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Post-crash Salary Survey
MrRules writes "It's that time again;
the 2002 salary survey's are out.
This year there's an interesting twist:
SAGE,
SANS and Sun's
BigAdmin site have combined to run the largest global
participation sysadmin salary survey ever done.
What I like is that this is different to those surveys
done by HR departments -- this is real data on how you
spend your time, by sysadmins for sysadmins. It'll be interesting to see how things have changed over the past 18 months."
Don't know about you but I get worried that this is as good as it gets salary wise, after big jumps through the bubble it's quite possible that this is the pinnacle of our (techies) earning potential for a long time to come (I know boo hoo, but still a strange position to be in)
In my last job which I left a few months back there had been a pay freeze on for 3 years. Whilst the price of good went up our wages stayed the same so in essence we were taking a pay cut. Going from what I've been hearing frm other people who are looking is that people are offering pretty much the same of down. Thats the way I'm reading it.
The economy is down and as there are so many people desperate to get jobs companies know they can offer lower rates and there will normally be someone who will be able to do the job well and except whatever the company is willing to pay.
I would be interested to know if there were still any growth areas but I think not apart from prehaps skills in very specialised subjects
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I had to take a position as Sysadmin, Oracle DBA, Developer (mostly java) in order to keep my phony baloney 6 figures salary when my dot.com went dot.bellyup. Are there still jobs out there where you're just doing systems administration?
Over the same period I've had four ten percent "take it or leave us" pay cuts, leaving me with a huge dent in my take-home pay.
How are other programmers faring? What's your plan? I'm sticking where I am for the time being and DEFINITELY plan to move on as soon as the market picks up.
It won't suprise me at all if this survey shows negligable changes in salaries over the last 12 months - companies prefer to make redundancies to cutting wages as the effect on moral of those who are left is much less.
However, if the statistics were an equivalent of GDP for IT industry professionals (i.e. an estimate of the total take home pay of the profession) then the figures would almost certainly be utterly horrible.
According to www.jobsmeta.co.uk and www.jobstats.co.uk advertised vacancies in the UK are running around 50% of the middle of last year - in addition the hourly rate/annual salaries have also slipped (due to simple supply/demand). It wouldn't suprise me if IT-GDP (for want of a better term) was down 20-30% on the year.
Really this is just a way of saying things are tough all over - I'd like not to complain, but as one of the many people who are looking at the moment this market sucks and the reasons can't really be reduced to simple one-liners or attributed to anyone/thing in particular.
Right now a couple of months off to get some R&R thats been lacking over the last 5 years doesn't go amiss - but in a couple more I'm likely to get really flexible in what I'll look at just to avoid going mad at home. My main concern isn't a pay-cut (my essential bills are around 30% of my last salary) - but I don;t want to take a job outside of my key skills, people pay a huge amount of attention to your last role so it would be like writting off my career to date.
In the mean time I'm doing the odd day of freelance work - its not a lot but its covering the bills.
I guess we'll see where we end up.
Actually, maybe not. I'm a sysadmin in the Navy (IT2, that's SGT to you, ground pounder), and with BAQ, BHA, BAS, completely free medical, per diem, 30 days vacation a year, and so forth and so on, I'm making roughly the equilivant of about $50,000 a year. There are some sysad jobs out there now making far less than that, and my last civilian job didn't pay much more.
:)
Of course, being in a hostile fire zone (read: no taxes) helps some.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
" My salary declined 100% to 0 FUCKING DOLLARS per hour, week, month AND year. And i'm pretty sure its a republicans fault."
you may be more right then you think
War is necrophilia.
Before:
Occupation: Student (K-12/Post-secondary) with a side dabbling of NT and UNIX administration.
Salary: After:
Occupation: Student (K-12/Post-secondary) with a side dabbling of NT and UNIX administration.
Salary: How many of you share my plight?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
But you ARE employed and have job security. I on the other hand was laid off twice last year and 3 times in the past 2 years. Now, I am making $0 and have few job prospects. Go Army!
Of course, being in a hostile fire zone (read: no taxes) helps some. :)
Until some of that hostile fire comes your way. No thanks, my life is worth more than ~$1K/month to me.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
It depends on what your field is.
For regular bussinesmen its a recession. For IT workers its not just a crash but a depression. Not only are our jobs being cut but we are being outsourced to India at the same time. The good news is that the pay rate is so rediclously low that many people who went into IT for the money will leave. This leaves true geeks left assuming they have college degrees and years of experience.
I myself am applying at Wallmart tomorrow. I am young in my 20's and have great computer knowledge but only 2 years experience and no college degree. HR actually thinks computer science degree's teach you desktop troubleshooting as well as system administration and programming skills. Its a shame even linux kernel developers can not get jobs today because they have no cs degree as the same time vb weenies who are gifted in mathmatics are taking the jobs instead because hr thinks that degree will make them better programmers.
http://saveie6.com/
This is the first tripple dip recession in history and while Greenspan has done a phenominal job of keeping it from being a crash Bush has not helped one bit. In fact his retarded trickle down let's give the top .25% 80% of the tax benifits policies are sure to extend the downturn and keep millions of working folks underemployed for years to come. Sept 11'th had little effect on the economy other than the airline industry and general consumer outlook (though even that is debatable given the strong housing market, people generally don't invest in big ticket items unless they feel at least somewhat good about the future)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Admin passwords for workstations usually is the serial number on the machine. That's very effective, and someone who has no physical access to the computer will have a hard time to figure it out. It's not as if you can do a dictionary scan on a serial number...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Try working in Academia....
:-)
I'm the sole admin, postmaster, backup/veritas & webmaster, for a network over 120 UNIX machines, with everything from Linux PC's&Mac's, through Ultra5's, to E6500's, 48-processes IBM pSeries and 30-way SGI boxes.
About 350 users worth of "drag" to go with it...
Salary works out at about 29,000 dollars.
Which is why I code pr0n sites "out of hours"
What you are saying is that the last 4 years have created unrealistic salaries for people who skills do not give the business benefits those salaries demand.
Or to put it another way, if you plot the salary curve for the last 20 years and factor out the
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
3 people:
1. pays $90,000 in taxes
2. pays $9,000 in taxes
3. pays $1,000 in taxes
You realize that you overcharged and have $10,000 extra dollars. How should the money be divided up?
Then people complain when the 3rd person only gets $100 dollars back/cut and the 1st person gets $9,000 back/cut. Saying the tax cut/rebate was just for the rich.
Clinton had the benefit of a very good economy in the 90's. You will notice that even Clinton's record surplus started declining in 2000, the same time as the economy.
And undoubtedly exacerbated by then newly minted "President" Bush who spent every moment talking down the economy until it started rolling downhill, just so that he could propose his "tax cuts for the rich" program.
Mark my words, we're gonna feel the negative effects of this one-termer's indifference to the economy (as it relates to the bottom 80%). Can you say Reaganomics? Well, this is worse. Just like daddy, he's a free market sort (money belongs in the hands of the rich multinational companies, not in the hands of American workers). Not that a free market is a bad thing, it's just that companies shouldn't be handed a blank check to make money (tax shelters) by going out of the country, yet reaping the benefits of other American companies.
Do I think the world would be all rosy and sunshine if the guy who was probably elected actually got into office? No, but I think it would have been a hell of a lot better than it is and much better than it is going to get after Bush II's legacy has been passed to the next President.
Ugh, I work in Academia too, and you're getting screwed. Our campus won't even hire a full-time IT person of any type for under $33K or so. Now if you're a part timer, or a temp, then you may get less, of course...
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Military sys jobs are great but take a look at the majority of the techno geeks out there. Do you really think most of them are fit for military service?
What country do you inhabit? I pay more than $25k in taxes on $120k inccome. Please, please, tell me how to fit my data point onto your curve. You can't. No one can. I'm screwed anually by taxes and you think I'm skating along. You dick.
You are utterly clueless on this topic. ALL of your numbers are hopelessly wrong. Let me suggest you start at irs.gov and try a few test runs.
The "10 men at dinner" post below is much gentler and effective than I can possibly be on this, but let me just say: go to hell you confused moron and all of your ilk who spend MY money like it's yours and cry when I get a little break. Seriously, go right to fucking hell you prick. God, you suck, and are so damn clueless it makes me irate (can you tell?).
You think I get 25x services/benefits for my taxes than someone who pays $1k/year in taxes. Think again. Yeah, I live in a nice neighborhood in Mass, but I pay state and local taxes too. Grrr fucks like you piss me off.
Morons like you who assume all "rich" people (i.e. anyone who makes more than you) somehow magically evade taxes infuriate those of us who pay massive taxes and have no idea how you can really believe such nonsense. It's such a common miscomception, and arguing against it inevitably coaxes out conspiracy therories a la Eddie Murphy dressing up as a white guy and learning that white business owners give away their products and sefvices to other whites for free. That was a parody. It DOESN'T HAPPEN between white people, and it DOESN'T HAPPEN between the irs and people who make more than you.
Just STFU until YOU make some cash (that takes work though, you probable leech, so be ready to get off the couch if you want a taste of the unpleasant reality). Until then, shut up.
everything in moderation