Teach me so I can make 100k and buy my lambo!
In b4 lesson involves how to park sweet car in garage a bunch while on biz trips. 
Find something you enjoy doing and get good at it?
Also if you’re in IT having people/soft skills and technical skills is a huge win lots of highly technical people have 0 soft skills and it holds them back.
Yeah, the more and more stories I hear about “guys that a company hires” to do X job, but really doesn’t know X that well, the better of I feel about myself. I’m in the situation where our IT is small so you kind of have to overlap skills and areas to get what you need done. My current position suggests a SharePoint admin, but I’ve really only taken 1 (5-day) class on it. I know almost all the staff and faculty on campus on a personal level. They call me because they don’t want to deal with other techs or because I can help them understand something technical in a non-technical way. Anyway, I’d love to get more experience in Networking and servers as it’s really not something I had to deal with prior to Sharepoint.
Another good point by LZ. Soft skills are very rare and companies that have engineers like to put them in front of people. If you are one that works out of a dungeon and have 0 skills, you are going no where. A biggest compliment you can get in your field is “You don’t seem like an IT guy”. Social, networking, and having a multi vendor approach to projects is big. Don’t fall into the vendor mold where every solution you have is a single vendor and that is all you know.
Just got a thing from monster for a SQL DBA/System Administrator…as in the same position. Better pay Eleventy Billion dollars.
Lots of positions still open!
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100k+ I can confirm is absolutely possible but does require some experience under your belt. A lot of of the big companies here will pay very well for the right people.
Honestly what I have seen lately in IT is “who ya know” > “what you know”. Which might work for some people but I would think that is a dangerous line to tip toe.
Said lady has messaged me a few times on Linked In but none of the positions or work really caught my eye. I think with any career, not just IT, if you don’t self advance yourself and stay up with whats new, you are never going to reach the upper end of your respectable bracket. If you are a go-getter then the money will always follow. Keep in mind person X might make a salary of ~20K more than person Y, but person X works 15-20 hours a week more than Person Y. Which brings Person X’s $/hr down drastically. Person X is working holidays and weekends and Person Y is barely checking their phone for updates/check ins. There is a balance somewhere in there depending on who you are and what you want in life.
Remember, be like a bull in an IT shop lol
Ya I have seen this a lot in trade offs. If you are in the in crowd, you can get away with special perks and benefits, if not you become the work horse and your high salary usually comes with longer hours and less free time.
LZ, how much of your time do you spend away from your family and traveling on saturday mornings to get home or sunday nights to make your engagements? (rhetorical) I think the point holds that it’s common for more money to equal more time dedicated (although I’m not sure you were arguing the point). It’s ok, that’s life, but it’s a fair point. I would also argue that it’s rare to get paid a lot in IT and work a strict 40 hours/week.
I don’t think its really that bad I can think of a number of places I could work 40-45 hours a week making similar in salary to what I do now.
Once you move outside a role that falls under operations its much easier to achieve a high salary and standard work hours.
Consulting is an entirely separate conversation while I may travel a lot I also get X % of what I bill and I also work from home and have a very very flexible schedule when home.
Yeah, but even people outside of operational roles and consulting put in extra hours. And I’m not saying that it’s a hard rule, but it’s definitely common.
I disagree. High paying usually involves staying ahead of the curve which requires doing your day to day work and also taking some effort outside of work to follow what you like to do. Staffing now are starting to expand to use time at work to train but you still need to put in time outside of your work if you want to be in the higher paying bracket unless you get lucky and work for a family friend or something or in a role that has little day to day work and can study all day… which in most cases for creative and energetic people would make them want to kill themselves.
True IT is anything but a 40 hour week, no doubt. Salary/compensation has most to do with billable labor & strength of economies you support IMO.
@boardjnky4 those people I was doing work with in NC outsourced operations and they don’t even check emails after hours while working a norma 40ish hour work week
I’d be interested in seeing how the full model works there. Is their operation fully managed? Ie, does the managed service handle the change control process as well?
I have been working IT for a city in the suburbs of Austin. Get to do a lot of neat stuff with the police cars, fire trucks, and city hall.
Best thing I ever did was come down here.
Pay is not great, but I’m working on a pension. Public sector pay is not going to be as high. I’ll just keep getting a few certifications here and there, and work my way up.
Public sector IT can be a good spring board in my opinion. If you have drive & skills the benefits substituting for pay thing will get old quick. It also becomes difficult to witness sheer incompetence, knowing the union shields lackeys. Long term I have no interest in growing my compensation a safe 2-3% annually. I also have no faith in the pension system, it’s a rigged shell game IMO. Another 2-4 years for me and I’d like to make my move back to the private sector. The best general career advice I can give…get what you can and bounce. America does not reward loyalty these days, all you end up doing is more for less. /disgruntled rant
Austin is great place to be keep your hustle up lots and lots of great companies and jobs