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Post-crash Salary Survey

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the checking-out-the-world dept.

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."

12 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. small job by Syncroswitch · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am currently admin for my laptop "." And I have to tell you I dont pay myself squat. damn the management.

  2. Sobering Thought by zeoslap · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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)

    1. Re:Sobering Thought by dev11 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I am not sure if this is the peak or not. Certainly it is at best at a state of diminishing returns right now. I think this is just part of the shakedown that was inevitable after the boom of the 90's. The day of the HTML "developer" making 100k a year are long past. The overall quality of the tech sector will be better but smaller in size. Those of us are competant will still be able to find work, although some concessions may be necessary, such as relocating.

      At least with sysadmin, I would think the chances of having your job outsourced to India or somewhere else are less, at least some on site presence is still required. With a smaller tech sector, I think a diverse skill set will be mandatory. I myself am a part time admin, part time developer, and am always looking to expand my skill set. Browsing employment ads recently, employers seem to want an ever expanding set of skills and experience. I have BS in CS, and 6 years experience, but I may end up doing some of the (mostly meaningless) certs that HR drones seem to like.

  3. why do they need my e-mail??? by targo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:why do they need my e-mail??? by PD · · Score: 5, Informative

      They need the address because, contrary to the misleading /. article write-up, the surveys are not in fact out. They haven't even been handed in yet. That's the deal. You fill out the survey, and you hand it in. They calculate things, and then they will hand it back out with the results on May 1st. The e-mail address is so you can have a copy sent to you.

      --
      If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
  4. Pay Cuts by md81544 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I work as a contraact programmer in the City, London, and over the last year have taken on extra work in C, C++, VB, PHP, JSP, ASP, Oracle, SQL Server and shell scripting as a result of other guys leaving.

    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.

  5. heh.. we don't do much.. by marcushnk · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  6. As a developer... by netsavior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. This survey is only going to tell 1/2 of the story by Sensor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. Re:military by corbettw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  9. A Grammar Nazi Writes .... by Burb · · Score: 5, Funny

    survey's? surveys!

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  10. Re: Don't forget the Indian factor by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    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 .com era is diffinetly over. I saw an ad in the paper for a jr FreeBSD admin for only 20k a year!

    --
    http://saveie6.com/