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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."
Well, I'm a systems admin for the army, and you know what? I am almost positive every sysadmin job's salary is higher than mine.
I am currently admin for my laptop "." And I have to tell you I dont pay myself squat. damn the management.
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)
Any survey where the very first question is "What is your e-mail address?" makes me very very suspicious, especially when they collect all sorts of financial data as well.
Still, given Slashdot's anti-spam attitude, I thought that maybe they are a decent organization and checked their privacy policy. Vain hope, it actually bluntly says: SAGE might also use this email address to notify you of other related news and we all know what this usually means, right?
Now call me paranoid but I've been burned by much more innocent looking sites asking for my e-mail address.
When men used to be men
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?
(before you mod, learn to take a joke)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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.
If the /.ed state of the server is anything to go by.. We just sit around /. all day and bring down servers collectivly..
oh well.. back to my coffee..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
It would be nice if my company (and my previous company) could afford a Sysadmin... Be happy if you can be in the Sysadmin survey cause every developer I know is in a "Self-admin" shop... where the network has 100 band-aids and nobody can quite remember all of the Root passwords.
Take my word, don't come to Spain
I'm thinking about moving to Germany or something like that to get a good pay
May the source be with you!
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.
Houston, we have a problem.
OK, although many /.ers are out of jobs, THIS IS NOT A CRASH. It's a recession. Even Alan Greenspan, the 20th time winner of the Most Boring Person Award, says so. Also, although i hate to add a political twist to it, it's not the Republicans' fault: it started when Clinton was in office and exhibited itself fully when Bush took over. September 11th just 'broke the camel's back' so to speak.
If you want a system administrator job, look into the medical field. At least, if you're a surgeon, you won't have to worry about people installing new versions of their innards.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
It looks like us geeks are bringing down the curve.
survey's? surveys!
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.
...the sysadmins that run the linked site in the article get a payraise for dealing with a /.ing.
Do not ignore the India factor. 38% of all IT jobs are now outsourced for minimal wage in India according to the garnet group. This was done not just for companies looking for cheap labor but also to keep the American market oversatuared and thus salaries go down to rock bottom.
.com era is diffinetly over. I saw an ad in the paper for a jr FreeBSD admin for only 20k a year!
Most admin jobs are typically in the mid 30's now for 5 years experience and if you have many years perhaps you can make as much as 50k. The
http://saveie6.com/
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
And boy just about now, people are beginning to wonder why the hell they outsourced. Slowly *very* slowly the penny is dropping with management that cheap != good.
Make no mistake, those that have been biding their time over the past 18-24 months are starting to see market improvements, and are in place to maximize this.
I've seen people that have been made redundant 12 months ago get re-employed by their ex-employers, and other people rewriting huge portions of overseas-outsourced work.
I have a question for the people who are mourning the decline in salaries. Have you considered moving to where the same job would be more profitable?
I ask this question because I am considering it myself. I am a programmer specialized on a platform that is practically dead. (Natural/Adabas, if you're curious.) A search 2 weeks ago on monster.com showed that there were more jobs for this platform available in India than in the rest of the world combined. Here, there were only 8 jobs posted across the nation. (Did I mention that this platform was practically dead?)
Yes, I realize that these Indian jobs are probably just contracted back here to the U.S., but I will apply next week for a passport. When I receive it, I will then begin checking on these Indian jobs. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Ya know? I'm assuming that the relative pay in India will still be better than taking a lower-paid job here in the U.S. on a modern platform. I intend to talk with an Indian programmer soon to get his opinions.
Have other people pushed this option out of their minds? I just wanted to point out that it may still be valid.