Slashdot Mirror
2002 SAGE Salary Survey Finally Released
Ted Cabeen writes "The 2002 Salary Survey run by SAGE, SANS, and Sun's BigAdmin Group profiled in a March Slashdot Article has finally been released. Everybody who participated in the survey is entitled to a copy, as well as current members of those groups. How does your salary stack up in the post-crash economy?"
You insensitive clod!
(so bored... so bored... so bored...)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'd like to see just how poorly I rate (corrected for crappy South East Virginia wages, of course). Let me put it this way: I've seen the articles listing the average starting salary for a new college graduate; and, I want to know where I went wrong...
90% unemployed
10% received 50% paycut
In other news unemployment in India is almost zero...
Do rupees and unemployment checks count?
The most underpaid were also too psychotically busy to answer the survey...
Or was it done on Slashdot?
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
How does your salary stack up in the post-crash economy?
Is this a trick question? How would I know how my salary stacks up if I'm not entitled to a copy of the report?
I know many people that make some decent coin but hate their jobs. I make a nice salary and love my job. I wouldn't consider leaving (maybe for a good 1/3 increase in the cash and the same freedoms I have here).
The survey should ask more than just income: the real question is: are you happy at your job and content with your income?
Trolling is a art,
Its not how big it is, its how you use it that counts.
Can also be downloaded from SANS here.
I hear they're looking for a sysadmin to fine-tune their system so it doesn't happen again.
I don't know why but they never seem realistic. Maybe our bosses should fill em out.
I need more money!
"Despite economic coldrums, the average of all the salary changes (including the negative ones) for 2002 came across full-time workers worldwide was plus 8.15% when calculated for annulized salaries. Fully 1,810 respondents (24.03%) saw no salary change or reduced their salary. Of the 54.54% who increased their salaries 0-30% the mean increase was 8.88%"
i catch my own fish and grow my own vegees... and for net access, i got wifi... and i live in a card board box rent free under a bridge
fuck salary
The very finest in unavailable information.
Debating if I should quit right now or not but the page won't load!!! I just want to go back to bed!
The company I work for just handed out 0-7% raises with an average of 3%... I am seriously considering quitting and collecting unemployment, at least through winter providing we get snow.
Yeah, evidently SAGE is sans a big admin.
I work for a rather large unicolor octo-barred-logo company. Our salary reviews come once a year, in April, with little chance of a raise in between them. This year they handed down a new policy. Part 1: All employee's below a certain band, err, salary range, and who are performing at at least the "I have no reason to fire you" performance rating, get a raise. A 3% raise, but a raise none the less. Part 2: The "variable" bonus which is counted as part of our salary, is now cut in half. This "variable" bonus by the way, has gone down each and every year I have been with this company. Now instead of top performers getting somewhere between 12.5% and 16%, I believe 6.5% is going to be the best you can do. Part 3: To save money this year, all pay increases, which normally take effect May 1, will not take effect until July. I was one of the 'lucky' ones. I got a Band, err, salary range increase, which usually guarantees a better raise. Not this time. All told, if I am a top performer (not handed out too often) with my variable bonus, I will be making slightly less than the bottom figure on my new pay scale. Great. Makes the frequent 80 hour weeks (no overtime pay) Sooooooo worth it. I do however, understand that I am in fact lucky to have a job to bitch about. I am lucky I am not one of my contracter coworkers whose pay has been cut multiple times over the last year, and get two weeks off, without pay. I also understand that what makes some of this possible is also the same reason I can't spell the name of any internal help desk agent I have to call, or understand half of what they are saying. I truly dread seeing this Salary Survey.....I am afraid once I see the numbers, my Red Swingline(tm) and I will have to take action. Good Luck to us all, thanks for the forum to get this out. J.
is a good site for work info in Canada, including salary and employment statistics.
Job Futures
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Are you the guy behind the "Enlarge your penis" emails? Or just the get rich quick ones...
They're only accepting applications from Asia adn Middle East.
So Americans have to work 20+ years with a company to get the standard holiday allowance for a European in their first year on the job. Americans who change jobs won't on average ever reach that level. I wonder how worker happiness compares between the two continents - and no, I don't give a fig about where the businesses are more profitable, that doesn't equate to happiness.
My economy is fine, I jsut earned $12500 by suing Registar.com... ;o)
Try this one.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
but all these surveys do is give people false impressions of worth. You could glean from this thing that you should be making 70k with a bachelors degree or that being a woman with the same experience as I have you're worth 10k more than I am.
A young woman at my last job got fired because she went in to demand higher pay after she got her masters in accordance with one of these surveys. She worked for the company for the whole time and they paid for her education, but she decided to hop up the ladder and start emailing stats like this to the VP's. I mean really, what loaded sysadmin women fill these things out and do they need a developer and/or boyfriend!?!
I get 29 paid days off a year, which certainly isn't so bad. :)
Also, my last job had 20 paid days off a year.
"I'm in Italy and i found a way to start my business online for just 20 bucks a month... and now i am my own boss, and make more than i did at my previous job."
Why am I expecting the next line to be 'Herbal Viagra really works! Here are some testimonials...'
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
.
From what I can see, salaries are not the only thing that have crashed.
merci
Bush is on fire and its not good for my lungs.
It has much more information in it than just salary. It includes benefits, likes/dislikes, etc.
I live to gib...
Just read in Tuesday's Australian Financial Review that Executive salaries were still high (and growing) in the IT sector, comparable to other industry sectors, but the rest of the IT workforce was not enjoying the same percentage increase and ridiculous high salaries.
what??? you mean i've been wasting my time here!!!!
I thought he meant I'd be paid weekly, but he really meant weakly .
Isn't Amiga spanish or something? What does it have to do with computers?
You laugh, but a lot of those work at home, get rich schemes are popping up. And lets not add the pay to even have a looksee sites. The hard times are bringing the scam artists out in droves. Wasting everyone's time looking for the fine print. A true pox on humanity.
I would, right now without hesitation, take a 15% pay cut for five weeks' vacation a year.
What is so funny to me is the huge emphasis that the government and pressure groups put on the notion of 'family' here in the US, and yet at the same time don't want to give workers the rights to rear their children (in opposing the Family Leave Act), nor want to give them enough time off to actually spend time with them.
The average American worker works an obscene amount of hours. I am 100% positive this does not stem from any sort of American 'work ethic', but rather from the fact that you have to be seen as working more than your co-worker in order not only to get ahead, but to simply keep your job. The high levels of stress that follows are what lead to domestic problems like drug abuse, alcoholism and violence.
The idea of four weeks' vacation would never fly here, because greedy CEOs and stockholders don't want to see their all-precious profits possibly drop. But imagine the long-term benefits: Lower health care costs (rested workers are less stressed; less stressed workers are healthier), more motivated employees, and a happier populace with spare time to spend money vacationing.
It's a win-win situation, but I'll never see it in my lifetime. I'm a Canadian living in the US, and I've been thinking about using my right of return privileges (my grandfather was a UK citizen) to go to the UK and work for a few years. Sounds like, as usual, the Europeans don't have their heads up their asses like in this country.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Eventually, management's answer was presented to us in a meeting. They explained that, after surveying the market, they were paying us correctly. The said that the reason we could see the higher figures elsewhere was because everyone else in the world was paying too highly...
Oh, and they also claimed that we couldn't actually get these figures we read. My response was "empirical studies suggest otherwise", which got a bit of a look. I resigned within two weeks, and another guy I was at the meeting with resigned the next day.
Cheers,
Ian
Americans Live To Work
Europeans Work To Live
How else do you explain American vacation allowances? I recall seeing figures that showed productivity in American companies wasn't marekedly higher than their European equivalents, despite their longer hours. have to see if I cna track it down on Google.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
not too bloody well with this economy.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
I don't know abou him. But I'm at the point 'bootlicker' sounds appealing. If a job search is advertising? Then my "company" has closed shop and declared bankruptcy.
The question should be, do you make a decent salary, and do you feel RESPECTED by your bosses, coworkers, etc.
I make a pretty good salary, but I don't feel like my bosses respect me because what I do is so foreign to them, and none of my hours are "billable time". It baffles me that they pay me a high wage, but will easily go to an outside tech consultant without any prior input from me.
Is it that they don't think I'm competent? Hey, I've been here almost 5 years, they could have fired my ass by now and hired someone else if that was the case. Why do non-technical people make serious technology decisions for clients without input from me? It's that kind of shit that makes a high paying job miserable.
now why would i want a salary raise? they still don't sell the warp-drives in kit for home-build. there's no fusion reactor for independant power-supply for home. is still can't go fossil searching on mars etc. ...
...
keep your "money"
short there's nothing i want to buy. it's garbage in two to three years anyway
I'm sorry, I really am, but just because there are people getting screwed worse doesn't mean that those of us who aren't getting screwed as bad can't complain. If that were the case, then no one posting here has any right to complain about anything at all.
Put it in perspective - please don't complain when you actually have a job, a roof over your head, a computer... you have a lot more than most of the population in the world.
So please don't complain that people are complaining - while you may have more to complain about, it doesn't mean they don't have a right to complain, too.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
We don't have sick days/vacation days anymore, we have one category named "Paid Time Off" days, and right now I have 23 of them. Next year I will have 28. I earned them.
People in other departments (many who must work holidays) get a lot more PTO to make up for it. It's true I didn't start out with that, but "earned" it over time.
So what's the problem? We don't need the government sticking their noses into private businesses to force companies to pay people for not working - the same way we shouldn't have the government regulate wether or not we should get overtime. It works both ways.
I know the market is short on jobs right now, but no one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to work. The deal you have is between you and your company. 15% is a lot of money - maybe you should offer that to your superiors and see what they say. You never know, they might accept your offer.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I am making about $10k less a year than I was 2 years ago. It sucks too...
At least I am doing better than I was last year (was unemployed for 9 out of 12 months) so I guess I am doing better - in a fairly narrow perspective...
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
This may be nitpicking, I look at something like this and immediately distrust it: they quote percentages to four significant figures, yet they only had 10000 respondents. Anyone who understands sampling errors knows that 10k data points means approximately 1% error on any number you measure with them.. possibly much less.
And it's hard to read with all them number things.
Maybe I am just getting F'ed... but I am in the 1-2 years experience range, and I know hardly anyone (programmers included) in the IT field who are making 50k a year (the average reported in the survey is (50,558 for 0-1 year guys w/ a bachelor), and certainly not any sysadmins at all- and thats in the NY metro area, where the costs of living (and thus salaries) are quite high. The fact that those in the 2 year range see a 5k drop in average salaries really makes me wonder if they had enough of a random sample, and a large enough sample altogether. Similarly, when I see average raises in certain metro areas being 87.5%, I think there is something significantly flawed in this survey to actually use it for anything meaningful. I get the feeling this survey attracted types who wanted to show off their earnings, or raises. I mean how can the group of 5-9 years guys get 6.8% average raises, while guys w/ 10-14 years experiene recieved a whopping 22.6% increase, yet their elder 15-19 group also only recieved 6.9% raises. I just cant see how this could happen to the actual group overall. Another glaring hole- guys with 1-2 years experience falling into the ambiguously defined 'level 4' (4 being highest) group. That many people came out of school and rose to CTO in a year? It is interesting, but to use this as a basis for actual salary comparison doesnt seem right. It seems even less scientific than a slashdot poll to me.
Like my savings account, it's been slashdotted.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Ten hour days? No vacation?
Training your replacement in your company's new Bangalore office???
STOP!
How would you like to get out of that rat race? I have stumbled on a secret way to free yourself from the wage slavery and mind burn-out you are suffering at your current job. And I'm giving the secret away for FREE!
Let me tell you something, folks. I used to be a lot like you. I was working for a company that insisted on pushing their employees over the edge. What I found was, most workers not only took it, but gladly bent over and rubbed in the vaseline! These folks never understood the secret that I am about to reveal to you absolutely FREE!
So here it is! Follow this simple four step process to dislodge yourself from corporate America once and for all:
1. Quit your job!!! The most obvious step is the step that is the most inconceivable to the average American worker. Every day at your job is living hell. You dread going to your job every morning. Your job is the source of all your frustration and grief. QUIT! It's that easy. QUIT! When I realized I was working for a company that couldn't give a shit about me and was trying every day to find ways of milking more work out of me, I just up and left... It was such a breath of fresh air. Get a part-time job bartending or doing manual labor while you accomplish the rest of the steps...
2. Kill your monthly expenses!!! Pay off those high-interest credit cards! Only spend with them what you can pay off in full every month. Most of my former co-workers were so buckled under credit card debt but they were happy to keep spending more, because all they ever payed was the monthly minimum. They're going to be in for a surprise in three or four years. Sell the shit that drains your wallet! That Lexus SUV sitting there in your garage? Sell it immediately and buy a 5 year old Honda with cash. Let me tell you you won't miss that $600/mo payment! Expensive home or apartment in the city? Get out of that lease or sell it, and buy a nice humble townhouse in the suburbs. You might not be able to get rid of this "monthly" but it sure feels nice taking $500/mo or so out of it. Health club contract? Multiple cell phones/pagers? Expensive Internet connection?? You guessed it! Get them out of your life. Live SIMPLY. Not only is it cheaper, but you don't feel like such a consumer whore every month when you pay the bills!!
3. Stop buying so much shit! Al Greenspan says consumer spending is good for the economy, but who is he kidding? It's only good for the corporate execs you are currently freeing yourself from. Buy generics if you have to buy at all. Spend your money not on gadgets and trinkets but on things that fulfill your life--travel, a humble home that's yours and not the bank's, that little restarant you were always wanting to start up--whatever is your thing.
4. Do hourly contract work when you need money, and relax when you don't. Look at your new budget. Hell you can probably contract at HALF of what you were making before, and have plenty of time for what is important in your life.
Follow this four step process and rid your life of the work-consume rat race!
I can't emphasize it enough. That first step is crucial. QUIT THAT JOB NOW. QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT. Or, even better, get fired and collect unemployment! You've been paying for unemployment your whole life, so take a little for yourself! Make a promise to yourself: I will quit by next Thursday. I will quit after the next paycheck. And DO IT! Don't go updating your resume, looking for another sinking ship to jump to. JUST GET OUT OF THAT HELL HOLE OF A JOB RIGHT NOW!
Today is a lot better for me than it was two years ago, and I make LESS than what I used to! I work hourly, doing contract work for whoever needs a little programming. When I want
if you enjoy your job, and the money is competitive: DO NOT LEAVE.
even for more cash.
because you will find that more cash means that people who are making that much dough normally are not biting. big cash is indicative of a bad work atmosphere, high turnover, or terrible products/tools/requirements.
that's why the people who demand the highest prices tend to work contract. because the companies that have to pay that much for the work, you don't want to be with over the long term.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I just took a pay cut for a job I like better.
-well sort of.
I now have the same job 4 days a week
Yes - I'm lucky to be able to live on 4 days pay. But how many others could do the same if they chose not to buy the new car / hifi / etc?
Have to say - it has been a wonderful life change, I can't imagine going back!
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Yeah, up until about a month ago I worked at the same company. This last pay-raise-that's-really-a-pay-cut was the straw that broke the camel's back. The whole blatant lack of regard for their employees just got to be too much. After I leave I hear about them shifting huge amounts of jobs overseas, so I guess it was a good time to get out. In the 2.5 years I was there:
1) I was told that in spite of being a top performer I was getting a crappy review because seniority dictated that the small number of good reviews go to the dead weight that had been there longer than I'd been alive.
2) In spite of virtually single handledly saving a multi-million dollar contract with months worth of hard work, I was chastised for not working enough overtime while accomplishing it.
3) How is it possible to have more management than producers, yet still not have an ounce of leadership among them? I think Dilbert read strips about us...
No, no, no. You're looking at it all wrong.
You see, in the states, you simply change jobs once per year, and take a 6 week vacation between the jobs, two of which are paid by the last sucker^h^h^h^h^h^hemployer.
So you can keep your government mandated time off, and I'll keep pocketing more of my paycheck than you. Any the grin on my face, thank you very much.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
i recently lost my job and when i found a new one they decided to pay me 8% more then i was making at my old company. however my father is also is in a tech firm got a 10% pay cut possibly more pay cuts and 60% of the staff was let go.
go figure
is it really worth it though if your not doing something you like. i like to code but how can i really compete against a whole country willing to take $.05 on the dollar for my salary. hopefully i'll run into an employeer that will return revenues to the country (s)he lives in.
bottom line IMO the economy will increase when the government decides to punish those that hire out of country firms to do work and help those companies willing to hire americans first. ok GW how can we give the 87 billion to iraq if there is no tax revenues cause all work is exported.
Sounds like one of the few sectors where pay is actually increasing. State and local gove worksers being cut. Must be nice to work for an organization where you can print money at will.
I imagine salaries in Canada are not too far off what you'd find in most of the north-northeastern states.
" The problem is the perspective you take on it. The employee/employer relationship should be considered a private contract between the two, the government ought not stick their nose where it doesn't belong."
Unfortunately what you seem to forget is that this contract isn't being forged between equals.
The government if applied properly helps balance the equation.
...and thus it does not truly apply to most Slashdotters.
Think about this: thanks to the baby boom, the majority of the people in the industry are over 40 and making bank because the companies don't want them to retire yet, or even worse move on to a competitor with all that built-up knowledge.
This, of course, skews your "average", because your "average respondent" has 15 years of experience and valuable knowledge.
Whereas, most Slashdot members have under 10 years experience, in fact I'd wager most have less than 5, so OF COURSE you're all making much less than the survey says.
And this doesn't even take into account the usual survey bias for salaries, where the ( lowest / highest ) paid respondents are ( hesitant / eager ) to respond due to their ( shame / pride ). Most people who don't make bank don't like to talk about it.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Ill work in Brazil, by the beach, for
half of that...send in your offers...
"We do not get paid more than our male counterparts. In fact, in most industries, we are paid significantly less than a male doing the same job with the same level of education."
Education? Nice way to twist it. But not true. Women and men with the same degree and no experience are paid the same, with a slight edge to women.
Women in professional fields are paid more than men with the same *experience*. The trouble is, women tend to take their peak earning years off to have and raise children, and thus end up with less experience for a given age.
That's just a fact.
Life has other compensation for women that it does not afford men, but I'm afraid your position is more political than practical, so I'll not try to change your mind.
Go on being bitter.
But in the meantime, what are you wearing right now?
I can't access that file. People, post your salary info here. Also info in what country you're working. I'll start with this:
Unix Sysadmin, Virgin Isles, 3500$ a month.
Take Back Your Time day is a nationwide initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.
But I've taken a 40K hit in the last 12 months. This after 16 years in the industry, always working so much as to loose some of my vacation time each year while staying on top of the curve for my chosen specialization, networking & security. My last employer loved me, the one before that keeps trying to contract me for small jobs, my current employer says great things and in return for my low salary, gives me a bit of extra time off. But, I can't use it as I always pay the catch up price when I return from ANY time off.
The Euro time off sounds intriguing. I could care less about corporate needs at this point. I'm watching others make good coin from my time all the while I'm facing a depricated salary. At this point, I just want a higher quality of life. And with the state of medical insurance, vacation benefits and workers rights in the US, it's not happening.
The Man with the Plan is smiling.
I'll post here since it is related to a very similar three letter company.
My boss hired this moron who would spend most days juggling in the hallway. One day he printed out his usual pile of crossword puzzles (true story), but left his paystub print out sitting in my printer tray for a week. I looked mostly accidentally, thinking it was my own paystub printout, but almost wept on the spot when I realized how much more he was making (with 2 yrs less experience). I figure this was accounted for by the fact that both my boss and co-worker were alumni of the same "prestigous" engineering university.
Check this out.
Tri-weekly.
Try weekly.
Try weakly.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
Really I am, I started life in the commercial world, then moved over to the military engineering side for many years. I loved the challenge of military projects. Just too cool to be working on submarines and torpedos and what not, esp surrounded by a bunch of like-minded, introverted, sometimes-off-the-wall engineer types. Amazingly better and more thought enhancing than the commercial side of things, which I would never go back to. But then I left that for public education several years ago and I would have to say I hit pay dirt. The salary remained about the same, healthy for IT, but not great to other commercial salaries, but the satisfaction sky rocketed. There was just so much to do, build labs, get people online, teach teachers, help with curriculum, start computer clubs and robotics clubs, build those robots. From routers to desktops and everything inbetween, you can make your job be anything you want it to be. Plus we have lots of vacation time, fire drills on nice days, and I get to go to pep rallies!! I tell you it is very weird to have a pep rally day, and everyone is supposed to be there, you get there and think, they are paying me for this?
The teachers are wonderful, the kids are like sponges and want to learn everything. It is a good place to be, and everybody loves you (ok a few may hate you, but it becomes insignifigant) . Really, I have people who hug me. Think about that. I get paid to do what I love to do anyway, and people hug me for it!!! Yep, I love my job.
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
While there are some good laws to protect innocents (like child labor laws), the constitution (we are talking about the U.S.) does not guarentee the right to paid for not working.
The more the government forces it's weight onto eployers "rights", the more the employees will suffer in other ways. For example, if the government forced my company, which offers 160% matching into my 401k (up to the first four percent), to add an additional week of vacation, I might lose that match. I'm perfectly happy right now, thanks, I don't need the government to screw up my retirement.
But they'd like that, wouldn't they? Social Security is merely a political tool for getting votes now, and the more they make me dependent on it, the more they can control me.
Or how about my company not pay as much for my health plan? Or any one of the other benefits I get. It's really plain and simple - I like the freedom to negotiate with my employer. If I'm happy with my vacation time, or the arrangement I have with overtime, why would I want the government to come in and screw it up?
Let's face facts - more often than not, the people that really get ahead in this world are the people who work hard - a lot harder than 9-5, 5 days a week with four weeks vacation. If I CHOOSE to work more, that should be my choice. If my company CHOOSES to reward me for that with higher pay, then that's their choice. The government should not screw with it any more than they should take away overtime or force a business owner to not allow smokers in his own business.
And this isn't just pointed at you, but I love the slashdot hypocrisy - government intervention is great when there is a percieved advantage to you, but horrible otherwise. There should simply be less government intervention, PERIOD.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Or of a successful company with a good work ethic, healthy office environment and smart management. You take on good people, do well as a result, and consequently can afford to pay a good wage and take on more good people as you grow. However, I suspect that the "smart management" thing makes these a minority of the companies advertising high salaries...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
If you poorly manage your money, then your salary can be nearly irrelevant.
One interesting concept is the "true wage", as described in the book Your Money Or Your Life. In order to figure out what you really make, you have to factor in all time spent, including travelling to and from work. You then have to count your work-related expenses, including eating lunch out, business clothes, car maintenance, etc. You're also supposed to figure out the "life energy cost" (i.e., if your job is hellish, the rest of your life will not be great), but even leaving that aside, jobs might compare much differently than they look on the surface.
Additionally, it's easy to waste money and so create a "need" for more money. Living on frozen pizzas/TV dinners is expensive, and will probably lead to more health-related expenses. There's a lot to be said for having a lower salary, whether by working less or taking a lower-paying job that's more fulfilling, and lowering your cost of living by driving a good used car, not buying ridiculously overpriced "designer" clothes, etc.
Then you get into wisely investing your money, etc., and you start to see how people who don't look so great on paper are better off after everything has been added up. It really is how you use it rather than the size. Of course, if you take this to an extreme, you start expending more effort than is worth the money you might save, but as with everything else, balance is key.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
So around 1/4 of people took a hit, and just over 1/2 got a rise up to 30%. That leaves a lotta people taking a rise of over 30% to get the average figures quoted...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I used to be a Unix sysadmin and took a five year hiatus, it being necessary to my mental health. So last month I decided to get looking and went to two interviews. What a disappointment they were, the duties were more for senior operator. Point and click, simple, repetetive tasks. The managers at both businesses were very rude, elitist, maybe even racist. I was reminded of mainframe positions we used to derisively call "tape apes" in the olden days.
So even though I miss the money, I won't be going back to sysadminning. I will stay where I am and enjoy my pagerless weekends.
Amway/Quixtar! What a wonderful triangular oppertunity!
How does one go about doing that? Oh, you answer that on step 4 - you simply "Do hourly contract work when you need money, and relax when you don't". Man, I must have been left off the memo indicating that contract work could be had for anyone who asked for it and there's actually a time when money is not needed.
Anyway, paying off debts and lowering consumption is good advice, though hardly ground breaking. The rest is classic oversimplification syndrome.
I work in IT- Not exactly entry level, but in the 2-5 years experience area. A 3rd level tech at a medium/large company.
I have a cool boss, who brings us cookies for no reason and always keeps the fridge in her office stocked with Pepsi.
I have fairly flexible hours, working usually right around 40 hours per week. I have cool coworkers and this is a neat business. I get training funded by the company.
I get a free laptop to borrow if I ever need it to go out of town or something and a free cell phone with unlimited nights and weekends.
I make $55k/yr and I'm 22 years old.
I would love to get more than 3 weeks per year of vacation, but that's better than most people i know, so I can't complain.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Yeah this got a funny, but with the economy turning to shit, and the powers that be unwilling or unable to change it. Think of all the pluses of living an independent life. Grow your own, or live near a farmers market. The food is better and cheaper, no worring about ADM or other "big food" corp's petty wims. Generate your own electricity, no more blackouts for you, and hearing "fueal rates are going up again". Sewing your own clothing isn't as hard as it was in grandma's day. Furniture making isn't that hard, especially with modern tools. Throw in some telecommuniting, or a home business so you don't have to live in sardine conditions., and I'll bet you'll survive a lot better when the bottom falls out of the middle class.
What I mean to ask was how is work in the EU? I don't particularily want to live in the United Kingdom (no offense to Brits, but as a Canadian, I would have a tough time with all those people on a small island), but Spain or Italy might be nice....
I just got a job with a three letter agency making pre-crash wages and working on computers!!!!! WOO HOO!!!! Job security, decent pay and the coolness factor of the industry!!!! Been laid off twice within the last two years, so this is so sweet!
"The teachers are wonderful, the kids are like sponges and want to learn everything. It is a good place to be, and everybody loves you (ok a few may hate you, but it becomes insignifigant) . Really, I have people who hug me. Think about that. I get paid to do what I love to do anyway, and people hug me for it!!! Yep, I love my job."
:)
Can I hug you too?
Just Plan Stupid - Believing that there even *are* chicks on Slashdot
I think the best way to live is a balance.
I like to think I maintain it pretty well. Sure I only graduated from college 9 months ago, but I drive a 6 year old car, I enjoy mountain biking and I spend less than $150/mo on groceries because I do a lot of fresh veggies and rice and I don't eat very much (and almost no "sweets").
I work 40 hours a week and I love my job. I'm off work by 4pm and have a few hours to be outdoors or with friends.
I make $55k per year. Once my education and other debts are paid off by the end of this year, I'll be putting up about $1500/mo in "extra cash" that I can maintain for anything.
If I could change one thing, it would probably be my limited vacation time. I get roughly 14 days per year plus national holidays, which is a bit slim for my liking, but it was a tradeoff I had to accept.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Nice. What do you do, exactly, and how did you get there?
The Other category [in 'Favorite Job Properties'] included these items (with the number of citations in parentheses):
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
This survey shows everything that's wrong with the IT profession. Salary surveys should be done by IT workers for IT workers. What the hell is Sun doing in this survey? Sun is a member of the ITAA, an employer association which is an advocate of off-shoring IT; bringing in hundreds of thousands of people with H1-B and L-1 visas every year, despite the downturn; lobbies in Congress for laws to strip IT workers of overtime pay, or to screw over independent contractors, and so on and so forth. Considering this, it seems Sun has economic interests directly opposite of IT workers.
Sun's direct involvement means this survey is a crock of doo-doo. And organizations like SAGE, IEEE and so forth are in the same boat with a load of corporate sponsorship. Do the employers like Sun, IBM and Intel let the workers run their associations like the ITAA? Hell no. Do real professionals, like doctors and lawyers let other people run their own professional associations? No again. Yet companies who belong to associations doing PR and lobbying day and night to offshore jobs, bring in cheaper, foreign workers in droves, kill overtime provisions and do virtually everything to make us work longer hours for less seem to be perfectly accepted in cooperation with SAGE, the IEEE and so forth. This is because SAGE, IEEE and other such organizations are not professional associations like other professions have - no profession is so stupid to let that happen. That's why they go to Congress and have laws passed and done awway with that have the effect on lowering our pay and there is virtually no association on the other side that fights that. Despite the fact that every other group in the world, from lawyers to doctors to auto workers to retirees to everyone has people in Congress fighting for their economic interests.
Dump these phony, employer-controlled so-called professional associations like SAGE and the IEEE and look for some real ones like these:
You can choose between these two, depending on whether you think the solution to the problem is a union or a professional association.
That whole orbital guidance tech for China deal in the 90s made me sick. I would have found Clinton, Congress and the Corporation all guilty of treason if it were up to me.
And yes, we are selling our national security short with all the multi-national corporate work migration.
(note: I'm non partisan -- we seem to have had 2 village idiots in a row for president)
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Your anecdote is well received, but you must grant us that you receive more paid leave than the average American. Consider the findings a 2002 Center for Economic Policy Research study:
CEPR Study
Minimum MANDATED (by law) annual paid vacation days:
Austria 30
Denmark 30
Finland 30
France 30
Spain 30
Luxembourg 25
Sweden 25
Germany 24
Belgium 4 (weeks)
Greece 4 (weeks)
Ireland 4 (weeks)
Netherlands 4 (weeks)
United Kingdom 4 (weeks)
Portugal 22
European Union 4 (weeks)
Canada 2 (weeks)
United States 0
Of course, the above are just the minimum legal requirements, in practice, the contrast is even more stark:
AVERAGE Annual Paid Vacation Days and Holidays
(vacation/total vacation+holiday)
Italy 37/45
Finland 37.5/44.5
Netherlands 31/38.1
Germany 30/38
Luxembourg 28/38
Austria 26.5/36
Portugal 22/36
Spain 22/36
Denmark 27/34
France 25/34
Sweden 25/34
United Kingdom 25/34
Switzerland 24.3/33
Belgium 20/31
Greece 22/31
Japan 18/31
Ireland 21/30
Norway 21/28
United States 12/23
Kind of makes the salary averages useless, neh?
The question is how you organize the system so it fulfills lots of demands, like effectivity and give good health care to (at least) most of the people. I don't trust state systems anymore.
One disadvantage with nationalized health care is that if you get problems because of bad treatment, it's very, very hard to sue the state and win. The gigantic health care system have little motivation to fix problems that are big for you -- but not for them. ("We're larger than the phone compan{y,ies} -- we don't care because we don't have to.")
Please note that if you are in that situation, you will have a hard time to buy private health care, since you're poor from the high taxes (to pay for the state health care system.)
In a real example, people had to go somewhere private and buy cancer tests because the place doing that was closed for the summer...
(Any budget cuts decided by the administrating politicians are done so many users will suffer -- otherwise the politicians will cut more from the health care...)
Another scenario:
The doctor will get rid of you by telling you it is because of X without really knowing (to cure the problem would take long and damage their treatment statistics, I believe). X is never treatable without dangerous surgery that they don't recommend... You will believe in X the first couple of times you get that diagnosis -- and not bother the health care system with the problem for years.
Yes, I have experience with that scenario here in Sweden. ("Runner's knee" that took two decades(!!) before someone cared enough to find the problem and fix it. This has meant a lot for my quality of life.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
that is used by management to divert attention from their shortcomings back on to you. I always felt like smacking people when they would ask me this question. The answer to the question is, yes, of course I love what I do, as much as I did when I was in 5th grade and reading "Teach Yourself Basic". However, when it comes from management it's a stupid question that is beside the point. The point is that if they pay a competitive salary they shouldn't have to ask such phony questions. What, am I supposed to suddenly believe that management cares about whether I'm doing what I love?
The main problem with such a question is that it portrays a version of reality where management is free from blame and are just trying to "help", when in many cases, lack of pay can be a big part of the problem. There is a saying in Zen Philosophy of "unasking" a question. Your question, "Why is it always about the money?", is a false question, since it blatantly assumes that it is "always about the money". Therefore, the appropriate response to your question is to tell you your question is wrong. It is incorrect because it assumes that it's "always about the money" and deflects blame from employers. The problem is, the question basically says that it's ok for employers to be greedy sacks of shit, but as soon as the little guy tries to get a decent salary, then they have to explain why it's an issue, or in your words "ALWAYS about the money"(emphasis added). It's an issue because money is how we pay for food. It's an issue because money in the bank is the only real security that one has in the "free" market. That's why it's an issue.
In the field of system administration, there are no more professional organizations than SANS and SAGE. SAGE is actively working to make itself more relevant to system administrators, and serve their needs and desires even better.
You can either believe me, or go to the SAGE web page at www.sage.org and see for yourself. If you think they're not doing something right, I encourage you to volunteer to help fix whatever you think is wrong.
Disclaimer: I am a member of SAGE and trying to do what I can to help make it a better organization.
Brad Knowles
http://daily.daemonnews.org/ -- if you're not
I don't know, I've never tried. I have friend who moved to Barcelona a year ago to be with her boyfriend. I guess it was fairly straight forward. Her Spanish is good though. IIRC, any EU citizen has the right to work, claim benefits including medical coverage, etc., in any other member state. Anecdotal, you might find some places put a lot of paperwork and beaurocracy in the way of foreign workers. Anyway, you should try visiting Scotland... it's not quite as over-populated as you might think.
Australia
5145 US/month
20 days holiday, 18 days sick pay (accumulates), 10 public holidays
1 flex day per month
37 hour week.
You, sir, would have got a +1 funny
I presently am happy as an oyster, ever since I got my present job : 33 days off per year as standard company holidays, plus 25 days off as part of the 35-hours working week ... the unfortunate part being my under $2k a month ... Ah, yes, I forgot : I live in France; that is far lower violent crime rate that in US, less stupid presidents, and steadily growing Linux adoption :)) ...
Wouldn't part this job for all the whiskey in Ireland
what you're really trying to say is that you get the extra 25 days off for working a lot more than 35 hours a week.
The trick is keeping those long days short.
Denmark is 25 mandatory. Until last year it was 30, but saturdays were counted (a leftover from the days when a workweek was 6 days). Most people do actually get 30 days now.
Note that mandatory cuts both ways. Companies must provide 25 days of paid vacation, and workers must take them. The last is to ensure that you cannot be pressurised into not taking your vacation.
Sun was not involved in the survey directly. BigAdmin just helped get people to take the survey. They were in no way involved with the survey itself.
And yes - I do know this first hand.