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Why do most IT jobs top out at $400K - $500K?

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Kaido said:
When I started going to college back in early the early 2000's, network admins were making $100k+. After the dot com bust and with computers getting popular for the general public, I saw the salaries drop significantly. Every kid now grows up with a computer and knows how to use it. Geek Squad pays $13/hour to people who are very well qualified (not getting into the discussion about those who aren't). In a lot of areas of the country, $50k is doing pretty well in IT. Oh, the good old days...if I had only been born a few years earlier 😀
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Well I agree many understand computers today, but troubleshooting and the like not so much. Before I switched jobs recently I had a rather nice side business that was just word of mouth mostly to the 300 or so associates I worked with, family and friends.

I'd constantly get geeksquad and the likes screw ups and most of the time have them back up and running overnight. The deal was I wasn't sitting in front of these machines, they picked up and dropped them off. Most of my hands on was just running various tools and then purging all the temp crap, doing some registry clean up (not with a cleaner...going in and removing crap) and getting the latest free AV on them.

My total time hands on was under a hour. I usually made $100-200 per machine depending mostly on how close a friend they were and if I got any 'discounts' from them.

My skills were valuable for specialized business workstations that went down and being able to get them back up and running quickly. Some of our users required full rights, many just wanted them and the powers that be didn't push back hard enough.

In the end I kept them running and got them back to work quickly after they decided to install "Super Hentai Battle Bitches" and swear they didn't know how that got put on their machine.

Sadly most of the 'pros' out there are really script kiddies that use full reinstall as their trump card.
 
alkemyst said:
Well I agree many understand computers today, but troubleshooting and the like not so much. Before I switched jobs recently I had a rather nice side business that was just word of mouth mostly to the 300 or so associates I worked with, family and friends.

I'd constantly get geeksquad and the likes screw ups and most of the time have them back up and running overnight. The deal was I wasn't sitting in front of these machines, they picked up and dropped them off. Most of my hands on was just running various tools and then purging all the temp crap, doing some registry clean up (not with a cleaner...going in and removing crap) and getting the latest free AV on them.

...

Sadly most of the 'pros' out there are really script kiddies that use full reinstall as their trump card.
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Yeah, but that's the difficulty - a lot of business managers can't discern between someone with valuable skills, and someone like who you're describing. So they figure, why do I need to pay so much, when I can hire just about anybody off the street? That's been the attitude at several places I've worked at. And yeah, absolutely - specialized skills demand more pay. Our Cisco PBX guy gets mad money for his time, but you couldn't pay me enough to touch that stuff 😀

Also, a full reinstall is my favorite card to play. Takes so much less time than actually fixing the problem :awe:
 
Kaido said:
When I started going to college back in early the early 2000's, network admins were making $100k+. After the dot com bust and with computers getting popular for the general public, I saw the salaries drop significantly. Every kid now grows up with a computer and knows how to use it. Geek Squad pays $13/hour to people who are very well qualified (not getting into the discussion about those who aren't). In a lot of areas of the country, $50k is doing pretty well in IT. Oh, the good old days...if I had only been born a few years earlier 😀
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Don't get me started on the geek squad. While I'm sure that some of them know what they are doing, the majority of them, well.... 😵
At my job, we repair a lot of what geek squad "fixed" - maybe the one around here just extremely sucks, I don't know.
 
The numbers are probably about right, getting a distinguished engineer, fellow position at company like Google, Amazon, Microsoft will probably top you out somewhere around that range.

As to why, well that's probably because that's the market value for those jobs. The supply is limited, but so is demand - most companies don't need anything in that position, and the biggest software companies in the world only need a handful of those jobs.
 
Argo said:
The numbers are probably about right, getting a distinguished engineer, fellow position at company like Google, Amazon, Microsoft will probably top you out somewhere around that range.

As to why, well that's probably because that's the market value for those jobs. The supply is limited, but so is demand - most companies don't need anything in that position, and the biggest software companies in the world only need a handful of those jobs.
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No you are not.

You usually don't make $250k+ unless you have people report to you. You can do that in a consulting environment where you are a niche expert and is brought in on an hourly-basis, but not in a salaried position in a large company.

Those distinguished engineers you are talking about are more like engineering managers with a shit load of people reporting to them. They are still an engineer in that they create "visions", but all actual work are carried out by their subordinates.

Unless you are a nomad (i.e. consultant), I find it hard for any regular engineer (that doesn't have any subordinates) to break $250k in a corporate environment.
 
sdifox said:
Never heard of a guy called Gates? What about the guy that is always in a black turtleneck?
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Bill Gates was never a programmer, he was an executive. He may have programmed. But his "job" and the source of his pay was not as a programmer, but as a businessman.
 
Mahaguru said:
i am not being sure the the disconnection here is. it jobs paying good money now. i am only being curious as to the reason of why this is occuring. why are it job topping off when plenty of good jobs being available but people are of short supply. are you knowing?
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lolz... theree are like 3 or 4 vacant IT jobs all across north america, and about 1.8 million unemployed IT people...
why would you possibly think IT jobs are in demand?
 
JMapleton said:
Bill Gates was never a programmer, he was an executive. He may have programmed. But his "job" and the source of his pay was not as a programmer, but as a businessman.
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Stick with what you know... buying $400 jeans.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2005/10-13Waterloo.aspx

During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business.

Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well.

In the first five years, he personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit
 
Imdmn04 said:
No you are not.

You usually don't make $250k+ unless you have people report to you. You can do that in a consulting environment where you are a niche expert and is brought in on an hourly-basis, but not in a salaried position in a large company.

Those distinguished engineers you are talking about are more like engineering managers with a shit load of people reporting to them. They are still an engineer in that they create "visions", but all actual work are carried out by their subordinates.

Unless you are a nomad (i.e. consultant), I find it hard for any regular engineer (that doesn't have any subordinates) to break $250k in a corporate environment.
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It's rare, but if you are one of the few CCIEs out there that also speak Juniper, Oracle, etc fluently and know how to get shit back on when it goes off like magic...you can hit these levels.

The suck part is you will be traveling 90% or more.
 
sao123 said:
lolz... theree are like 3 or 4 vacant IT jobs all across north america, and about 1.8 million unemployed IT people...
why would you possibly think IT jobs are in demand?
Click to expand...

What? There are tons of open IT jobs in the Indy market. I see several every week that I qualify for. The key question for me is do I want to stay working at a company or go the consulting route? Consultants make more money but the company I work at is super stable and has awesome benefits and good pay.
 
guyver01 said:
Stick with what you know... buying $400 jeans.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/speeches/2005/10-13Waterloo.aspx

During Microsoft's early years, all employees had broad responsibility for the company's business.

Gates oversaw the business details, but continued to write code as well.

In the first five years, he personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped, and often rewrote parts of it as he saw fit
Click to expand...

You're missing my point entirely. Yes he may have coded.

But his MONEY was made as a businessman, NOT a code monkey.
 
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