me his boss's number and told me to call him. I did and he asked me to send in my resume. After I did that, they wanted to meet me. So I had an interview with them . It went really well. the only problem is they only work with people who at least have 4 years of experience. They'll call me next week to let me know. At this point i have 2 company's that are interested in me. The one i'm having my internship at, is really fun and awesome to work for. Really awesome projects. The other one seems to be really good aswell. Thought they don't take starters Maybe I can have my 1st 
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Apr 3, 2015 08:11
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Bhodi posted:Security = printing money right now a good post
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Apr 3, 2015 14:47
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Gyshall posted:a good post
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Apr 3, 2015 18:36
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I'm not sure what the unixbeards and ccies here earn but their billable hours are outrageous.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:42
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Downside: You actually have to pass the CCIE. I have an old co-worker who's slammed his face into that wall three times. That third failure has got to sting.
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Apr 3, 2015 19:51
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Bhodi posted:Downside: You actually have to pass the CCIE. I have an old co-worker who's slammed his face into that wall three times. That third failure has got to sting. Well to be fair, it has a reputation of being a certification that is *crazy* hard to get. But yeah, I think after the 2nd time I'd reevaluate my study habits and test taking strategy.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:13
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I'd like to know enough to even sign up for that test - but yeah, pass it. vvv 10 years and a lot of alcohol.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:21
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Vague question here but what would be the typical career path or certification ladder to go from help desk with an A+ to CCIE?
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Apr 3, 2015 21:21
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Hughmoris posted:Vague question here but what would be the typical career path or certification ladder to go from help desk with an A+ to CCIE? A+ has little or nothing to do with the CCIE but I think it'd be CCNA-CCNP-CCIE with years of professional networking experience.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:24
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So I think this is the right place to post this. I'm just finishing up week two of my first ever IT job as general support for our company. Don't ask me how I got here, because I have no education, no certifications, and no prior experience, but I convinced them to give me the job. My first project to work on while I have downtime is to get Autotask implemented. It looks like we purchased it a year ago and some stuff has been set up, but not too much. We have a total of 7 IT people in two geographical locations who would be responding to tickets, and probably about 20-30 users submitting tickets since we are limiting it to managers only. I've been digging through the documentation for the past week or so, playing around and testing things out, and I think I have a pretty good handle on how it works. It is definitely way overkill for what we need, but we already paid for it and currently have no ticketing system, everything runs through email. I guess what I want to know is does anyone have any tips before I really get into configuring?
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Apr 3, 2015 21:27
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Bhodi posted:Downside: You actually have to pass the CCIE. I have an old co-worker who's slammed his face into that wall three times. That third failure has got to sting. Failures are pretty demoralizing because you don't find out for sometimes several days if you passed or failed! I took it the first time on a Friday expecting to have failed and when I got the notice at like 2am that I did it was a kick in the balls. The second time around I again took it on a Friday. I frantically mashed F5 on the status check page until it locked me out of the system for 48 hours. I was pretty sure I passed and I found out like 3 days later that I did. Those days were very very long.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:31
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1000101 posted:Failures are pretty demoralizing because you don't find out for sometimes several days if you passed or failed! I took it the first time on a Friday expecting to have failed and when I got the notice at like 2am that I did it was a kick in the balls. Yeah, the CISSP is like that as well (and the other ISC^2 certs), but getting a coworker to vouch for your experience is probably harder than the exam for that one. In fact the only reason I still have it is because it's super easy to get the re-cert waived as long as you can submit CPEs to show you are still "actively learning". All the other certs I have like the GIAC ones, you get the results as soon as you answer the last question. The SEC5XX and SEC6XX GIACs and the CWNA were probably the more challenging ones I've personally taken.
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Apr 3, 2015 21:41
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