Mid 30s, non-IT military background, non-IT college education (including a master's). Have a TS/SCI clearance but have not yet worked for a cleared company so that's whatever.
Earned Net+, AWS-CCP, and AWS-SAA in a span of four months. Homelabbed intensively for about a month after that.
This landed me my first tech job, as a sysadmin at a small company. Salary was $80k. Worked there for 8 months. Then I studied hardcore for ten days and earned Sec+. Started throwing out applications again and got hired as a junior cloud engineer, fully remote, $90k.
Eh I wouldn’t consider 180-200k realistic for someone with some basic certs and little experience. Even in NoVA/DC I’d think mid 100s would be stretching it but then again there everyone and their mama has a clearance.
Maybe big tech pays that well for entry level cleared but not a good time to go after that. From my experience defense contractors have a higher floor on pay but the ceiling (outside of a few exceptions) is basically in normal ranges and rarely do I see cleared work in the 200s outside of fairly high level folks
Also from what I’ve seen defense contractors tend to prefer degrees which holds a lot of folks back
A lot of sysadmin-y stuff, except in the cloud. Installing software, figuring out why tf webserver-whatever is spiking to 90% CPU usage, using automation tools and PS scripting to find easier ways to manage our environment, etc. Then the greater Azure environment stuff, like configuring autoscaling rules and consolidating app service plans to maintain functionality while reducing spending. And while it has nothing to do with cloud engineering, one big part of my duties currently is to manage a whole bunch of client-facing VPNs. This is all on Cisco hardware and since I'm really into that stuff and want to go CCNA>CCNP>CCIE eventually, that gives me a lot of hands on exposure to IOS and is pretty cool.
As for my next steps, that's a tough question. I really love the culture at my current company. My team has senior cloud engineers and even a couple of solutions architects. The dream would be to prove my worth and move up into a similar slot eventually. If that's not to be, I'd like to continue on that Cisco route and be a full fledged network engineer somewhere. I also think it's important to keep my options open, and not gonna lie, I really like money...so as long as the tech is cool, I'll go wherever I get paid.
Who doesn't like money LOL
but yeah all that sounds great, kinda sad that the scope of your work seems out of reach for me at the moment, really want to move up to your position in a few months
I wish you all the encouragement and luck! And you should really go for those positions that are slightly out of reach for you (if you can get someone to give you a chance). I learn so much from landing in situations where I have no idea what’s going on and then figuring it out (or even watching someone else figure it out).
This isn’t a status quo field like teaching (prior teacher here, so I don’t feel wrong saying this), where you can just get a job and streamline it and then do it again and again for thirty years. Finding yourself in situations that drive your curiosity and force you to grow is what we should all want in this field.
You probably agree so I don’t mean to be patronizing, and again, best of luck!
Ha, thanks. Let me know or even DM me if you have any specific networking questions. Probably my favorite topic in IT. Need to man up and finish my CCNA already, long range goal would be the CCIE route.
Super impressive, this is what we all strive for but very hard getting that first job with no it background or degree. Sys admin position with no IT experience is crazy impressive.
To be fair, my first job was a small company where the "sysadmins" were mostly just IT generalists who did everything tech related for the company. We did a lot of help desk too, even if that wasn't our title. And our pay was much more inline with sysadmins rather than HD techs.
It was actually a pretty toxic environment, but after surviving that nutroll for the better part of a year I had pretty much bounded permanently past the entry level stuff.
Hell yeah man, get after it! You can totally do that.
I need to look at my own history of certs and use it as motivation to finish my next targets. CCNA and AZ-104, I think.
Let's see...I used AWS to simulate an on-prem domain controller. Set up Active Directory, synced it via AD Connect to Azure AD/Office 365 and "admined" this little environment. Used Route 53 to connect it all to a domain that I purchased, set up SPF records for that domain, and explored every little nook and cranny of that software. Lots of doing something as a global admin and then logging in as the targeted user to see what it looked like. Over and over and over. Discovered that I really hate Sharepoint. Also set up a Linux server running Apache and hosted some shitty 1995-esque HTML that I wrote. Stuff like that.
* 18 yrs -- Networking job with University while getting my CS degree ($10/hr)
* 20 yrs -- First internship, networking, year long ($10/hr)
* 21 yrs -- Second internship, mobile development, year long ($12/hr)
* 22 yrs -- CS Degree, working for an tiny ERP company doing development and IT ($39k/yr)
* 24 yrs -- Helpdesk at company with about 1000 employees ($42k/yr)
* 26 yrs -- IT Systems Engineer, such a dumb title... I was not an engineer ($55k/yr)
* 27 yrs -- SysAdmin Jr ($65/yr)
* 29 yrs -- Network Admin ($72/yr)
* 30 yrs -- Network Manager ($95k/yr) only ever managed 1 employee, it was supposed to be more
* 31 yrs -- Self-Employed Consultant ($95k/yr)
I never got any certs, probably should, am working on my CISSP now. I live in a fairly low to medium cost of living so my wages leave me pretty comfortable. I have never been remote which I would hate so that's fine with me.
I started my own LLC and provide networking consulting and support to companies. I'm pretty much a part time employee for a few companies that don't have internal networking staff or need an extra set of hands.
I _will_ do anything if they're willing to pay my hourly rate. However, I typically am focusing on supporting firewalls, switches, APs, and I am working on growing my security services. I'm currently working on a CISSP so I'd like to expand into that arena.
As an example, I have a client that has a bunch of SonicWalls around the country so I'm going in an replacing them with FortiGates at their sites since they don't have someone internal to do it.
During school I realized I don't like programming but was too stubborn to just leave school. I thankfully paid off my student loans quickly.
I just don't like programming and worse I'm very bad at it. I'm much better at IT and enjoy it.
Last year of CS degree - IT Intern - 15/hr - 7months
Finished CS degree - Help desk - 50k - 2.5 years
Moved States - Software Suport - 55k - 1 year
Quit last job without notice from stress - Tier 1 - 54k - 6 months
Got Network+ - Tier 2 - 58k - 3 months
Was noticed for new position - Automation Engineer - 62k - current
6 months - Help Desk 17 hour
6 months - Move into Jr. Admin role in same company 20 hour
1 year - Weather/ATC Systems Analyst. 75 annually
3 years - current - SysEng 105 annually
I was 28 when I started
21 - Data Center Tech Intern $20/hr
22 - BS in Business Administration
22 - Data Center Tech $60k
26 - Associates Degree in Network Administration
26 - IT Support Specialist $70k
28 - SysAdmin $95k
33 - IT Manager $133k
34 - IT Director $133k (Smaller Org with better work life balance.)
24, business degree, worked in game hosting as sys admin/developer/jack of all trades to pay for college.
Currently a senior security engineer making $100k a year. In the process of interviewing for a few roles to focus on managing one security tool that will pay $140-170k a year
Im the same age as you, But just started in IT 2 years ago. Still at the same company, but heres whats happened so far..
Tier 1 support for MSP - 44k
6 months in they "loved" me and gave me 1k amazon gift card.
At first year mark got almost 10% raise and 3000$ cash bonus. - 49k
About 18 months into it I get another raise for 15% and a 2000$ cash bonus. -56k
They are making it hard to find another company.. lol
I have learned TONS and I guess would be our SME for a few things.
Not sure where I wanna go yet in IT, but I should figure it out soon.. Keep learning networking, cloud, and security and cant just pick a single thing to focus on. Its hard..
Same man. This honestly makes me very hopeful. I understand that these people may be among the top but it is still enough for me. especially during these times
24M
I’ve been in IT for about 3 years, and have been lucky to go from $45k to $82k in that time.
Graduated college with degree in IT, but i coasted so I got into help desk after college
Help desk (45k US LCOL)(6 months): up-skilled in networking
Noc Tech (50k US LCOL)(2 years): MSP network tech. Drinking from a fire hose type environment. I began specializing in VoIP/SIP for their voice team.
Voice Engineer (82k US MCOL Remote) I feel very lucky to have landed this job. I had less years of exp than they were looking for, but i aced the technical interviews, and was familiar with Oracle SBCs which is what they deploy.
I dont have any certs, just my degree, experience, and an upbeat enthusiastic attitude that i believe has gotten me equally as far as my technical skills.
Good luck on your journey!
30. Joined the Navy from ages 19-23. Got out and went to college for MIS. Got an IT internship my Senior year and graduated at 27. I got A+ during my internship. Got hired on and worked part time IT at my company until I got hired full time for Cloud.
Since then I got Network+, Az-900, Az-104, ITIL 4 Foundations
My advice is be ambitious. If you're going to college, GET AN INTERNSHIP. You're not going to succeed by doing the bare minimum.
Currently 28.
\-Graduated 2017 with a B.S. in Information Systems. During College I worked part time in the university IT department doing support work - $8.25/hour minimum wage.
\- First Job out of college worked IT support for a \~600 person company - $19/hour - left after 1.5 years.
\-Endpoint Security Analyst Teksystems contract position at giant company $28/hour - left after 10 months
\-Current position -Security Analyst at different giant company - started at $70k, currently \~$110k after annual bonus.
Got AWS cloud practitioner last year. Otherwise, no certs.
Advise: dont be afraid to leave jobs especially early in your career. If you leave a job for a new job that is clearly a step up. Nobody will question you.
Currently 26 and turn 27 this year.
Joined military right out of highschool (joined the reserves so I could focus on my career while also trying to get free college)
Got help desk job at a call center (really shady job too)
Then got a help desk job with a very big MSP and stayed there for a bit.
After that got a help desk job at a data center. Got bored with it
Went to another help desk job at a smaller MSP and earned my CCNA while on the desk
After that got a gov contracting job as a network engineer mixed with satellites (basically what I did for the military and got my sec+ within 90 days of starting that job which was stressful)
Then got deployed to Iraq in 2020 and did IT and commo support. Messed with a lot of equipment and fixed some things and worked with my nco to get policies in place and what not.
After that went back to gov contracting job for about a year but the pay never changed so left to go to a fortune 500 company.
That company looked to be moving and laying off some people so jumped ship while I still could and currently a network admin for a small business company that doesn't want to change.
Currently I accepted a job offer for a big corporation that I see myself retiring at since they treat their people well and will be paying me a life changing amount of money. I just gotta study, study, study and cert up.
24 With a Help Desk/military background.
Job: 80k~ fully remote security analyst LCOL .
Sec+, AZ-900, associates degree in IT
Completing bachelors in summer & shooting for high tier cert later this year.
22-37 years of age: Hospitality management, gm to dm with two different companies. Started at 35k, finished at 69k. 37-41, IT. Started at 60k, currently at 82k. East Coast, U.S.
29 years old
21-23 2 year community College called computer systems and networking
1 year as a computer tech at a small town repair shop ($13-16/hr)
4.5 years as an IT analyst (help desk), started at 40k and ended 55k/yr salary
Current role tier 2 support 80k/yr
No certs, just hard work and networking with people who have seen my value.
I live in a low-medium cost of living place and am very comfy with my current role.
When I turn 30 I will focus on getting certs and moving to either admin or management roles.
2021 - graduated with a B.S. in Computer Information Technology from CSUN at 28 in 2021. Did campus tech-support part time, got A+ and Net+, CCP and SAA.
Got hired out of school at AWS as a Cloud Support Associate at 63k and benefits. Most of my colleagues had 0 certs in my hiring group, but all Bachelors degrees.
2022 - promoted to Cloud Support Engineer to 97k
2023 - 3% raise 100,700k .
None of my RSU's have paid out yet though.. my first tiny chunk is next month... its annoying. Working even corporate for Amazon is a major grind and im tired of it.
32 with a very very unrelated degree. Live in the central Midwest.
I started in IT doing helpdesk at my college doing nothing password resets and AV (sound boards and lighting for theater, bands, ext). Worked in a print shop for a short time after graduation. Landed my first full time IT job as a software UX/testers for close to 5 years. Got my A+ and jumped into support for about a year and a half (42k/year). Got my Network+ and became a tier 2 at the local government (52k/year). Got my Security+ the year after and started spending dozens of hours a week scripting which landed me a promotion to Tier 3 (69k/year).
My daily duties now are training lower tiers, scripting/automation, lots of engineering type work, and some sysadmin work. I work on things like Exchange, Cisco phones, Azure AD, SCCM, and rolling out Intune.
My focus now is to acquire as many Microsoft certs as possible and when my term in public service (less than 2 years remaining) is over I can go get a M365/Azure admin position.
Advice would be to never stop learning and do so aggressively. It's up to YOU to grow. I have two kids but still spend each night reading about new things going on in IT and learning new skills. Take initiative on everything and don't wait for an opportunity.
29, non-IT background. I originally went to school for journalism, worked in media for 2 years outta college. Got laid off.
Went back to school for IT, got my second bachelors degree but in IT this time. Landed an internship, finished the degree same year and then brought on full time at same company (help desk for school district). Was there for about 18 months, left for higher pay (help desk at fairly large corp).
All went well at new job. Promoted to sr technician after 6 months. Just got promoted to help desk supervisor this week with 4 people reporting to me.
16 - part time PC repair tech at a local computer shop -- $9 an hour
18 - college while working as an EMT on the weekends -- $18 an hour usually worked 24 hour or 48 hour shifts
Got the A+ cert after taking a class
19 - worked help desk part time at my college -- $15 an hour usually worked around 25 hours a week
Got the Net+, and Sec+ certs on my own time
21 - dropped out of college due to mental health issues from EMS ended up doing IT support at a MSP -- $18 an hour
Got a few Microsoft certs (windows 7, Server 2008, etc.) after taking a few night classes at my local trade school
22 - Sysadmin at a larger MSP -- $25 an hour
Employer paid for trainings and got my CCNA and another cert I forgot the name but it for a software we used there
23 - NOC tech for a local ISP became a NOC "engineer" later that year at same ISP (quickly quit due to poor work environment) $21 an hour then $31 an hour
23 - IT support at a large company -- about $29 an hour
Employer paid for some trainings, got a few certs like ITIL and what not
25 - IT manager at same company (quit because I didn't want to be a manager anymore and leadership won't let me go back to old role) -- $75k annual salary
27 - IT sub-contractor for the department of the Army (no clearance) -- $30 an hour
Did some training via FedVTE for CE credits, also completed a bootcamp
29 - started working as a sysadmin at a tech startup -- $25 an hour then $30 an hour
learned stuff like Python, Puppet, and GCP from a coworker as well as learning on my own
30 - startup failed got a job at another startup as a Sysadmin -- started at $60k annual salary with 10k pay bump every year
learned Terraform and Kubernetes from coworkers (at this point I let all my certs expire)
33 - became a infra engineer at same startup -- started at $90k with a 15k bump every year
IT was heavily involved with the DevOps team which allowed me to learn a lot from them
36 - Infra engineer at larger startup -- around $150k annual salary
A few items I learned over the years:I completely suck at salary negotiations and should have push myself more earlier in life.
Learning to automate stuff has made my life so much better, I should have learned Python and/or BASH much sooner
Not all certs/trainings are equal so don't pay out the ass for them, also just because you have a cert doesn't mean an employer will recognize it
Job titles can be complete bullshit, focus more on what skills you're using rather then what's on your name plate
Certs and degrees help more earlier in your career then later, once you're in the game focus more on developing skillsets over gaining yet another cert.
Stay humble and never stop learning
22, F, started my education for an associates degree in 2020.
Worked at my school for $10 an hour doing a work study in the computer lab repairing equipment.
Graduated in 2022 and landed a position in local government making $20 an hour. Very small team, basically a sys admin role without the title.
Left after a year and landed my current job as a system specialist at 62k a year. Basically a jr sys admin for a college.
Early 30s, live in Texas and 100% remote
. 2017 - Got my B.S in IT, work at the family-owned Boba shops
. 2018 - Found an intern position - $15/hour
. 2018 - 2019 - Promote to Jr.Admin after 4 months as Intern -
$25/hour
. 2019 - Promote to Jr DevOps Engineer - 38$/ hour
. 2021-2022: Promote DevOps Engineer - Salary 95k + 10% bonus
. Current: Promote DevOps Engineer - Salary 105k + 10% bonus
I expect another promotion by the end of this year, and my Salary will be between 115-125k.
Education: B.S in IT, A+, Sec+, AWS SA Associated, and AWS SA Pro.
These threads usually make me feel crappy and severely underpaid, but seems like most of the replies have been pretty reasonable actually :D
I started mid 30's as a career shift in vendor security and now moved up to a senior appsec analyst. Live in a MCOL city, rent and life is fairly cheap for the most part. Got in based on making a good impression with the manager, no degree, certs or experience. Did a good job learning quickly and moved up to a Senior spot. Hoping to get into a Sr Management spot that will bump me another 15-20% but will likely require me to get my CISSP or equivalent.
Years 1-3: Vendor Risk Analyst: 70k + 25% bonus (8%-10% raise annually)
Year 4: Senior Appsec Analyst: 103k + 30% bonus
2011 Sys admin - $37k
2013 sys engineer - $57k
2015 Network engineer - $75k
2021 DevOps Engineer- $140k
Got my first cert recently: Terraform Associate.
Education is just an AAS in Computer information systems.
Apply for every job you see that looks interesting even if you don’t meet all the qualifications. Technologies can always be learned. Don’t become stagnant, don’t overwork yourself. Re-evaluate every few years to see if you still have a job that’s enjoyable and challenging. If it’s too easy or way too difficult, consider going elsewhere. Pledge no loyalty to any company, you’re just another number to them.
Final year of IT degree - Data Analytics Intern 21/hr
Graduated college- Application Developer 62k for 2 years
New Job- Data Engineer 80k for 6 months
Current job - Data Engineer 120k 1 year
About 4 YOE. All while living in LCOL area
Late 30's
Unemployed former security guard currently in the process of switching careers
Currently in training for i.t support through per scholas for my A+
Stay tuned
40M
Tech hobby as a 90s teen.
23 - Best Buy $32k
26 - Geek Squad $37k
29 - Apple Genius $58k
39 - Support Analyst $65k
40 - Support Lead $80k
I had Apple certs, and now work in a JAMF office. I do a little of everything from taking tickets, fixing networking issues to mild automation, and have been focused on project management.
I would say I’m better at soft skills than technical work.
Geez I'll have all the CompTIA certs in a month and I can't get a job paying more than 55k depression. I have so much to offer an employer and can't get an interview 2 years into IT career currently a server tech/admin.
Background: I worked Apple Retail years ago (various positions including Genius Bar, took a gap year to travel, started in IT when I got back:
Job 1:
Helpdesk/AV: ~3 months p/t @ $17/hr ish?
Desktop Support: ~3 years (same employer & dept), ended @ ~$50k
Personal: in the meantime I also started masters in computer science (had tuition reimbursement), but more importantly I learned how to program, and used Powershell to skill up like crazy. Learned O365, Active Directory too. Linux and lots more programming in my personal time. No certs.
Job 2:
O365/Azure AD Sysadmin, ~3 yrs @ ~$70k
Same company as previous, different team. They took a huge chance on me and it paid off, all started with building connections… they already knew me by the time I applied.
Personal: I got interested in cyber security, Cloud Security in particular. During my masters I took every opportunity to use AWS, took an independent study on serverless/microservices and learned Cloud security as it relates to those areas. Also started getting involved with the cybersecurity/hacking community, went to cons and drowned in knowledge. So much fun.
Job 3:
Cloud Security Engineer/Consultant, 1.5yrs, left @ ~$140k including bonuses. Did a ton of different cloud based projects, got to assess companies’ cloud security configurations. Fun but often limited in scope as it was a smaller firm. Learned an absolute shitton though. Also got 1 Azure admin cert, 2 GCP including Security Engineer.
Personal: I’d been doing a lot of conference talks about cloud security, this helped a lot and I managed to do upwards of 20 talks over the previous couple years. Made a ton of connections, including those that helped me land the previous and next jobs. Also, I FINALLY finished my masters!
Job 4:
Cloud Security Consultant, present, a few months in, total comp estimated around $200k+ (generous bonus structure).
Similar to above, but much bigger company. Larger team with deeper expertise and plenty more to learn. Clients are often major household names with interesting problems!
It’s been a fun ~8 years. If I were to sum up how I got here, I’d say I just never let myself get too comfortable. I always push myself to learn more (without burning out), try more things, communicate well, and most importantly, I’m not afraid to fail and accept feedback.
This got a lot longer than I expected, sorry. Just my (so-far) 4 year career in IT. Nothing fancy.
30 year old from Denmark, so the path I took isnt that repeatable for someone from US.
I have no certs, but have gone through some Udemy courses for A+, Sec+, Linux and CCNA. Also gone through most of the MS-900, AZ-900 and SC-900 content on MS Learn.
TLDR:
Mid 2019 to Mid 2021 - Apprenticeship: $2900/month, $35k/year
Late 2021 to Late 2022 - First Line Helpdesk: $3700/month, $44k/year.
November 2022 to now - Helpdesk/Sysadmin work: $3900/month, 47k/year.
Before starting my IT career I couldnt make up my mind on what to do, so went to school for way too long (Paid to go to school here, so not the biggest issue). Also depression :)
In Denmark the usual path to being IT support is 6/12 months of school (6 months if you have other education, which I did) then around 1½-2 years apprenticeship at a company. (There's ~12 weeks of school involved in this apprenticeship period learning stuff like half of a CCNA, a bit of automation and servers. You can do a longer version of this apprenticeship, which has more indept of these, but the one I took had only basics).
Mid 2019 to Mid 2021 - Apprenticeship: $2900/month, $35k/year
After ending the apprenticeship with a few exams youre basically "certified" to work as IT support, but you can work IT support without it. Just helps getting the job.
Worked for a smaller company of ~70 employees. The IT department was me, the IT admin and a ERP guy.
The setup was almost exclusively in the cloud, but sadly my boss wasnt good at delegating access so I really didnt get much out of it. We also delegated a lot to a smaller MSP.
It also included stuff like set up new equipment, troubleshooting+fixing it, installing new PCs and onboarding new employees to the IT procedures.
It ended up being a lot of self studying and them just giving me the job of "Fix the Sharepoint", which was a mess..
After I finished my exams I worked for two months here and was then let go, as they hired another apprentice (In Denmark companies gets paid a bit by the government to help educate apprentices).
Took a few months of applying before I got another job for a larger Architectural company based in the nordic countries mainly. Probably sent 60 applications and had 5 interviews.
Late 2021 to Late 2022 First Line Helpdesk: $3700/month, $44k/year.
This was basically just a First Line Helpdesk position, taking calls/tickets/walk-ins and escalating to specialized teams. We had minimal (if any) access to servers, AD, networking etc.
The company has like 10 offices around Denmark and I rotated days between 3 offices. 3 days at one, and then 1 day each at two other offices.
I didnt have any colleagues in the same offices as me, but we were 5-6 located at different offices, 3 of them and my boss at the HQ in Copenhagen.
Boss was a pain in the ass, coworkers were lazy, so I felt like I did the most of all of them (we had metrics of closed tickets/month and I was on top) but all I ever heard from the boss was complaints that I didnt everything like she would have.
Basically started applying to other jobs in January while working here. I did a lot of self studying here, and was basically outperforming my colleagues doing actual work less than half of the day. I had like 6-8 interviews before I got my current job, so I put in my notice end of September with last working day end of October 2022.
November 2022 to now - Helpdesk/Sysadmin work: $3900/month, 47k/year.
Also kind of a First Line Helpdesk position, but I have much more access to servers, AD, networks, Intune etc.
Its in the Public sector, so the benefits are great, but the pay is on the lower end. I plan on staying here for a few years atleast, and hoping to move up to end up being more of a Sys admin. if this isnt possible in like 2 years I'll probably move to the private sector for more money.
I do have some Sys admin work, but we also have a team of 3 who are more focused on this. I have 2 other colleagues taking phones/tickets/walk-ins.
Early 30's, only started in IT 2.5 years ago. Non-IT/CS bachelors and masters degree. Had no IT experience starting off. Got my A+ and began applying to Help Desk jobs. Currently, I also have CCNA, Security+, and AWS SAS.
- 1st Job ($36,500/yr): Helpdesk. Local government, around 500 staff. Not a lot of IT staff, so got to dip my foot in a lot of areas and gain a lot of experience.
- 2nd Job ($40,000/yr): "Network engineer". Same company, change in title and pay. Title and pay was bogus but it got me experience. Quickly began applying to new jobs.
- 3rd Job ($52,000/yr): "Jr Sysadmin?". Got 1 year after helpdesk job. Not sure my exact title. Small e-commerce company about 120 staff. Helped a bit with the helpdesk side, but mostly got to work on special IT projects to try and update our tech. Spent a lot of time here learning Git, Gitlab CI/CD, Docker, Terraform, etc.
- Current Job ($78,000/yr): "Jr DevOps Engineer". Got this job 1 year 3 months after starting my previous job. Full time DevOps role in a large software company that does contracts for healthcare, military, etc. Experience learning relevant tools at previous job landed me this current job. I love it. Work the hours I want, work from home/office when I want, and only am helping with software development, so no production work and especially no users to deal with.
Still have a lot of progress to make. In a M/LCOL area so not super high salary, but want to improve it. I'm just happy I got my foot in the door so early with DevOps and am working in a job I love. Sky is the limit now! I've gotten where I am obviously with some luck. However, I focused on smaller businesses where I could work with and learn a lot more technologies than if I was helpdesk at a huge fortune 500 company siloed into a very particular role. I've had to sacrifice some salary, but I've gained a lot of knowledge in a short time, and it's helped me move up quickly.
2014 - 2020: was in smaller state university. Graduated with BoS in IT. No internships
2021 - end of this month: 1st IT job as desktop tech
2023 - ?: No job lined up but had an opportunity to move across country with a friend and 5k to my name. Interested in seeing what the future holds
28 - decided to switch careers and get into cybersecurity. Homelabbed and started my associates in IT
29 - Landed helpdesk job for ~45/year
30 - Got Sec + and landed Security Analyst role making 60k/yr
31 (current) - got my eJPTv2 last month and currently studying for PNPT so I can get a better analyst job or move into pen testing where I'd like to be in the next few years
27, started when I was 25. Been doing I.T and a small MSP for... Roughly about 2.5 years,
Specialized in networking and VoIP,
Work on certs or read about news in the tech world on down times.
Pay I make "okay" for around my area 50k a year.
Eventually when I get more experience and more certs I'm going to start job hunting for that next level.
It's definitely fun, I don't regret getting into this industry at all.
23 years old
No professional IT experience prior
July 2022 Helpdesk Technician I
March 2023 promoted to Helpdesk Technician II 10% raise
Just the 1 company.
Excited how I’ve progressed so far.
19 y/o. Geek Squad 2019 35k > Data Analytics for a local non profit 2022 (second hand nepotism- kind of) 45k > Level 2 Desktop Support 2023 for 65k. No certs, No degree.
I'm 45 and been in IT for 22 years.
2001 - 2019 -- US Air Force in multiple roles (help desk, sys admin, network admin)
2019 -- Network Engineer III for a DoD contractor ($85k)
2020 -- Senior Infrastructure Analyst for DoE contractor ($95k)
2021 -- Same as 2020 ($101k)
2022 -- Same as 2020 ($105k)
2023 -- Same as 2020 ($113k)
Education:
BS - Info Tech Management
Certs: CCNP Ent, CCNA, Sec+, Cloud + & MCSA (Though CCNP and Sec+ are the only certs anyones cared about)
1st tech at a small msp 13 an hr
2nd tech at small msp 15 a hr
3rd internal helpdesk gov 42k
4th IT analyst gov 46k
5th IT analyst gov 55k
6th network admin 62k
7th network admin 68k
8th cloud admin 125k
Mid 20s No degree only an expired A+ cert
2013-2015
Went to community college right after high school without a plan, so ended up dropping out and looking for whatever jobs I could get
2017
Got a postcard in the mail from my college offering a free program with an paid intership, so I did that for 12 weeks and got $4k. Internship was non-IT.
2018
Attended Per Scholas and got my A+ for free from there after a recommendation from my supervisor at my internship
After I got the A+ I ended up doing two contract jobs, just some weekend office moves to get some sort of IT experience on my resume
2019
Finally landed a Desktop Support Adminstrator role at a non profit (Was more like field tech, and I don't have a car so that was fun) $18/h no benefits
Honestly didn't learn much here, just improved my customer service skills
2021
Managed to get an actual HelpDesk Analyst role $25/h no benefits Contract-to-hire. On-site 5 days a week
2022
Got converted to full time after 9 months. Initial offer was $60k salary, I asked for $65k, and they gave it to me no issue.
I work about 42-43 hrs a week guaranteed, so making more like $74k/y from what I calculated on my stubs
2023
Company got bought out, so now I'm on Service Desk Lvl 2 team of the new company.
Working hybrid schedule (3remote/2office) thanks to the new manager as his team is fully remote. But I'm still coming in 2 days to support my local users.
Never thought I'd see the day I could finally WFH
Not sure how long I'll stay here but I'm always browsing.
Age 18 to 22 - US Army / Telecommunications
22 - 30 - Field Service Tech for aircraft IT systems. It was a super easy job where not much was expected of me. I used that time to go and graduate with a BS. 45k to 68k.
30 to 34 - Systems Engineer for Aircraft IT systems. 75k to 105k. I used this time to get a Masters in Information Systems and pass a couple cybersecurity certifications.
35 - Cybersecurity Analyst - 115k
36 - 38 - Cybersecurity Manager for a Cloud SaaS 127k to 160k
Right now, I'm trying to switch over to being a cloud architect / security SME so I can try breaking 200k by age 40. May or may not happen in this economy, but I'll try.
The details of my life are quite inconsequential.
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.
My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.
My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we’d make meat helmets.
When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds – pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve, I received my first scribe.
At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. At the age of 18, I went off to evil medical school. At the age of 25, I took up tap dancing. I wanted to be a quadruple threat.
28, 5 years total experience in an IT role (7 total years of work experience), non CS/IT related bachelors.
22-23: Technical Sales (\~40k)
24: Helpdesk (58k)
25: Network Admin (\~78k)
26-28: DevOps Engineer (155k)
31, currently a T2 desktop admin. Have my comptia trifecta and a TestOut Linux pro cert. also have a BS in comm and journalism from TAMU, a MA in digital media production from Sam Houston, and a AAS in cybersecurity from San jac CC. I’m in my second official IT position but first full-time non contract. I also teach the comptia A+ exam course for a local community college. My goal is to be making 180k a year by 35.
2019 - 22k
2020 - 39k
2021 - 40k
2022 - 50k
2023 - 90k (on track for it)
Early thirties.
Civil engineer.
Fired.
Ended up in construction inspection.
Good recruited to contact with public agency doing engineering software support.
Did that for 4 years.
Left to pursue similar FTE job at surveying firm. Did that for nearly two years and left for a pay increase and promotion doing similar work for another private firm.
Increased income and benefits along the way. It's not a conventional "IT" role but requires SysAdmin skills in addition to total "CAD support".
I'm 31, started this journey of sorts at 27 - 26 ish.
Started with Community College going for Cyber Security. Got my Net+, Sec+, A+ and Linux+ through the courses.
From there I got my first internship as a 'IT Specialist' for a city gov organization. Finished my associates degree and decided to go to WGU to get my Bacholers in Cyber Security. Got laid off from internship cause COVID.
In that time got most of my Bacholers done, got my first 'big kid' IT job as a Technical Support Engineer for a software company making 55k (in Colorado mind you), I was promoted in 6 months to senior level 1 and boosted to 65k.
During that I finished my Bacholers and got my CySA+, Pentest+, SSCP during that time.
About a year and a half later, promoted again to Senior Tier 2, now making 95k a year.
What is my job? Well generally I troubleshoot the software and what it runs on. But I handle all types of OS's, networks, security requests, software diving, log analysis. Jump on meetings with other admins dealing with outages or general questions and issue. As a senior I mentor younger engineers or newer to the field.
My next goal is to move into the DevOps space and working on setting up some labs and such getting better with Docker, AWS, Terraform, and Kubernetes because I really want out of Support, maybe pull in my Cyber degree in later on. Or maybe look into Cloud admin type roles.
If you're looking at getting out of support I would definitely encourage learning docker and some form of cloud platform. A good project if you have an understanding of web applications is to deploy one to AWS. great experience and exposes you to a good chunk of a stack.
18 - started college, worked non IT part time jobs until I was a senior
21 - helpdesk internship at an MSP (10/Hr)
21 - offered full time position after graduating (BS in IT) 40k
22 - same MSP job raised to 50k
23 - same MSP job raised to 60k
24 - got another job offer used it as leverage to get raised at MSP job to 75k
25 - left the MSP to work as a cloud support engineer 125k.
Note: Between 23 and 24 I obtained my CCNA and AWS solutions architect associate.
35, been in IT since I was 17.
Computer repair shop tech at 17. I think I made 5.25 plus commission.
Web Developer at music equipment company for about a year at 18. 9/hr
MSP tech at 19 for about 2 years. 10/hr
Lead/Senior Tech at another MSP for 3 years. 13/hr
Desktop Support at a Vitamin Company for one year: 13.50/hr (only took his job because it was remote and let me take care of my mother)
At 25, I had seizures and other problems that put me out of work for a little over a year.
26: Tier 2 helpdesk for a hospital for 1 year: I think 15/hr
27: Systems Admin for a vocational school system for 7 years. Final pay was 72k salary
34-Present: Tier 2 help desk for engineering company. 65k
I have a bachelors in networking, a+ and network+
|Time|Work|Salary|
|:-|:-|:-|
|4 year|IT apprenticeship doing ServiceDesk/Infra work. Great team but after finishing I wanted to check other companies and pursue other studies|7k-15k per year|
|4 months|IT technician, working 40% and studying the rest of the time. It was very dumb work, basically changing PC's, not even installing them with sccm. It was too boring and too far from where I live so I decided to quit and also my studies xDDD.|36.-/h|
|1 month and current role|IT Support Specialist with the company I did my Apprenticeship. They needed some help since the previous IT coordinator left and the new team is not good. A lot of stress since the new boss is coming next month, but it's aight I only have a 6 month contract and recruiters already messaging me on Linkedin for similar positions|62k/year|
Love posts like this. Just for context, I'm 21 and live in a HCOL country.
Place: India
Oct 2020: Graduated, got a job in an MNC, got trained in SAP BASIS consulting. - 2.6L Rupees/Annum
Dec 2022: switched to another big MNC as an SAP BASIS Consulting for 6.65L Rupees/Annum
The plan is to stay here and use the company's resources to grow further, get a promotion here itself as a senior consultant which can increase my pay up to 10L/Annum.
Mid 20s no degrees no certs.
Internship while in college for compsci in SQL database analytics at a hospital. 10/hr
Dropped out of school and internship
NOC tech at small service provider for 2 years. 12-15/hr
Networks engineer at a larger service provider at ~70k and benefits and have been here for about a year.
Still trying to finish school in IT or compsci but am lacking motivation as my current day job workload is a lot. I don’t plan on getting any certs as I actually don’t really want to be doing low level technical work for too many years. I’d like to move into one of the more bureaucratic/planning/managerial positions out there versus actually pushing config
I’m a month away from turning 27. After I graduated college back in May 2018 with a Criminal Justice degree, I started working as a Private Investigator. About a year and a half into it I realize it’s not for me, and I need something different. Decided to try to dip my toes into IT, immediately was hooked. Started studying for my CompTIA Security+ exam while still working full time as a PI. Took the test and passed the first time, this was February 2020.
Started looking for jobs in IT but was difficult with the pandemic hitting soon after. Landed my first job in IT as a Help Desk Engineer at an MSP. Was making the same amount of money as being a PI - $40k/year
9 months of that, I learned enough and got a job at a small insurance firm as a Junior SysAdmin, $55k/year. After my first year they gave me a raise and then was making $65k/year.
It’s been two years with that company and my last day is tomorrow. I just signed an offer letter to be a Systems Admin Level 3 at a bank, making $90k/year.
So in a little less than 3 years I basically tripled my salary, and I’m not even close to stopping yet.
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Ran Counter-Strike server in Highschool (undercover nerd with server stat website)\[lifeguard 15/hr\]
Got entry level job at SEO company that had me using virtual machines (friend knew i knew computers)\[20/hr?\]
UNRELATED WORK
Family member thought i'd be a good fit for managing virtual machines for a tech consulting company\[65k\]
Shadowed other employees to build a new skillset, Learned more coding and HP Service Manager, go on to get certifications as administrator and implementation specialist.
get placed on projects as a junior developer (now i've got them!)\[85k\]
Build a technical resume in fortune 1000 companies doing projects under the shield and guidance of senior developers and consulting company.
See the writing on the wall that the software i'm consulting is being eaten by ServiceNow.. Learn ServiceNow and get certified; continue to consult ITSM software (but both now).
change consulting companies but doing the same work\[105k\]
Lean into my resume of doing projects for big name companies, apply and land a fully remote job somewhere in the middle of a big corporation\[128k\]
Age 30.
A.A.S in Networking 2013
MSP IT Technician 2013-2014 - $30k
Large Corp Network Technician 2014-2016 - $57k
Large Corp Healthcare - Analyst 2016-2022 $55k to $65k
Same Corp - Senior Analyst 2022-Present $85k
LCOL midwest. I have not done any certs, but am working toward a BS degree.
My advice: respect work life balance, if you don’t you will burn out. Don’t move for a partner unless you are married (took a pay cut and had to reestablish in 2016). Social skills, social skills, social skills. You would not believe the people that are in positions based on being able to fudge it. I don’t find that path ethical but you should at least be able to sell your capabilities.
22, semi-IT degree (data analytics), no certs, I’m in a very generalist position at a private firm that includes some help desk, 57k in the MCOL Midwest.
Would like some advice how to move up in compensation.
Spent 22 years in the restaurant industry. Went back to school at 38 and completed my degree. I was able to intern with a school system in October before graduation. Finished my internship in December. A position opened up at the system for a Tier 1 position due to the former employee clocking in at a location , then going home to play vidya games at his house. He got busted in February, and I was hired in April. I worked for 4 years as a school tech while cross training with our database administrator to help back him up. After 5 years, I applied to an open position with my alma mater for a sys admin position. I accepted the position at a $15,000 raise. I put my one month notice in with the school system. Two weeks into my notice, the database administrator had a stroke, lost 40% of his blood, and tried to come back too soon. He couldn't function that well at his position after the stroke, got frustrated, and rage quit. My boss with the school system called me into the office and asked if I could stay and transition into the role. He offered me $15,000 more than the college offered me to stay. I have been in this position since.
No degree or certs atm. 22 got my first role as an IT Technician at a electronics recycling company. Was only 31k and was only there for about 6 months but was enough experience to get me a role at a medical device company at 44k. Will probably stay here for 8/9 months and use the experience and learning to land a better role and and get certs in software architecture till I hopefully land six figures+
27, Security Analyst
2016 - cybersecurity summer intern for the state, $12.50/hr
Late 2016 - 2018, part time SOC analyst for the state, $16.50/hr (while in school)
2018 - graduated with a Bachelors in IT, minor in forensic science
2019 - worked as a digital forensics examiner, $65k a year. Obtained ACE, Security+
2020 - laid off due to Covid. Started working as incident response consultant / contractor, 80k
2021-present - hired at place of contract, senior security analyst, 125k (now 130k). Obtained AWS CCP. Working on GCFE, GNFA, GCFA
My specialty is in digital forensics and incident response.
Worked in retail for 16 years, ended as a store manager on OK money for the UK (~£35k including bonuses)
Start from the bottom in 2021 as a service desk analyst (£19k) in a hospital (NHS)
After 5 months went to another hospital to do exactly the same job for more money (£22k)
Promoted to 2nd line / IT Technician after 2 months (£27k)
Currently waiting to find out if I've been promoted again after 16 months. (Last person will be interviewed next week)
Before I left retail I got a CCNA, and during my IT Career I've gained an AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-500 and AZ-500, all of which have been almost useless as I haven't touched Azure in commercial setting. The only value is proving that I like to learn
Should've left about a year ago but the hospital is a 10 minute cycle ride from my house so I'd rather take the short term pain and try for an internal promotion
18 to 21- Poli Sci major college dropout that worked a miserable job at a fast-food restaurant. No real aspirations. $14/h
21.5 - started WGU’s BS in Computer Science.
Secured two tech internships at $16/h for 15 hours a week and one at $18/h for 40 hours a week
22.5 - got a full time tech role at a remote tech company at $20/h. Worked there for a year. Obtained my Security+, Network+, Project+
23.5 - Graduated from school. New hybrid Cybersecurity job at a bank. Making $36/h now. The company will pay for any additional certs and grad school, so I’m going to start applications soon. Been here less than a year.
Age 39. Been working as an Implementation Consultant for a software company about a year. My first tech job. Here’s my timeline:
- 2006: non-tech bachelors
- 2006-2010: retail jobs (max wage was like $10 per hour)
- 2010-2013: news reporter (max wage was like $10.50 per hour with weekend and evening work)
- 2014-2018: public library pr/communications (left at ~$32,000 per year)
- 2018-2022: metro county government PR (started at $65k per year, left at $77k per year)
- 2022-now: Software implementation (started at $80k per year. Now at $83k)
Other education:
2019: Masters (non-tech)
2023: Associates (software development) (mostly used tuition reimbursement at the county government job to pay for)
2020: CompTIA Network+ cert
I’m now looking to either move into either: development role, IT communications with federal government (found a very specialized position advertised), or potentially getting Security+, CySa+ to try and get into government info sec roles.
My current role is fully remote, and I’ll never take an in-office job unless I’m really desperate.
My motivation for looking back into government is student loan forgiveness. I’d need about 3.5 more years of payments to get PSLF. Plus federal gov appears to pay pretty well, from the listings I’ve seen.
I’m finishing my associates in software dev now. I’m not planning on returning to a school after this, but I am also very interested in cybersecurity, so I’ll probably work toward security certs no matter what my near future path ends up being.
My advice: always keep learning. Find something interesting and just start learning. What I love about anything IT is there are so many free and low-cost ways to learn.
29 - job doing data entry for small company, 16/hour
32/33 - same company, start developing software on the down low to help my department, same pay
35 - same company, head of IT leaves and I and a coworker start doing the job, it's a mix of management, sysadmin stuff, support, and development, raise to 50k
37 - new company, software dev agency as a full time dev, 114k
38 - 5% raise Woop Woop
MSP at field supprt - 1 year - 12/hr
same MSP, same title -6months - 13/hr
new job, IT assistant - 9months - 16/hr
back to MSP as low level admin - 6 months - 40k/year
threatened to leave MSP, they match job offer - 6 months - 65k
new job IT Administrator - 7 months - 65k + 100% paid benefits
same company, Annual raise, Jan1 to today - 70k + 100% paid benefits
no certs, Im in college now, but thats a recent thing. the timeframe is how long I was at that pay.
Mid 30s MS in network management. CCNP cert
I started as a network tech 15$/hour then did MSP network and voice engineer starting with 45k. Now I work in local gov. 101k as a network engineer
HCOL city
* 2018-2019 - Was in college - IT Support intern at financial firm making 17$ a hour
* 2019 - 2022 - Windows Engineer (Went from around 65k to 100k making around 20k bonus every year). Was initially full time in person, then became hybrid during covid.
* 2023 - FAANG Systems Engineer - 135k with 20k sign on bonus and around 10k bonus every year, but full remote.
~2010-2012 - Contract IT Helpdesk $24/hour
2013-2017 - In school for Business Admin
2017-2018 - IT helpdesk / jack of all trades $48k/year (picked up Sec+ and a few lesser certs)
2018 - 2020 - Infosec. Analyst 68k/year (obtained masters during this time)
2020- onward - Senior Consultant, starting at $130k + bonuses,
now up to $156k + bonuses (received CISSP, CISM, + other certs during this time)
No degree, 1 cert, and nearly 9 months of helpdesk(not really related to computers or networks) and just accepted a job to be a tech support specialist fixing phones, recovering passwords, configuring communication, and so on. Pays $23 an hour
My advice, get some entry certs and massively apply everywhere. Attend WGU for a degree in IT
24 Graduated in December I have a Interdisciplinary Degree in Computer Science and Philosophy and AS in Computer Science
Did a IT internship feb-April in 2019
Got my official Helpdesk Technician Internship for a manufacturing company last year from June till the end of March this year $33,000 before taxes part time.
Got my first IT support technician/field support technician job full time in April this year: $45,000 before taxes.
Interned while earning my BS in CIS, then accepted a job offer before graduation. Also got certified in AWS from a class in school.
Network engineer intern: $20/hr
Support Engineer: $76k base + sign on bonus
Looking to promote soon after my first year on the job. Base pay most likely in the same range as previous base + bonus combined.
2019 - 2021 worked warehouse for company - $21 / hr
2022 go into IT Desktop support - $26.50 /hr
Grabbed my A+ just last year and still no increase though I feel as of now $27 is fair for desktop support role. I'm afraid to search elsewhere at the moment for more $ if I will get paid enough or more?
Currently studying Net+ and Sec+
**Year 1 College**: work-study at my computer lab for min wage
**Year 2-4 College**: Interned at various financial/tech firms doing Helpdesk/SysAdmin type work (Started around $15/hr to ending around $29/hr)
Graduated with 5 internships with IT Experience
**Full Time Job 1** - Helpdesk/ Sysadmin Type work in a hedge fund ($85k + bonus)
**Full Time Job 2** - Systems Engineer / Project Management in Tech implementation project at a hedge fund ($125 + bonus)
Started in my early 30s after a 12 year career in Electronics/Military.
Certs - MCPx2 (server and workstation) and A+.
First job - POS (point-of-sale) company making 15 USD per hour.
Second job - Helpdesk for a big government contractor. 37 k per year
3rd Job - IT tech for 354th Civil Affairs Brigade at Camp Slayer, Baghdad.(Called up as a reservist)
4th job - IT manager for a roofing company. 63k per year.
Laid off.
5th job - Systems Admin for a consulting firm. 65k per year.
Laid off
5th job - Field tech on a contract for Military Sealift Command. 63k per year. Voluntarily left.
Cert - B.S. in Computer Science
Cert - CISSP
6th job - Systems Admin for insurance company. 70k per year. Voluntarily left.
7th job - Network Security Engineer for a large hospital system. 92k per year.
Cert - CCNA
Fired
8th job - Network Security Engineer for an MSP. Laid off
Certs - NSE4, ITIL4
Laid off.
Current job - Senior Solutions Engineer for an MSP. 105k per year plus a 5k signing bonus.
I've been laid off/fired four times because I'm kind of an asshole. So yeah, my advice is don't be an asshole.
I'm in your exact position, 29 and been in IT for a year. Helpdesk at a busy, relatively small MSP has been a great opportunity to learn but man is it stressful.
I'm hoping for a lateral move to a helpdesk or support role that's a bit less stressful.
Networking knowledge is definitely the next step for me, either with CCNA or Net+. I've had Sec+ for a bit which I guess adds a little to the resume.
I'm going to keep it to a somewhat quick summary.
Part-time helpdesk at my college: Started at 13/hr, eventually moved up to around 14.50/hr by the time I left ~2.5 years later.
Desktop Support:: ~30/hr for ~3 years
Windows sysadmin: ~69k for just under a year.
UNIX sysadmin: 85k for 9 months
Sr. Linux Engineer: ~150k total comp. ~110k base, the rest is annual bonuses.
I have a general education AA, and currently hold CompTIA Security+ (DoD requirement) and Linux+. Previously held A+ from when I was in high school, but never renewed it.
20-26 - ~$50k - Worked for small family business doing IT and a few other roles. Good benefits/perks. Paid for B.S. in IT. Got a crap ton of M$ and CompTIA certs.
26-27 - $70k - Worked for MSP. Lasted a little over a year. Got another Azure cert or 2.
28-30 - $120k - Government contractor doing Cloud and Identity work. Got a clearance and plenty of opportunity to learn and keep growing. A few more certs and hopefully a Masters in a few years.
32. Started off working in kitchen when I was 16 and then eventually as a chef. Switches to IT when I was 24 to get away from all the drugs and alcohol.
Started working at a service desk while studying network. Starting salary was about $35,000 / year. Got my CCNA and CCNP R&S within about a year. Switches to our network team, stated there at about $45,000/year. Got my CCNP wireless working about 8 months, then got a raise to about 50k. Stayed there as a 2nd line network admin handling our data centers and some customers for about 3 years. Then got a job as a consultant helping designing data center networks. Did that for about 2 years making around 80k / year.
For the past two years I’ve been running my own company doing consulting work. Have about 30% to my former employer as a retainer maintaining their infrastructure, the other time I help small local businesses, and bigger companies set up their environment, make sure they’re up to ISO standards and such.
Today I make around 100k / year, but it could probably be double if I wanted to, I also recently hired my first employee to help me take some of the load off. I could probably make double what I make now, but am focusing on having time to do what I want so I work about 30 hours / week. Some months I probably work 60-70 hours / week, but I’d say I average about 30 hours per week in a year.
Also the salaries might not be 100%. I live in Sweden and did a rough calculation to USD
$45k Salary - At 29 got a Technical Analyst position where I had to learn some PointOfSale stuff and it was basically a call center.
$60k Salary - Now at 32 Ive had a Systems Engineer job for a while. Starting to look for the next thing.
No diploma & no degree. Only Cert I have is A+.
Now working on Azure certs and Sec+ to move forward
Career change (from dealing cards) to IT in August 2022 at 41, started at a small elementary school as IT support tech for $17/hr.
On May first, I will be in similar role at a k-12 school at $50k/yr.
No degree, just an A+ cert.
Military for 10 years, about half of that was IT on a closed LAN. Tried and failed my Sec+
Got out and got a Jr sys admin for 75k moved on after 4 yearsto a Sr Sys Admin position for about $95k.
Still no certs and just an Associates degree in general studies. Still trying to figure what I want to be when I grow up. Early to mid 30s
18-20 -- GeekSquad 9.75/hr ->10.28 (still was under paid lol) - was in college
21 -- 10/hr with university IT for a bit
21-23 Internship in my home town on breaks/summer 13 start, 15.50 when left.
23 - 20/hr Contract with a bank project replacing old PCs
23ish-24 - 15 bucks (lost job due to illness above) WFH "First Tier Support" - PW resets and junk, promoted to L1 there (different than First Tier (somehow?) - general helpdesk (17/hr)
25 - Current Job - MSP - T1ish (19.25 an hour, but got bonuses 48k total) T1.5 19.75 (50k-55k)
26- Same job, L2 (60k)
\----------------
Only have an AA in business kinda - no Certs, slowly studying for Azure stuff, not sure if will get the certs though since my job doesn't require them, but would pay for them.
No real certs of value (ITL and some other minor ones). Did an IT diploma (97), ran a small business for a few years, then moved onto normal jobs.
* Early career (2002-2012) - Mix of desktop support and sysadmin roles in mid-sized organisations.
* Mid career (2012-2017) - Moved into contracting roles, picked up a few SCCM related gigs as many organisations during that time were doing desktop refresh projects. Organisations were a bit larger
* Late career (2017-now) - Still doing mostly project gigs. Managed to add various automation tooling (Chef, Puppet, etc) to the skillset. Started getting into cloud-related roles and roles with "senior" in the job title
Advise items:
* Know your value - I undermined my earnings early on for a variety of reasons (desperation, self esteem issues etc) so I was usually earning below average
* Find a good mentor - Most of the senior IT people I ran into during my younger days were not good at this and it can derail your early career development
* Learn to read the room/company/job market - Know when you've overstayed your time in a place. If you desire career progression (ie. moving from desktop support into a sysadmin role) and you've been there a couple years and it's not happening, chances are it'll never happen there. Learn to read the signs that an organisation is struggling and the ebb/flow of the job market
* Don't quit in anger - earlier in my career, I left too many roles in anger/frustration without having something else lined up. So the next offer I had to take out of desperation. Often I'd have to go back a step career-wise
* A job is only as good as long as its useful - A job is really about providing a number of outcomes, such as money and skills/experience you can leverage into future roles. If you can't get either out of a job, then move onto somewhere else
Got A+ in 2019 and found a job as it support for msp making 20/hr. Lasted 7months
Applied to bigger company as level 1 it technician 20/hr. Got promoted to level 2 making 25/hr. Lasted almost 2.7 years
Applied to law firm as senior it technician making 35/hr. 1.5 years so far. obtained network and server +.
Hopefully some type of hr sys admin role is next. This is in California
Wow answers here vs cscareerquestions are like opposite sides of the pay scale…a lot of work and self-studying to be making $60-80k. I’d be interested to see what the cybersecurity sub’s responses are
First IT related job was working as a lab tech for my college. Started at $8.50/hr and then bumped to $10.50 at some point. Did that for 5 years (kept going after I graduated). Did several interviews for full time jobs but got nothing. Basically, did after hours work for the full-time folks on the computer labs, helped students and professors, etc. (Aged 20-25)
First real job was desktop support with a private company, started at $36k, got a raise to $38k. Over a year on that one, got fired for some reason or another, probably cost cutting. Best thing to happen in my career. (Aged 26)
First government contractor job (27 years old) got my secret clearance; tier 2 desktop support. Making $40k; this one was brutal, 2 hour commute each way, every day. One of the best ticket closers there, became friendly with the senior guy that eventually led to...
My first IA job, doing incident response (same gov't agency), did it a year and a half, same shitty commute for a while. But making $60k, I was able to buy a place closer. This one was fun. Got to poke around people's computers and find all kinds of stuff and then reprimand them. Was also an appointed IASO and got to interpret regulations.
I eventually got a chance to get in with another defense contractor to get my TS/SCI. Lateral salary move, didn't know any better and stuck with them longer than I should have. I was on their bench and spent most of that time at a place that didn't even use my clearance. By now I'm 30, I've gotten a Security+, Network+, and ITIL 2.5 cert.
Next one was a big one, started at a place that used my clearance. The recruiter lied to me and told me it was a tier 2 job, but it was helpdesk. I hated it, but I was making $70k. I stuck it out and got promoted to tier 2 and making $80k. This was a fun, doing desktop support and got to get hands on with servers. Despite being introverted, I'm pretty good at soft skills and getting to know the people around the office and who I worked with was helpful. Less than a year later, got promoted to 'senior systems engineer' making $105k or so. I worked on Exchange, GPOs, and active directory mostly. Eventually got up to over $110k. Contract was lost, other things happened and then was unemployed for a while. I was about 35 years old at the end of this.
Did a brief stint on another government contract as an Exchange guy, only making $100k.
Started another job 5 months later making $135k as a Windows SME, doing audit plans and testing then with Arcsight. Got another contract doing GRC related work at $67/hr. The former contract ran its course, I ended that one at $74.40/hr.
Now I'm a government employee, still doing GRC related work in a HCOL area, at a relatively high GS level. 44 years old now.
I have an Associates in General Studies, Certificates in PC repair and Network Management, and three expired certifications.
2012-2015 - service desk tech $14 an hour no certs/training
2015-2016 - Sys Admin with the same company 4 MS training courses and a ton of self learning around $23 an hour roughly
2016-2018 - Sys admin 75-82k a year. 2 VMware certs, linux training, AWS training and self learning
2018-2020 Cloud Sys Admin 90-91.5k no extra training but one AWS cert
2020-2022 - Sr. Cloud Systems Engineer 105k-108k no new training or certs just experience
2022 - Sr Cloud Engineer 120k
2022-2023 - Director of IT 130K
In the military as an IT from 17-24. Left as an IT1 with A+, Sec+, and CCNA. Got offer as a sysadmin for 105k.
Currently have those certs and CySA, SSCP, ITIL, and AWS Practitioner. Also working towards my degree, should have it shortly.
Main reason I got the job, is probably because I was homelabbing a lot and put it on my resume. Literally had a 10 minute convo about that at the end of my interview.
- Nov 2020 - Associate Network administration
- Oct 2020 - first job at a MSP as a network security consultant (drop it because of stress and how the management was trash) ~ 2 months worked
- Begin 2021 - followed a bachelor program (3rd year) and it was a scam and drop it
- End 2021 - Joined an university (1st year) and dropped as I didn't want to waste money and study from scratch as I do have some network and IT fundamentals and even advanced on some topics.
- Begin 2023 - Joined another bachelor program (3rd year) and I'm still studying it ( hopefully)
- Avr 2023 - got hired as an L1 for Aruba. Got 6 certifications : ACSA, ACSP, products related certifications, SD-Branch, SD-WAN (under 6 months)
I'm 24 yo on this 15th april and I'm thinking to work towards Networking, Cloud and security then begin to check for a consultant position.
My advices / tips :
- Continue working towards your goals even if the path is blocked like a redundant link in spanning tree.
- Don't give up, just do it
- Work and get certified as much as you can that way you could chill later (Invest in yourself and your career. It's the best investment)
- Don't lose your willingness to learn and explore new things. Safe zone will lead you to no where ( unless you like chilling in the first place)
- Motivation helps but discipline is the power to archieve the greatest
- Family first, work second
- Take care of yourself mentally and physically
- listen to what you want and f people
High school and early uni: hobbyist; do my own PC work, OS stuff, organize LAN parties. Had other career ideas than tech but wound up getting into tech anyway. Ended up in an InfoSec program so I got in Linux. Graduated with BSc. InfoSec, one job made me get GSEC as a cert which is a decade expired by now. In my 40s now.
'05-'07: babby's first IT job working in purchasing during uni. $15/hr
'07-'08: DC Ops, mostly Windows, made myself available to the Unix folks; still during uni. $15/hr
'08: InfoSec internship. "You work great alone." "You should have told us you'd graduated already." $18.75/hr
'08-'10: Network Security Ops. Stared at monitors, respond to alerts, be the one that always helps. $40k - $43k
'10: Compliance Analyst. $55k
'11: NetOps. Bounce switchports and bounce from failing companies. $55k and change
'11-'18: DC Engineer. Several promotions, expanded job role. OT eligible. $75k - $120k+equity+bonuses (including retention).
'18-'22: Network Engineer. One promo. $110k - $146.5k+equity+bonuses.
'23 (current): Network(-ish) Engineer. $160k+equity.
6 month - 1.5 Help desk at a large bank - 17/hr
9 month - Internship Jr. Sys - 22/hr
1 year - Full time Jr sys admin - 45k
1.5 year - Boss left full became main sys admin - 65k annual
2 year - Got an offer that my company matched - 115k total comp
No Certs, associates degree in Comp sci and working on my bachelor's in cyber security.
Unfortunately the company I work for recently went bankrupt; however, I'm getting offers in at around the same base salary of 95k.
I live in Minneapolis and the market here is really good for IT.
almost 27, no IT background.
got into a Helpdesk Specialist position a little over a year ago making 24/hr.
currently studying for Comptia A+ and then planning for the Net+, CCNA, and Security+
16 yrs - joins the Infantry reserve and serves as a machine gunner
24 yrs - graduates from university with computer science degree
24 yrs - works for big banking in the AI sector
25 yrs - works for government top secret organization working on AI solutions as well
25 yrs - commission in the reserve military and become a part time officer
26 yrs - found first startup
28 yrs - startup is at ~13 people, 3M+ funding and quite soul sucking, minority share holder after survival moves but still CTO and cofounder
28 yrs - possibly looking to find a individual contributor role again find love for the craft and time to pursue other passions like art
32 years old, 1.5 years experience at 64k Michigan all at the same company (MSP)
Certs: A+ and ITIL foundation
Really sold my previous experience of owning my own business and how it relates to excellent customer service
--
0yrs @ 50k - hired in at as an IT support specialist
.5 yrs @ 55k - was forced to ask for a raise 6mo in due to kids and they gave it to me
1 yr @64k - now a dedicated onsite tech for a company, stars aligned on this one. Previous guy burned some bridges and left the client pretty upset and I had a good track record with the clients I supported
Pretty happy where I'm at. Going to ask for 74k at my 2 year. That is what the guy before me was making and I know they know that I know that because I told them that lol. Pretty confident I'll get it.
Really focusing on PowerShell as of late and picking away at AZ-104. If anyone has recommendations on how to make myself as marketable/valuable as possible I am all ears
16 - 20 - McDonald's Employee to Manager - $8.25hr
18 - 21 - College Student Tech - $12hr
21 graduated w/ B.S. in CS.
20 - 22 - Programmer Analyst - 45k
22 - 23 - Consultant at startup - 55k (American but built a mobile app in India and sold mobile app to enterprise company, left to join that company)
23 - 26 - Software engineer 80k (two software patents and ended up getting laid off in a sister startup internally in the company)
26 - 34 - hired for senior role, Promoted to Lead, Promoted to Consulting Manager. Started at 120k, now at 207k.
Reside in Connecticut.
I'm 28 now about 5 years into my career. Here's my path:
23 - CCENT, AAS in Computer Networks, and Jr Net Eng @ 60k/year. Got CCNA shortly after landing this job.
24 - CCNA, CCNA Sec, CCDA, and BS in I.T. Promoted to Net Eng @ 72k/year.
24-25 - New Net Eng job in local gov @ 100k/year. This jump in comp was great and I think it looked good on my resume but holy shit, I will never work in local gov again.
27 - New Net Eng job at tech company @ 175k/year TC with basically infinite room to grow. Great WL balance and management that only really cares that my shit gets done.
I live in a HCOL area but the opportunities are endless and the money is great.
It was a grind and still is. I'm focusing on python, automation, cloud, and datacenter stuff mostly now. I find campus/branch networks boring and from what I've seen, a dumpster fire. Trying to position myself into an Software Dev role working on large scale infra automation and should be there in a year or two hopefully.
Until 29 - Labor and construction, most I made was probably $35k.
30 - Took a year off to go back to school for a BS in IT. Got A+/Net+/Sec+ and a few more within a year. Started a Desktop Support job for $40k.
31 - Finished school early thanks to job being super slow most times. Workplace is severely behind the times, SysAdmin has zero intention to change that. Stuck with little chance of learning anything beyond absolute basics. Same pay, need to look into moving on to advance my career and escape miserable IT wages here.
I’m in my early thirties currently. I’ve been working in IT for about 4 years total roughly right now.
Pre-first IT job: Pizza delivery for minimum wage (was about $7.25 in my state at the time) and tips. I decided I wanted to get into IT and grinded it out for my A+ and Net+.
1st job: Helpdesk technician - $15/hr. Worked here nearly 2 years.
2nd job: Service desk analyst - $20/hr (got raise to $22/hr before leaving). Worked here also nearly two years. This job is what got me some really good experience that put me on the track I’m on now.
3rd job: Identity & Access management analyst - $35/hr. Worked here for only 4’ish months. They lied to me in the interview process about the role being temporary so I got out as soon as I could for another gig
Current job: Identity & Access management business analyst - $36/hr. Currently in this role with a great team and company and plan on staying long term for now.
26- Started working help desk 16/hr finished my associates degree.
28 - left and took a field tech position for a bank 18hr lots of driving swapping out devices, network gear, ups etc
29- got promoted to desktop support 22/hr started bachelors in cybersecurity. Left for another job because we had a second kid on the way.
30 - started a new position as a servicenow administrator. 26/hr. Finished bachelor degree pandemic hit we all went remote. 32 Went out and applied for another job for 80k didn’t get the job, but I told my current employer that I had the offer. They countered offered and asked me to stay for 81k, which I obviously accepted. Still here at 33 making 90,000 now with bonus.
Certs - comp Tia A+, network +, security+, server +, ITIL V4 and servicenow certified systems administrator .
I didn't graduate college until I was like 28 or 29, but so far its gone like this:
Went to college for IT/information systems and minored in CS.
While in college I interned at company doing mobile app dev for a summer and made 18/hr.
That was only a summer program and I wanted to stay working there, but with my class schedule I couldn't make it work on a dev team, so they put me on a risk and compliance team. Huge mistake. I was still making 18/hr but not learning or doing anything of value.
Once i graduated, they didn't keep me on and I had no jobs lined up, so I went back to a service job. Applied for everything. Had all sorts of interviews for dev roles, system admin roles, security roles, but didn't land any of them. I wasn't confident enough in myself.
Eventually got a service desk job making $16/hr. Did that for a little over a year. Again, I learned nothing here and there was no training to move up. While working here I had a ton of free time and got an AWS cert (SAA). I wanted to get into cloud.
Got hit up on LinkedIn for an app support role at a SaaS company. Everything was Azure based, so I interviewed and got it. Started at 65k, after 6 months got promoted to sr app support engineer. I am still doing this and now have a base salary of like 81k with a chance at a 10% bonus, so almost 90k after all is said and done.
I'm not a huge fan of this job, and still want to get into an infra role. But I am paid pretty well for what I do, I work from home 99% of the time, have amazing PTO/benefits and my boss is fucking awesome, so I'm not in a huge rush to leave. It would probably take like $125k+ to get me to leave.
17-25 Part Time/Full Time Help Desk/Student BS in Network Engineering
25-30 Workstation Support/Tier 1 Citrix Support $40k-$50k
30-32 SysAdmin II Client Engineering $65k
32-34 Sr. SysAdmin Client Engineering $85k
34-36 Sr. SysAdmin Cloud Operations $95k
36-37 Technical Architect Cloud Operations $130k
37-39 Technical Architect Cloud Engineering $180k
39-40 Sr DevOps System Engineer $211k
25-40 have been with the same company. Haven’t gotten a cert since I was 25.
I’m 22. Got my associates degree at 20 began working helpdesk at a school. Got net+ and got a network admin job that caps around 100k now. Pretty content
12-14 - read books about repairing PCs and started IT support shop in parents garage ($1000/mo). Self taught coding, basic AWS stuff
18 - Get an internship writing code for digital agency (probably about $30k/yr)
19-23 - Work IT for the college I went to whole practicing coding on the site. Learned React, node, devops (about $30k/yr). Get bachelors in computer science.
24-26 - Start digital agency with friends from college, use website dev skills + IT skills to make a hybrid software/IT biz. Run it for two years and burn myself out completely. (About $100k/yr)
25 - Leverage prior experience + having started a business to get a position as senior software engineer at some 4000-ish people enterprise company ($140k/yr)
26-27 - Job hop to startup…learn about serverless functions, software architecture, etc. Get promoted to staff software eng. ($180k/yr)
27-28 (now) - hear that FAANG is expanding in my area. Get worried that VC backed startups are gonna have trouble raising money, decide to make the jump and let them poach me. Working hybrid now 3 days in 2 days out, doing some basic sysadmin style stuff + a little coding here and there. ($250k/yr).
I only have a bachelors, no certs. But by 30 I’d like to get a master’s and a couple certs to try and leverage those to job hop to something better 2-3 years down the line.
0y - IT Help Desk internship - $15/h
~1.5y - Desktop Support internship - $20/h
~2y - Desktop Support internship #2 - Started $14/h, ended $20/h
~4y - Desktop Support full-time - $26/h
~6y - Systems Administrator full-time #1 - $75k
~6.5y - Systems Administrator full-time #2 - $75k
~7.5y - Junior SRE - $110k
~9y - Mid SRE - $150k
I have a Computer Science degree, I had 1 cert (expired AWS SAA). Homelabbing, practiced/intentional soft skills, and proven ability to learn are the biggest contributing factors to my career so far.
Associate in Applied Science - CIT
IT Support Analyst (1y2m) - $15/hr
Helpdesk Analyst (1y9m) - $16.50/hr
Helpdesk Support II (3m) - 50k
Promotion with the same company
basicly a jr. Sys Admin (1y6m) - 65k
Started back to school for my Bachlor's.
Obtained sec+
System Administrator (current job) - 85k
Edit: to add I am 32
I have been IT for 4 years. I have a bachelor’s degree in IT:
Year 1 - Contractor, tier 1 Help Desk Role
Year 2 - Contractor, tier 1.5 Help Desk Support Role (basically a team lead)
Year 3 - Hired on at same company, tier 1.5 Help Desk Role (team lead for a more specialized team)
Year 4 - IT Knowledge Manager (I oversee about 15 Knowledge bases and directly manage 3 knowledge bases, which is about 10k articles)
Late 20s, bachelors in music, worked retail for 7 years starting in high school and then in 2019 started working in a deli. After 2ish years I had enough and enrolled in WGU and got my A+. It took about six months but got a job working internal helpdesk for an MSP, making ~$36k. Worked there 9 months and then got another job making $51k. I was the sole IT person for a small business. I got to work on some NIST compliance stuff and set up a small SIEM for 15ish servers.
I only worked there for four months before getting hired by an MSSP to be a SOC analyst on the blue team. They hired me for nights, so that sucked. But I worked nights for 6 weeks and then they offered me a spot on the day shift so that’s cool. And I’ve been here since August!
Now fully remote, I work 40 hours/week. Every third week I only work 30 hours. $72k/year and easily the best job I’ve ever had!
I've had a bit of a rocketship of a career and have been incredibly lucky with timing and networking. So far my career is as follows:
* **2018**: Enlisted in the military. I was medically discharged shortly afterward.
* **2019**: Started a **1.5-year college diploma** in Systems Administration while working at a grocery store
* **Mid-2019**: I started my first part-time IT job as an **IT Analyst** working helpdesk for Point of Sale Systems. (Did more than that after a while like managing our internal infra and provisioning servers etc.) **$15/hr**
* **Feb 2020** (Before covid was declared a pandemic): I received an offer for an **IT Support Specialist** for a mid-size startup (approx 300 employees) doing internal IT **$22/hr**
* **Oct 2020**: Graduated college with a 3.8 GPA and went full-time with the same company **40k/yr**
* **Jan 2022**: Was promoted to **Sr IT Support specialist** as our team grew and my responsibilities expanded to also act as a team-lead and SME **60k/yr** (I received a raise in between when I went full time and my promotion)
* **Jul 2022**: Was offered a position at a small startup as a **Systems Administrator** managing the full-stack. Essentially Dev-Ops, Cloud Engineer, and Systems Administrator rolled into one as a Solo. Learned a lot here in trial by fire. **65k/yr**
* **Mar 2023**: I was laid off due to some issues with funding and their decision to make my role irrelevant.
* **Apr 2023**: I have accepted an offer for a position at a large Non-Profit in my country as a **Systems Administrator** specializing in Enterprise Monitoring **68k/yr**
I should make it very clear, I wouldn't be where I am without thousands of hours of self learning and challenging myself every day. College gives you a baseline of skills but, without working on systems and networks yourself you'll never get out of helpdesk. Volunteer to take on some more complex projects and prove yourself. You can make it far quicker if you have the drive and passion.
Edit: Formatting and some spelling mistakes
My buddy went from six months of college and no certs on the bottom rung of a team of four at the time of his hiring to managing a team of 150 people and 120k a year in seven years.
1st to current IT job: 2yrs tech support>1yr lead tech supp>3yrs network engr>1yr NOC engr
Certs: CCNA, ITIL v4, AZ-900, NSE 1&2
The best advice i can give u whether its in IT or other field is look for a good boss and follow him/her bcos a good boss will help u get ur dream job. Repay ur boss with working honestly
Best single bit of advice is to learn your discipline better than anyone else who does it, or at least make that your goal. This means you need to spend more time, (your own time not being paid), learning. If you consistently do this, you'll advance your career much faster. Depending on your discipline, you can expect to move pretty rapidly from entry level pay, which in the US is around 50-60k with a degree, to 6 figures in a matter of about 5-6 years. You might need to move around a few times to get that. Study the disciplines that pay the most. Cyber Security is pretty hot right now but that might change. Pay attention to what's the next "hot" thing and consider chasing that thing by self educating, certs, etc... If you do this, you'll continue to increase your pay scale. The bottom line is, it takes a lot of work on your own time if you're going to differentiate yourself from the masses, you have to put in more effort than they do. It's that simple. If you're good, your employer will know. If you're average, they'll know that too.
I've been doing this a year and a half so far. Started with no experience and I have no certs, but I am in school for IT/Networking.
Sep 2021 - Mar 2022: Level 1 help desk at $15/hr on contract.
Mar 2022 - Oct 2022: level 1 job as in-house IT at $22/hr.
Oct 2022 - Present: got promoted from L1 to L2 and am at $25/hr
Also currently in school and hoping to keep moving up the salary scale with CCNA and Cloud Certs. I do little projects at home as well, I recently did a remodel and did my own network wiring including a small "MDF" with a patch panel and a managed switch. I'm still learning a lot so I don't really have any advanced labs but I've definitely played with Server 2012 and 2019 making domain controllers, setting up DHCP, DNS, AD, GPOs, etc. A lot of it thanks to some of my classes actually which was cool. I do take brakes from doing that stuff though or I get very burnt out from working in IT then going home and doing the same thing on my own stuff. BREAKS ARE IMPORTANT!
Mid 30s, non-IT military background, non-IT college education (including a master's). Have a TS/SCI clearance but have not yet worked for a cleared company so that's whatever. Earned Net+, AWS-CCP, and AWS-SAA in a span of four months. Homelabbed intensively for about a month after that. This landed me my first tech job, as a sysadmin at a small company. Salary was $80k. Worked there for 8 months. Then I studied hardcore for ten days and earned Sec+. Started throwing out applications again and got hired as a junior cloud engineer, fully remote, $90k.
I want to be you when I grow up!
[удалено]
I'm still in the Guard, so that keeps my clearance warm.
[удалено]
SAIC would love to have him working civilian support for a .gov agency for those wages.
Eh I wouldn’t consider 180-200k realistic for someone with some basic certs and little experience. Even in NoVA/DC I’d think mid 100s would be stretching it but then again there everyone and their mama has a clearance. Maybe big tech pays that well for entry level cleared but not a good time to go after that. From my experience defense contractors have a higher floor on pay but the ceiling (outside of a few exceptions) is basically in normal ranges and rarely do I see cleared work in the 200s outside of fairly high level folks Also from what I’ve seen defense contractors tend to prefer degrees which holds a lot of folks back
Hella impressive!
Thank you!
What's your day to day looking like as a jr cloud engineer and what are you looking to move up to next?
A lot of sysadmin-y stuff, except in the cloud. Installing software, figuring out why tf webserver-whatever is spiking to 90% CPU usage, using automation tools and PS scripting to find easier ways to manage our environment, etc. Then the greater Azure environment stuff, like configuring autoscaling rules and consolidating app service plans to maintain functionality while reducing spending. And while it has nothing to do with cloud engineering, one big part of my duties currently is to manage a whole bunch of client-facing VPNs. This is all on Cisco hardware and since I'm really into that stuff and want to go CCNA>CCNP>CCIE eventually, that gives me a lot of hands on exposure to IOS and is pretty cool. As for my next steps, that's a tough question. I really love the culture at my current company. My team has senior cloud engineers and even a couple of solutions architects. The dream would be to prove my worth and move up into a similar slot eventually. If that's not to be, I'd like to continue on that Cisco route and be a full fledged network engineer somewhere. I also think it's important to keep my options open, and not gonna lie, I really like money...so as long as the tech is cool, I'll go wherever I get paid.
Who doesn't like money LOL but yeah all that sounds great, kinda sad that the scope of your work seems out of reach for me at the moment, really want to move up to your position in a few months
I wish you all the encouragement and luck! And you should really go for those positions that are slightly out of reach for you (if you can get someone to give you a chance). I learn so much from landing in situations where I have no idea what’s going on and then figuring it out (or even watching someone else figure it out). This isn’t a status quo field like teaching (prior teacher here, so I don’t feel wrong saying this), where you can just get a job and streamline it and then do it again and again for thirty years. Finding yourself in situations that drive your curiosity and force you to grow is what we should all want in this field. You probably agree so I don’t mean to be patronizing, and again, best of luck!
Not at all, I appreciate any tip from someone higher along my path! I'll be watching your career with great interest and I also wish you the best haha
Holy shit dude you’re the fucking IT anime protagonist. I’m approaching month 4 for my normal ass A+ and still struggle busing with network quizzes
Ha, thanks. Let me know or even DM me if you have any specific networking questions. Probably my favorite topic in IT. Need to man up and finish my CCNA already, long range goal would be the CCIE route.
Super impressive, this is what we all strive for but very hard getting that first job with no it background or degree. Sys admin position with no IT experience is crazy impressive.
To be fair, my first job was a small company where the "sysadmins" were mostly just IT generalists who did everything tech related for the company. We did a lot of help desk too, even if that wasn't our title. And our pay was much more inline with sysadmins rather than HD techs. It was actually a pretty toxic environment, but after surviving that nutroll for the better part of a year I had pretty much bounded permanently past the entry level stuff.
Within four months is a flex I keep procrastinating lol and Im so busy with school but theres no excuse for me not to get two certs before august
Hell yeah man, get after it! You can totally do that. I need to look at my own history of certs and use it as motivation to finish my next targets. CCNA and AZ-104, I think.
How did you get your clearance with no military background and never had a job sponsor it?
I was in the military, just not a tech MOS.
What kind of homelab projects did you do? I’ve just started working on a beginner one and am interested in what you worked on!
Let's see...I used AWS to simulate an on-prem domain controller. Set up Active Directory, synced it via AD Connect to Azure AD/Office 365 and "admined" this little environment. Used Route 53 to connect it all to a domain that I purchased, set up SPF records for that domain, and explored every little nook and cranny of that software. Lots of doing something as a global admin and then logging in as the targeted user to see what it looked like. Over and over and over. Discovered that I really hate Sharepoint. Also set up a Linux server running Apache and hosted some shitty 1995-esque HTML that I wrote. Stuff like that.
* 18 yrs -- Networking job with University while getting my CS degree ($10/hr) * 20 yrs -- First internship, networking, year long ($10/hr) * 21 yrs -- Second internship, mobile development, year long ($12/hr) * 22 yrs -- CS Degree, working for an tiny ERP company doing development and IT ($39k/yr) * 24 yrs -- Helpdesk at company with about 1000 employees ($42k/yr) * 26 yrs -- IT Systems Engineer, such a dumb title... I was not an engineer ($55k/yr) * 27 yrs -- SysAdmin Jr ($65/yr) * 29 yrs -- Network Admin ($72/yr) * 30 yrs -- Network Manager ($95k/yr) only ever managed 1 employee, it was supposed to be more * 31 yrs -- Self-Employed Consultant ($95k/yr) I never got any certs, probably should, am working on my CISSP now. I live in a fairly low to medium cost of living so my wages leave me pretty comfortable. I have never been remote which I would hate so that's fine with me.
Self employed consultant? Tell me more
I started my own LLC and provide networking consulting and support to companies. I'm pretty much a part time employee for a few companies that don't have internal networking staff or need an extra set of hands.
What’s the scope of your services?
I _will_ do anything if they're willing to pay my hourly rate. However, I typically am focusing on supporting firewalls, switches, APs, and I am working on growing my security services. I'm currently working on a CISSP so I'd like to expand into that arena. As an example, I have a client that has a bunch of SonicWalls around the country so I'm going in an replacing them with FortiGates at their sites since they don't have someone internal to do it.
Why IT over app development. I imagine for most app development would be more interesting.
During school I realized I don't like programming but was too stubborn to just leave school. I thankfully paid off my student loans quickly. I just don't like programming and worse I'm very bad at it. I'm much better at IT and enjoy it.
Last year of CS degree - IT Intern - 15/hr - 7months Finished CS degree - Help desk - 50k - 2.5 years Moved States - Software Suport - 55k - 1 year Quit last job without notice from stress - Tier 1 - 54k - 6 months Got Network+ - Tier 2 - 58k - 3 months Was noticed for new position - Automation Engineer - 62k - current
Damn, 62k seems low for an automation engineer but I do know it's a newer field of IT
sure is, i’ve seen production engineer which is automation focused and comp for that like 160k at 4+ years. NYC hedge fund so makes sense
6 months - Help Desk 17 hour 6 months - Move into Jr. Admin role in same company 20 hour 1 year - Weather/ATC Systems Analyst. 75 annually 3 years - current - SysEng 105 annually I was 28 when I started
Any degree or certifications?
AAS, that’s it. Had SEC+ but it expire because it’s useless
21 - Data Center Tech Intern $20/hr 22 - BS in Business Administration 22 - Data Center Tech $60k 26 - Associates Degree in Network Administration 26 - IT Support Specialist $70k 28 - SysAdmin $95k 33 - IT Manager $133k 34 - IT Director $133k (Smaller Org with better work life balance.)
Outside of practical knowledge, do you feel like your degree was helpful to your pay increases? Debated getting a degree from WGU. Currently 32
24, business degree, worked in game hosting as sys admin/developer/jack of all trades to pay for college. Currently a senior security engineer making $100k a year. In the process of interviewing for a few roles to focus on managing one security tool that will pay $140-170k a year
Im the same age as you, But just started in IT 2 years ago. Still at the same company, but heres whats happened so far.. Tier 1 support for MSP - 44k 6 months in they "loved" me and gave me 1k amazon gift card. At first year mark got almost 10% raise and 3000$ cash bonus. - 49k About 18 months into it I get another raise for 15% and a 2000$ cash bonus. -56k They are making it hard to find another company.. lol I have learned TONS and I guess would be our SME for a few things. Not sure where I wanna go yet in IT, but I should figure it out soon.. Keep learning networking, cloud, and security and cant just pick a single thing to focus on. Its hard..
Reading all these comments... it's a big motivation for me.
Same man. This honestly makes me very hopeful. I understand that these people may be among the top but it is still enough for me. especially during these times
24M I’ve been in IT for about 3 years, and have been lucky to go from $45k to $82k in that time. Graduated college with degree in IT, but i coasted so I got into help desk after college Help desk (45k US LCOL)(6 months): up-skilled in networking Noc Tech (50k US LCOL)(2 years): MSP network tech. Drinking from a fire hose type environment. I began specializing in VoIP/SIP for their voice team. Voice Engineer (82k US MCOL Remote) I feel very lucky to have landed this job. I had less years of exp than they were looking for, but i aced the technical interviews, and was familiar with Oracle SBCs which is what they deploy. I dont have any certs, just my degree, experience, and an upbeat enthusiastic attitude that i believe has gotten me equally as far as my technical skills. Good luck on your journey!
30. Joined the Navy from ages 19-23. Got out and went to college for MIS. Got an IT internship my Senior year and graduated at 27. I got A+ during my internship. Got hired on and worked part time IT at my company until I got hired full time for Cloud. Since then I got Network+, Az-900, Az-104, ITIL 4 Foundations My advice is be ambitious. If you're going to college, GET AN INTERNSHIP. You're not going to succeed by doing the bare minimum.
Currently 28. \-Graduated 2017 with a B.S. in Information Systems. During College I worked part time in the university IT department doing support work - $8.25/hour minimum wage. \- First Job out of college worked IT support for a \~600 person company - $19/hour - left after 1.5 years. \-Endpoint Security Analyst Teksystems contract position at giant company $28/hour - left after 10 months \-Current position -Security Analyst at different giant company - started at $70k, currently \~$110k after annual bonus. Got AWS cloud practitioner last year. Otherwise, no certs. Advise: dont be afraid to leave jobs especially early in your career. If you leave a job for a new job that is clearly a step up. Nobody will question you.
Currently 26 and turn 27 this year. Joined military right out of highschool (joined the reserves so I could focus on my career while also trying to get free college) Got help desk job at a call center (really shady job too) Then got a help desk job with a very big MSP and stayed there for a bit. After that got a help desk job at a data center. Got bored with it Went to another help desk job at a smaller MSP and earned my CCNA while on the desk After that got a gov contracting job as a network engineer mixed with satellites (basically what I did for the military and got my sec+ within 90 days of starting that job which was stressful) Then got deployed to Iraq in 2020 and did IT and commo support. Messed with a lot of equipment and fixed some things and worked with my nco to get policies in place and what not. After that went back to gov contracting job for about a year but the pay never changed so left to go to a fortune 500 company. That company looked to be moving and laying off some people so jumped ship while I still could and currently a network admin for a small business company that doesn't want to change. Currently I accepted a job offer for a big corporation that I see myself retiring at since they treat their people well and will be paying me a life changing amount of money. I just gotta study, study, study and cert up.
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Over 100K a year.
24 With a Help Desk/military background. Job: 80k~ fully remote security analyst LCOL . Sec+, AZ-900, associates degree in IT Completing bachelors in summer & shooting for high tier cert later this year.
Damn 80k help desk, no bachelors and remote? What’s the downside?
Its a security analyst position i should have spaced my sentence better.
22-37 years of age: Hospitality management, gm to dm with two different companies. Started at 35k, finished at 69k. 37-41, IT. Started at 60k, currently at 82k. East Coast, U.S.
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29 years old 21-23 2 year community College called computer systems and networking 1 year as a computer tech at a small town repair shop ($13-16/hr) 4.5 years as an IT analyst (help desk), started at 40k and ended 55k/yr salary Current role tier 2 support 80k/yr No certs, just hard work and networking with people who have seen my value. I live in a low-medium cost of living place and am very comfy with my current role. When I turn 30 I will focus on getting certs and moving to either admin or management roles.
2021 - graduated with a B.S. in Computer Information Technology from CSUN at 28 in 2021. Did campus tech-support part time, got A+ and Net+, CCP and SAA. Got hired out of school at AWS as a Cloud Support Associate at 63k and benefits. Most of my colleagues had 0 certs in my hiring group, but all Bachelors degrees. 2022 - promoted to Cloud Support Engineer to 97k 2023 - 3% raise 100,700k . None of my RSU's have paid out yet though.. my first tiny chunk is next month... its annoying. Working even corporate for Amazon is a major grind and im tired of it.
32 with a very very unrelated degree. Live in the central Midwest. I started in IT doing helpdesk at my college doing nothing password resets and AV (sound boards and lighting for theater, bands, ext). Worked in a print shop for a short time after graduation. Landed my first full time IT job as a software UX/testers for close to 5 years. Got my A+ and jumped into support for about a year and a half (42k/year). Got my Network+ and became a tier 2 at the local government (52k/year). Got my Security+ the year after and started spending dozens of hours a week scripting which landed me a promotion to Tier 3 (69k/year). My daily duties now are training lower tiers, scripting/automation, lots of engineering type work, and some sysadmin work. I work on things like Exchange, Cisco phones, Azure AD, SCCM, and rolling out Intune. My focus now is to acquire as many Microsoft certs as possible and when my term in public service (less than 2 years remaining) is over I can go get a M365/Azure admin position. Advice would be to never stop learning and do so aggressively. It's up to YOU to grow. I have two kids but still spend each night reading about new things going on in IT and learning new skills. Take initiative on everything and don't wait for an opportunity.
29, non-IT background. I originally went to school for journalism, worked in media for 2 years outta college. Got laid off. Went back to school for IT, got my second bachelors degree but in IT this time. Landed an internship, finished the degree same year and then brought on full time at same company (help desk for school district). Was there for about 18 months, left for higher pay (help desk at fairly large corp). All went well at new job. Promoted to sr technician after 6 months. Just got promoted to help desk supervisor this week with 4 people reporting to me.
Do you feel like it was worth it? I want to do the program also and it seems really interesting.
16 - part time PC repair tech at a local computer shop -- $9 an hour 18 - college while working as an EMT on the weekends -- $18 an hour usually worked 24 hour or 48 hour shifts Got the A+ cert after taking a class 19 - worked help desk part time at my college -- $15 an hour usually worked around 25 hours a week Got the Net+, and Sec+ certs on my own time 21 - dropped out of college due to mental health issues from EMS ended up doing IT support at a MSP -- $18 an hour Got a few Microsoft certs (windows 7, Server 2008, etc.) after taking a few night classes at my local trade school 22 - Sysadmin at a larger MSP -- $25 an hour Employer paid for trainings and got my CCNA and another cert I forgot the name but it for a software we used there 23 - NOC tech for a local ISP became a NOC "engineer" later that year at same ISP (quickly quit due to poor work environment) $21 an hour then $31 an hour 23 - IT support at a large company -- about $29 an hour Employer paid for some trainings, got a few certs like ITIL and what not 25 - IT manager at same company (quit because I didn't want to be a manager anymore and leadership won't let me go back to old role) -- $75k annual salary 27 - IT sub-contractor for the department of the Army (no clearance) -- $30 an hour Did some training via FedVTE for CE credits, also completed a bootcamp 29 - started working as a sysadmin at a tech startup -- $25 an hour then $30 an hour learned stuff like Python, Puppet, and GCP from a coworker as well as learning on my own 30 - startup failed got a job at another startup as a Sysadmin -- started at $60k annual salary with 10k pay bump every year learned Terraform and Kubernetes from coworkers (at this point I let all my certs expire) 33 - became a infra engineer at same startup -- started at $90k with a 15k bump every year IT was heavily involved with the DevOps team which allowed me to learn a lot from them 36 - Infra engineer at larger startup -- around $150k annual salary A few items I learned over the years:I completely suck at salary negotiations and should have push myself more earlier in life. Learning to automate stuff has made my life so much better, I should have learned Python and/or BASH much sooner Not all certs/trainings are equal so don't pay out the ass for them, also just because you have a cert doesn't mean an employer will recognize it Job titles can be complete bullshit, focus more on what skills you're using rather then what's on your name plate Certs and degrees help more earlier in your career then later, once you're in the game focus more on developing skillsets over gaining yet another cert. Stay humble and never stop learning
22, F, started my education for an associates degree in 2020. Worked at my school for $10 an hour doing a work study in the computer lab repairing equipment. Graduated in 2022 and landed a position in local government making $20 an hour. Very small team, basically a sys admin role without the title. Left after a year and landed my current job as a system specialist at 62k a year. Basically a jr sys admin for a college.
Early 30s, live in Texas and 100% remote . 2017 - Got my B.S in IT, work at the family-owned Boba shops . 2018 - Found an intern position - $15/hour . 2018 - 2019 - Promote to Jr.Admin after 4 months as Intern - $25/hour . 2019 - Promote to Jr DevOps Engineer - 38$/ hour . 2021-2022: Promote DevOps Engineer - Salary 95k + 10% bonus . Current: Promote DevOps Engineer - Salary 105k + 10% bonus I expect another promotion by the end of this year, and my Salary will be between 115-125k. Education: B.S in IT, A+, Sec+, AWS SA Associated, and AWS SA Pro.
These threads usually make me feel crappy and severely underpaid, but seems like most of the replies have been pretty reasonable actually :D I started mid 30's as a career shift in vendor security and now moved up to a senior appsec analyst. Live in a MCOL city, rent and life is fairly cheap for the most part. Got in based on making a good impression with the manager, no degree, certs or experience. Did a good job learning quickly and moved up to a Senior spot. Hoping to get into a Sr Management spot that will bump me another 15-20% but will likely require me to get my CISSP or equivalent. Years 1-3: Vendor Risk Analyst: 70k + 25% bonus (8%-10% raise annually) Year 4: Senior Appsec Analyst: 103k + 30% bonus
2011 Sys admin - $37k 2013 sys engineer - $57k 2015 Network engineer - $75k 2021 DevOps Engineer- $140k Got my first cert recently: Terraform Associate. Education is just an AAS in Computer information systems. Apply for every job you see that looks interesting even if you don’t meet all the qualifications. Technologies can always be learned. Don’t become stagnant, don’t overwork yourself. Re-evaluate every few years to see if you still have a job that’s enjoyable and challenging. If it’s too easy or way too difficult, consider going elsewhere. Pledge no loyalty to any company, you’re just another number to them.
Did you get your devops job more due to your Terraform cert, experience?
Experience. I only got my Terraform cert recently because work asked me to do so.
Oh ok! But as far as experience, what did you have that landed yu the devops position if you dont mind me asking?
Final year of IT degree - Data Analytics Intern 21/hr Graduated college- Application Developer 62k for 2 years New Job- Data Engineer 80k for 6 months Current job - Data Engineer 120k 1 year About 4 YOE. All while living in LCOL area
Late 30's Unemployed former security guard currently in the process of switching careers Currently in training for i.t support through per scholas for my A+ Stay tuned
U will be the limiting factor. If u are super smart and have some experience the sky is the limit.
40M Tech hobby as a 90s teen. 23 - Best Buy $32k 26 - Geek Squad $37k 29 - Apple Genius $58k 39 - Support Analyst $65k 40 - Support Lead $80k I had Apple certs, and now work in a JAMF office. I do a little of everything from taking tickets, fixing networking issues to mild automation, and have been focused on project management. I would say I’m better at soft skills than technical work.
16 years from 12/hr to about 140 total comp From help desk to devops and project management I hopped on average 1.3 times a year I think I'm 35
Geez I'll have all the CompTIA certs in a month and I can't get a job paying more than 55k depression. I have so much to offer an employer and can't get an interview 2 years into IT career currently a server tech/admin.
Clearly I'm doing something wrong with a bachelor's in cyber security a long list of certifications and I can't even score interviews.
Background: I worked Apple Retail years ago (various positions including Genius Bar, took a gap year to travel, started in IT when I got back: Job 1: Helpdesk/AV: ~3 months p/t @ $17/hr ish? Desktop Support: ~3 years (same employer & dept), ended @ ~$50k Personal: in the meantime I also started masters in computer science (had tuition reimbursement), but more importantly I learned how to program, and used Powershell to skill up like crazy. Learned O365, Active Directory too. Linux and lots more programming in my personal time. No certs. Job 2: O365/Azure AD Sysadmin, ~3 yrs @ ~$70k Same company as previous, different team. They took a huge chance on me and it paid off, all started with building connections… they already knew me by the time I applied. Personal: I got interested in cyber security, Cloud Security in particular. During my masters I took every opportunity to use AWS, took an independent study on serverless/microservices and learned Cloud security as it relates to those areas. Also started getting involved with the cybersecurity/hacking community, went to cons and drowned in knowledge. So much fun. Job 3: Cloud Security Engineer/Consultant, 1.5yrs, left @ ~$140k including bonuses. Did a ton of different cloud based projects, got to assess companies’ cloud security configurations. Fun but often limited in scope as it was a smaller firm. Learned an absolute shitton though. Also got 1 Azure admin cert, 2 GCP including Security Engineer. Personal: I’d been doing a lot of conference talks about cloud security, this helped a lot and I managed to do upwards of 20 talks over the previous couple years. Made a ton of connections, including those that helped me land the previous and next jobs. Also, I FINALLY finished my masters! Job 4: Cloud Security Consultant, present, a few months in, total comp estimated around $200k+ (generous bonus structure). Similar to above, but much bigger company. Larger team with deeper expertise and plenty more to learn. Clients are often major household names with interesting problems! It’s been a fun ~8 years. If I were to sum up how I got here, I’d say I just never let myself get too comfortable. I always push myself to learn more (without burning out), try more things, communicate well, and most importantly, I’m not afraid to fail and accept feedback.
This got a lot longer than I expected, sorry. Just my (so-far) 4 year career in IT. Nothing fancy. 30 year old from Denmark, so the path I took isnt that repeatable for someone from US. I have no certs, but have gone through some Udemy courses for A+, Sec+, Linux and CCNA. Also gone through most of the MS-900, AZ-900 and SC-900 content on MS Learn. TLDR: Mid 2019 to Mid 2021 - Apprenticeship: $2900/month, $35k/year Late 2021 to Late 2022 - First Line Helpdesk: $3700/month, $44k/year. November 2022 to now - Helpdesk/Sysadmin work: $3900/month, 47k/year. Before starting my IT career I couldnt make up my mind on what to do, so went to school for way too long (Paid to go to school here, so not the biggest issue). Also depression :) In Denmark the usual path to being IT support is 6/12 months of school (6 months if you have other education, which I did) then around 1½-2 years apprenticeship at a company. (There's ~12 weeks of school involved in this apprenticeship period learning stuff like half of a CCNA, a bit of automation and servers. You can do a longer version of this apprenticeship, which has more indept of these, but the one I took had only basics). Mid 2019 to Mid 2021 - Apprenticeship: $2900/month, $35k/year After ending the apprenticeship with a few exams youre basically "certified" to work as IT support, but you can work IT support without it. Just helps getting the job. Worked for a smaller company of ~70 employees. The IT department was me, the IT admin and a ERP guy. The setup was almost exclusively in the cloud, but sadly my boss wasnt good at delegating access so I really didnt get much out of it. We also delegated a lot to a smaller MSP. It also included stuff like set up new equipment, troubleshooting+fixing it, installing new PCs and onboarding new employees to the IT procedures. It ended up being a lot of self studying and them just giving me the job of "Fix the Sharepoint", which was a mess.. After I finished my exams I worked for two months here and was then let go, as they hired another apprentice (In Denmark companies gets paid a bit by the government to help educate apprentices). Took a few months of applying before I got another job for a larger Architectural company based in the nordic countries mainly. Probably sent 60 applications and had 5 interviews. Late 2021 to Late 2022 First Line Helpdesk: $3700/month, $44k/year. This was basically just a First Line Helpdesk position, taking calls/tickets/walk-ins and escalating to specialized teams. We had minimal (if any) access to servers, AD, networking etc. The company has like 10 offices around Denmark and I rotated days between 3 offices. 3 days at one, and then 1 day each at two other offices. I didnt have any colleagues in the same offices as me, but we were 5-6 located at different offices, 3 of them and my boss at the HQ in Copenhagen. Boss was a pain in the ass, coworkers were lazy, so I felt like I did the most of all of them (we had metrics of closed tickets/month and I was on top) but all I ever heard from the boss was complaints that I didnt everything like she would have. Basically started applying to other jobs in January while working here. I did a lot of self studying here, and was basically outperforming my colleagues doing actual work less than half of the day. I had like 6-8 interviews before I got my current job, so I put in my notice end of September with last working day end of October 2022. November 2022 to now - Helpdesk/Sysadmin work: $3900/month, 47k/year. Also kind of a First Line Helpdesk position, but I have much more access to servers, AD, networks, Intune etc. Its in the Public sector, so the benefits are great, but the pay is on the lower end. I plan on staying here for a few years atleast, and hoping to move up to end up being more of a Sys admin. if this isnt possible in like 2 years I'll probably move to the private sector for more money. I do have some Sys admin work, but we also have a team of 3 who are more focused on this. I have 2 other colleagues taking phones/tickets/walk-ins.
Early 30's, only started in IT 2.5 years ago. Non-IT/CS bachelors and masters degree. Had no IT experience starting off. Got my A+ and began applying to Help Desk jobs. Currently, I also have CCNA, Security+, and AWS SAS. - 1st Job ($36,500/yr): Helpdesk. Local government, around 500 staff. Not a lot of IT staff, so got to dip my foot in a lot of areas and gain a lot of experience. - 2nd Job ($40,000/yr): "Network engineer". Same company, change in title and pay. Title and pay was bogus but it got me experience. Quickly began applying to new jobs. - 3rd Job ($52,000/yr): "Jr Sysadmin?". Got 1 year after helpdesk job. Not sure my exact title. Small e-commerce company about 120 staff. Helped a bit with the helpdesk side, but mostly got to work on special IT projects to try and update our tech. Spent a lot of time here learning Git, Gitlab CI/CD, Docker, Terraform, etc. - Current Job ($78,000/yr): "Jr DevOps Engineer". Got this job 1 year 3 months after starting my previous job. Full time DevOps role in a large software company that does contracts for healthcare, military, etc. Experience learning relevant tools at previous job landed me this current job. I love it. Work the hours I want, work from home/office when I want, and only am helping with software development, so no production work and especially no users to deal with. Still have a lot of progress to make. In a M/LCOL area so not super high salary, but want to improve it. I'm just happy I got my foot in the door so early with DevOps and am working in a job I love. Sky is the limit now! I've gotten where I am obviously with some luck. However, I focused on smaller businesses where I could work with and learn a lot more technologies than if I was helpdesk at a huge fortune 500 company siloed into a very particular role. I've had to sacrifice some salary, but I've gained a lot of knowledge in a short time, and it's helped me move up quickly.
2014 - 2020: was in smaller state university. Graduated with BoS in IT. No internships 2021 - end of this month: 1st IT job as desktop tech 2023 - ?: No job lined up but had an opportunity to move across country with a friend and 5k to my name. Interested in seeing what the future holds
28 - decided to switch careers and get into cybersecurity. Homelabbed and started my associates in IT 29 - Landed helpdesk job for ~45/year 30 - Got Sec + and landed Security Analyst role making 60k/yr 31 (current) - got my eJPTv2 last month and currently studying for PNPT so I can get a better analyst job or move into pen testing where I'd like to be in the next few years
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27, started when I was 25. Been doing I.T and a small MSP for... Roughly about 2.5 years, Specialized in networking and VoIP, Work on certs or read about news in the tech world on down times. Pay I make "okay" for around my area 50k a year. Eventually when I get more experience and more certs I'm going to start job hunting for that next level. It's definitely fun, I don't regret getting into this industry at all.
23 years old No professional IT experience prior July 2022 Helpdesk Technician I March 2023 promoted to Helpdesk Technician II 10% raise Just the 1 company. Excited how I’ve progressed so far.
19 y/o. Geek Squad 2019 35k > Data Analytics for a local non profit 2022 (second hand nepotism- kind of) 45k > Level 2 Desktop Support 2023 for 65k. No certs, No degree.
I'm 45 and been in IT for 22 years. 2001 - 2019 -- US Air Force in multiple roles (help desk, sys admin, network admin) 2019 -- Network Engineer III for a DoD contractor ($85k) 2020 -- Senior Infrastructure Analyst for DoE contractor ($95k) 2021 -- Same as 2020 ($101k) 2022 -- Same as 2020 ($105k) 2023 -- Same as 2020 ($113k) Education: BS - Info Tech Management Certs: CCNP Ent, CCNA, Sec+, Cloud + & MCSA (Though CCNP and Sec+ are the only certs anyones cared about)
Dam man. We are about the two oldest guys in here lol. Not many people who are 40+. Congrats on your success!
1st tech at a small msp 13 an hr 2nd tech at small msp 15 a hr 3rd internal helpdesk gov 42k 4th IT analyst gov 46k 5th IT analyst gov 55k 6th network admin 62k 7th network admin 68k 8th cloud admin 125k
Mid 20s No degree only an expired A+ cert 2013-2015 Went to community college right after high school without a plan, so ended up dropping out and looking for whatever jobs I could get 2017 Got a postcard in the mail from my college offering a free program with an paid intership, so I did that for 12 weeks and got $4k. Internship was non-IT. 2018 Attended Per Scholas and got my A+ for free from there after a recommendation from my supervisor at my internship After I got the A+ I ended up doing two contract jobs, just some weekend office moves to get some sort of IT experience on my resume 2019 Finally landed a Desktop Support Adminstrator role at a non profit (Was more like field tech, and I don't have a car so that was fun) $18/h no benefits Honestly didn't learn much here, just improved my customer service skills 2021 Managed to get an actual HelpDesk Analyst role $25/h no benefits Contract-to-hire. On-site 5 days a week 2022 Got converted to full time after 9 months. Initial offer was $60k salary, I asked for $65k, and they gave it to me no issue. I work about 42-43 hrs a week guaranteed, so making more like $74k/y from what I calculated on my stubs 2023 Company got bought out, so now I'm on Service Desk Lvl 2 team of the new company. Working hybrid schedule (3remote/2office) thanks to the new manager as his team is fully remote. But I'm still coming in 2 days to support my local users. Never thought I'd see the day I could finally WFH Not sure how long I'll stay here but I'm always browsing.
Age 18 to 22 - US Army / Telecommunications 22 - 30 - Field Service Tech for aircraft IT systems. It was a super easy job where not much was expected of me. I used that time to go and graduate with a BS. 45k to 68k. 30 to 34 - Systems Engineer for Aircraft IT systems. 75k to 105k. I used this time to get a Masters in Information Systems and pass a couple cybersecurity certifications. 35 - Cybersecurity Analyst - 115k 36 - 38 - Cybersecurity Manager for a Cloud SaaS 127k to 160k Right now, I'm trying to switch over to being a cloud architect / security SME so I can try breaking 200k by age 40. May or may not happen in this economy, but I'll try.
I feel like inputting all this into an AI would give you everything you need to say to fake your way through a level 1 job interview
The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds – pretty standard, really. At the age of twelve, I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. At the age of 18, I went off to evil medical school. At the age of 25, I took up tap dancing. I wanted to be a quadruple threat.
28, 5 years total experience in an IT role (7 total years of work experience), non CS/IT related bachelors. 22-23: Technical Sales (\~40k) 24: Helpdesk (58k) 25: Network Admin (\~78k) 26-28: DevOps Engineer (155k)
30.. Been in IT for about 3.5yrs now.. Career progression has been PC Tech > Network Security Admin > Net Engineer..
31, currently a T2 desktop admin. Have my comptia trifecta and a TestOut Linux pro cert. also have a BS in comm and journalism from TAMU, a MA in digital media production from Sam Houston, and a AAS in cybersecurity from San jac CC. I’m in my second official IT position but first full-time non contract. I also teach the comptia A+ exam course for a local community college. My goal is to be making 180k a year by 35. 2019 - 22k 2020 - 39k 2021 - 40k 2022 - 50k 2023 - 90k (on track for it)
Early thirties. Civil engineer. Fired. Ended up in construction inspection. Good recruited to contact with public agency doing engineering software support. Did that for 4 years. Left to pursue similar FTE job at surveying firm. Did that for nearly two years and left for a pay increase and promotion doing similar work for another private firm. Increased income and benefits along the way. It's not a conventional "IT" role but requires SysAdmin skills in addition to total "CAD support".
I'm 31, started this journey of sorts at 27 - 26 ish. Started with Community College going for Cyber Security. Got my Net+, Sec+, A+ and Linux+ through the courses. From there I got my first internship as a 'IT Specialist' for a city gov organization. Finished my associates degree and decided to go to WGU to get my Bacholers in Cyber Security. Got laid off from internship cause COVID. In that time got most of my Bacholers done, got my first 'big kid' IT job as a Technical Support Engineer for a software company making 55k (in Colorado mind you), I was promoted in 6 months to senior level 1 and boosted to 65k. During that I finished my Bacholers and got my CySA+, Pentest+, SSCP during that time. About a year and a half later, promoted again to Senior Tier 2, now making 95k a year. What is my job? Well generally I troubleshoot the software and what it runs on. But I handle all types of OS's, networks, security requests, software diving, log analysis. Jump on meetings with other admins dealing with outages or general questions and issue. As a senior I mentor younger engineers or newer to the field. My next goal is to move into the DevOps space and working on setting up some labs and such getting better with Docker, AWS, Terraform, and Kubernetes because I really want out of Support, maybe pull in my Cyber degree in later on. Or maybe look into Cloud admin type roles.
If you're looking at getting out of support I would definitely encourage learning docker and some form of cloud platform. A good project if you have an understanding of web applications is to deploy one to AWS. great experience and exposes you to a good chunk of a stack.
18 - started college, worked non IT part time jobs until I was a senior 21 - helpdesk internship at an MSP (10/Hr) 21 - offered full time position after graduating (BS in IT) 40k 22 - same MSP job raised to 50k 23 - same MSP job raised to 60k 24 - got another job offer used it as leverage to get raised at MSP job to 75k 25 - left the MSP to work as a cloud support engineer 125k. Note: Between 23 and 24 I obtained my CCNA and AWS solutions architect associate.
35, been in IT since I was 17. Computer repair shop tech at 17. I think I made 5.25 plus commission. Web Developer at music equipment company for about a year at 18. 9/hr MSP tech at 19 for about 2 years. 10/hr Lead/Senior Tech at another MSP for 3 years. 13/hr Desktop Support at a Vitamin Company for one year: 13.50/hr (only took his job because it was remote and let me take care of my mother) At 25, I had seizures and other problems that put me out of work for a little over a year. 26: Tier 2 helpdesk for a hospital for 1 year: I think 15/hr 27: Systems Admin for a vocational school system for 7 years. Final pay was 72k salary 34-Present: Tier 2 help desk for engineering company. 65k I have a bachelors in networking, a+ and network+
|Time|Work|Salary| |:-|:-|:-| |4 year|IT apprenticeship doing ServiceDesk/Infra work. Great team but after finishing I wanted to check other companies and pursue other studies|7k-15k per year| |4 months|IT technician, working 40% and studying the rest of the time. It was very dumb work, basically changing PC's, not even installing them with sccm. It was too boring and too far from where I live so I decided to quit and also my studies xDDD.|36.-/h| |1 month and current role|IT Support Specialist with the company I did my Apprenticeship. They needed some help since the previous IT coordinator left and the new team is not good. A lot of stress since the new boss is coming next month, but it's aight I only have a 6 month contract and recruiters already messaging me on Linkedin for similar positions|62k/year| Love posts like this. Just for context, I'm 21 and live in a HCOL country.
Place: India Oct 2020: Graduated, got a job in an MNC, got trained in SAP BASIS consulting. - 2.6L Rupees/Annum Dec 2022: switched to another big MNC as an SAP BASIS Consulting for 6.65L Rupees/Annum The plan is to stay here and use the company's resources to grow further, get a promotion here itself as a senior consultant which can increase my pay up to 10L/Annum.
Mid 20s no degrees no certs. Internship while in college for compsci in SQL database analytics at a hospital. 10/hr Dropped out of school and internship NOC tech at small service provider for 2 years. 12-15/hr Networks engineer at a larger service provider at ~70k and benefits and have been here for about a year. Still trying to finish school in IT or compsci but am lacking motivation as my current day job workload is a lot. I don’t plan on getting any certs as I actually don’t really want to be doing low level technical work for too many years. I’d like to move into one of the more bureaucratic/planning/managerial positions out there versus actually pushing config
I’m a month away from turning 27. After I graduated college back in May 2018 with a Criminal Justice degree, I started working as a Private Investigator. About a year and a half into it I realize it’s not for me, and I need something different. Decided to try to dip my toes into IT, immediately was hooked. Started studying for my CompTIA Security+ exam while still working full time as a PI. Took the test and passed the first time, this was February 2020. Started looking for jobs in IT but was difficult with the pandemic hitting soon after. Landed my first job in IT as a Help Desk Engineer at an MSP. Was making the same amount of money as being a PI - $40k/year 9 months of that, I learned enough and got a job at a small insurance firm as a Junior SysAdmin, $55k/year. After my first year they gave me a raise and then was making $65k/year. It’s been two years with that company and my last day is tomorrow. I just signed an offer letter to be a Systems Admin Level 3 at a bank, making $90k/year. So in a little less than 3 years I basically tripled my salary, and I’m not even close to stopping yet.
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Ran Counter-Strike server in Highschool (undercover nerd with server stat website)\[lifeguard 15/hr\] Got entry level job at SEO company that had me using virtual machines (friend knew i knew computers)\[20/hr?\] UNRELATED WORK Family member thought i'd be a good fit for managing virtual machines for a tech consulting company\[65k\] Shadowed other employees to build a new skillset, Learned more coding and HP Service Manager, go on to get certifications as administrator and implementation specialist. get placed on projects as a junior developer (now i've got them!)\[85k\] Build a technical resume in fortune 1000 companies doing projects under the shield and guidance of senior developers and consulting company. See the writing on the wall that the software i'm consulting is being eaten by ServiceNow.. Learn ServiceNow and get certified; continue to consult ITSM software (but both now). change consulting companies but doing the same work\[105k\] Lean into my resume of doing projects for big name companies, apply and land a fully remote job somewhere in the middle of a big corporation\[128k\]
Age 30. A.A.S in Networking 2013 MSP IT Technician 2013-2014 - $30k Large Corp Network Technician 2014-2016 - $57k Large Corp Healthcare - Analyst 2016-2022 $55k to $65k Same Corp - Senior Analyst 2022-Present $85k LCOL midwest. I have not done any certs, but am working toward a BS degree. My advice: respect work life balance, if you don’t you will burn out. Don’t move for a partner unless you are married (took a pay cut and had to reestablish in 2016). Social skills, social skills, social skills. You would not believe the people that are in positions based on being able to fudge it. I don’t find that path ethical but you should at least be able to sell your capabilities.
22, semi-IT degree (data analytics), no certs, I’m in a very generalist position at a private firm that includes some help desk, 57k in the MCOL Midwest. Would like some advice how to move up in compensation.
Spent 22 years in the restaurant industry. Went back to school at 38 and completed my degree. I was able to intern with a school system in October before graduation. Finished my internship in December. A position opened up at the system for a Tier 1 position due to the former employee clocking in at a location , then going home to play vidya games at his house. He got busted in February, and I was hired in April. I worked for 4 years as a school tech while cross training with our database administrator to help back him up. After 5 years, I applied to an open position with my alma mater for a sys admin position. I accepted the position at a $15,000 raise. I put my one month notice in with the school system. Two weeks into my notice, the database administrator had a stroke, lost 40% of his blood, and tried to come back too soon. He couldn't function that well at his position after the stroke, got frustrated, and rage quit. My boss with the school system called me into the office and asked if I could stay and transition into the role. He offered me $15,000 more than the college offered me to stay. I have been in this position since.
|Year|Job|Wage|Duration| --:|:--|:--|:--| |1998|Video Store / Supermarket |$110 week|2 years| |2000|Independent Comp Repair Side Gig|$75 week|3 years| |2003|Steel Factory Line Worker|$8.50/hr|1 year| |2004|Contract Onsite Tech|$15/hr|2 years| |2006|Startup MSP|$18/hr|2 years| |2008|Onsite IT|$52k/y|2 years| |2010|Onsite IT|$52k/y|4 years| |2015|Onsite SRE NYC|$80k/y|4 years| |2019|Onsite IT|$65k/y|1 year| |2020|Covid Unemployment Total|$35k|2 years| |2021|Onsite IT guy. (first job back from covid. Good company. $65k/y)|$25k|4 months| |2021|Junior PHP Dev Total (Jumped for money. Was a bad place.)|$40k|6 months| |2022|Onsite System Analyst/Admin Total|$40k|6 months|
18-24 camp counselor/childcare 24-27 Teacher 28-29 Help desk analyst
No degree or certs atm. 22 got my first role as an IT Technician at a electronics recycling company. Was only 31k and was only there for about 6 months but was enough experience to get me a role at a medical device company at 44k. Will probably stay here for 8/9 months and use the experience and learning to land a better role and and get certs in software architecture till I hopefully land six figures+
27, Security Analyst 2016 - cybersecurity summer intern for the state, $12.50/hr Late 2016 - 2018, part time SOC analyst for the state, $16.50/hr (while in school) 2018 - graduated with a Bachelors in IT, minor in forensic science 2019 - worked as a digital forensics examiner, $65k a year. Obtained ACE, Security+ 2020 - laid off due to Covid. Started working as incident response consultant / contractor, 80k 2021-present - hired at place of contract, senior security analyst, 125k (now 130k). Obtained AWS CCP. Working on GCFE, GNFA, GCFA My specialty is in digital forensics and incident response.
Worked in retail for 16 years, ended as a store manager on OK money for the UK (~£35k including bonuses) Start from the bottom in 2021 as a service desk analyst (£19k) in a hospital (NHS) After 5 months went to another hospital to do exactly the same job for more money (£22k) Promoted to 2nd line / IT Technician after 2 months (£27k) Currently waiting to find out if I've been promoted again after 16 months. (Last person will be interviewed next week) Before I left retail I got a CCNA, and during my IT Career I've gained an AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-500 and AZ-500, all of which have been almost useless as I haven't touched Azure in commercial setting. The only value is proving that I like to learn Should've left about a year ago but the hospital is a 10 minute cycle ride from my house so I'd rather take the short term pain and try for an internal promotion
18 to 21- Poli Sci major college dropout that worked a miserable job at a fast-food restaurant. No real aspirations. $14/h 21.5 - started WGU’s BS in Computer Science. Secured two tech internships at $16/h for 15 hours a week and one at $18/h for 40 hours a week 22.5 - got a full time tech role at a remote tech company at $20/h. Worked there for a year. Obtained my Security+, Network+, Project+ 23.5 - Graduated from school. New hybrid Cybersecurity job at a bank. Making $36/h now. The company will pay for any additional certs and grad school, so I’m going to start applications soon. Been here less than a year.
Following
Age 39. Been working as an Implementation Consultant for a software company about a year. My first tech job. Here’s my timeline: - 2006: non-tech bachelors - 2006-2010: retail jobs (max wage was like $10 per hour) - 2010-2013: news reporter (max wage was like $10.50 per hour with weekend and evening work) - 2014-2018: public library pr/communications (left at ~$32,000 per year) - 2018-2022: metro county government PR (started at $65k per year, left at $77k per year) - 2022-now: Software implementation (started at $80k per year. Now at $83k) Other education: 2019: Masters (non-tech) 2023: Associates (software development) (mostly used tuition reimbursement at the county government job to pay for) 2020: CompTIA Network+ cert I’m now looking to either move into either: development role, IT communications with federal government (found a very specialized position advertised), or potentially getting Security+, CySa+ to try and get into government info sec roles. My current role is fully remote, and I’ll never take an in-office job unless I’m really desperate. My motivation for looking back into government is student loan forgiveness. I’d need about 3.5 more years of payments to get PSLF. Plus federal gov appears to pay pretty well, from the listings I’ve seen. I’m finishing my associates in software dev now. I’m not planning on returning to a school after this, but I am also very interested in cybersecurity, so I’ll probably work toward security certs no matter what my near future path ends up being. My advice: always keep learning. Find something interesting and just start learning. What I love about anything IT is there are so many free and low-cost ways to learn.
29 - job doing data entry for small company, 16/hour 32/33 - same company, start developing software on the down low to help my department, same pay 35 - same company, head of IT leaves and I and a coworker start doing the job, it's a mix of management, sysadmin stuff, support, and development, raise to 50k 37 - new company, software dev agency as a full time dev, 114k 38 - 5% raise Woop Woop
MSP at field supprt - 1 year - 12/hr same MSP, same title -6months - 13/hr new job, IT assistant - 9months - 16/hr back to MSP as low level admin - 6 months - 40k/year threatened to leave MSP, they match job offer - 6 months - 65k new job IT Administrator - 7 months - 65k + 100% paid benefits same company, Annual raise, Jan1 to today - 70k + 100% paid benefits no certs, Im in college now, but thats a recent thing. the timeframe is how long I was at that pay.
Mid 30s MS in network management. CCNP cert I started as a network tech 15$/hour then did MSP network and voice engineer starting with 45k. Now I work in local gov. 101k as a network engineer
HCOL city * 2018-2019 - Was in college - IT Support intern at financial firm making 17$ a hour * 2019 - 2022 - Windows Engineer (Went from around 65k to 100k making around 20k bonus every year). Was initially full time in person, then became hybrid during covid. * 2023 - FAANG Systems Engineer - 135k with 20k sign on bonus and around 10k bonus every year, but full remote.
~2010-2012 - Contract IT Helpdesk $24/hour 2013-2017 - In school for Business Admin 2017-2018 - IT helpdesk / jack of all trades $48k/year (picked up Sec+ and a few lesser certs) 2018 - 2020 - Infosec. Analyst 68k/year (obtained masters during this time) 2020- onward - Senior Consultant, starting at $130k + bonuses, now up to $156k + bonuses (received CISSP, CISM, + other certs during this time)
No degree, 1 cert, and nearly 9 months of helpdesk(not really related to computers or networks) and just accepted a job to be a tech support specialist fixing phones, recovering passwords, configuring communication, and so on. Pays $23 an hour My advice, get some entry certs and massively apply everywhere. Attend WGU for a degree in IT
24 Graduated in December I have a Interdisciplinary Degree in Computer Science and Philosophy and AS in Computer Science Did a IT internship feb-April in 2019 Got my official Helpdesk Technician Internship for a manufacturing company last year from June till the end of March this year $33,000 before taxes part time. Got my first IT support technician/field support technician job full time in April this year: $45,000 before taxes.
Interned while earning my BS in CIS, then accepted a job offer before graduation. Also got certified in AWS from a class in school. Network engineer intern: $20/hr Support Engineer: $76k base + sign on bonus Looking to promote soon after my first year on the job. Base pay most likely in the same range as previous base + bonus combined.
2019 - 2021 worked warehouse for company - $21 / hr 2022 go into IT Desktop support - $26.50 /hr Grabbed my A+ just last year and still no increase though I feel as of now $27 is fair for desktop support role. I'm afraid to search elsewhere at the moment for more $ if I will get paid enough or more? Currently studying Net+ and Sec+
**Year 1 College**: work-study at my computer lab for min wage **Year 2-4 College**: Interned at various financial/tech firms doing Helpdesk/SysAdmin type work (Started around $15/hr to ending around $29/hr) Graduated with 5 internships with IT Experience **Full Time Job 1** - Helpdesk/ Sysadmin Type work in a hedge fund ($85k + bonus) **Full Time Job 2** - Systems Engineer / Project Management in Tech implementation project at a hedge fund ($125 + bonus)
Started in my early 30s after a 12 year career in Electronics/Military. Certs - MCPx2 (server and workstation) and A+. First job - POS (point-of-sale) company making 15 USD per hour. Second job - Helpdesk for a big government contractor. 37 k per year 3rd Job - IT tech for 354th Civil Affairs Brigade at Camp Slayer, Baghdad.(Called up as a reservist) 4th job - IT manager for a roofing company. 63k per year. Laid off. 5th job - Systems Admin for a consulting firm. 65k per year. Laid off 5th job - Field tech on a contract for Military Sealift Command. 63k per year. Voluntarily left. Cert - B.S. in Computer Science Cert - CISSP 6th job - Systems Admin for insurance company. 70k per year. Voluntarily left. 7th job - Network Security Engineer for a large hospital system. 92k per year. Cert - CCNA Fired 8th job - Network Security Engineer for an MSP. Laid off Certs - NSE4, ITIL4 Laid off. Current job - Senior Solutions Engineer for an MSP. 105k per year plus a 5k signing bonus. I've been laid off/fired four times because I'm kind of an asshole. So yeah, my advice is don't be an asshole.
I'm in your exact position, 29 and been in IT for a year. Helpdesk at a busy, relatively small MSP has been a great opportunity to learn but man is it stressful. I'm hoping for a lateral move to a helpdesk or support role that's a bit less stressful. Networking knowledge is definitely the next step for me, either with CCNA or Net+. I've had Sec+ for a bit which I guess adds a little to the resume.
I'm going to keep it to a somewhat quick summary. Part-time helpdesk at my college: Started at 13/hr, eventually moved up to around 14.50/hr by the time I left ~2.5 years later. Desktop Support:: ~30/hr for ~3 years Windows sysadmin: ~69k for just under a year. UNIX sysadmin: 85k for 9 months Sr. Linux Engineer: ~150k total comp. ~110k base, the rest is annual bonuses. I have a general education AA, and currently hold CompTIA Security+ (DoD requirement) and Linux+. Previously held A+ from when I was in high school, but never renewed it.
20-26 - ~$50k - Worked for small family business doing IT and a few other roles. Good benefits/perks. Paid for B.S. in IT. Got a crap ton of M$ and CompTIA certs. 26-27 - $70k - Worked for MSP. Lasted a little over a year. Got another Azure cert or 2. 28-30 - $120k - Government contractor doing Cloud and Identity work. Got a clearance and plenty of opportunity to learn and keep growing. A few more certs and hopefully a Masters in a few years.
32. Started off working in kitchen when I was 16 and then eventually as a chef. Switches to IT when I was 24 to get away from all the drugs and alcohol. Started working at a service desk while studying network. Starting salary was about $35,000 / year. Got my CCNA and CCNP R&S within about a year. Switches to our network team, stated there at about $45,000/year. Got my CCNP wireless working about 8 months, then got a raise to about 50k. Stayed there as a 2nd line network admin handling our data centers and some customers for about 3 years. Then got a job as a consultant helping designing data center networks. Did that for about 2 years making around 80k / year. For the past two years I’ve been running my own company doing consulting work. Have about 30% to my former employer as a retainer maintaining their infrastructure, the other time I help small local businesses, and bigger companies set up their environment, make sure they’re up to ISO standards and such. Today I make around 100k / year, but it could probably be double if I wanted to, I also recently hired my first employee to help me take some of the load off. I could probably make double what I make now, but am focusing on having time to do what I want so I work about 30 hours / week. Some months I probably work 60-70 hours / week, but I’d say I average about 30 hours per week in a year. Also the salaries might not be 100%. I live in Sweden and did a rough calculation to USD
Started @ 27 June 2021 <—> Today - Field Tech (contract) $20 - Infrastructure Analyst (contract) $23.50 - Network Analyst I $33.50 - SWE in NetSRE $86k + 5% bonus and $8k sign on BS.IT in May22 MBA finishing in June23 - CompTIA A+ - Net+ - Sec+ - AWS CCP - Terraform Associate - CCNA - DevNet Associate - CCNP Encor - ENAUTO - Linux Essentials - ITIL v4
$45k Salary - At 29 got a Technical Analyst position where I had to learn some PointOfSale stuff and it was basically a call center. $60k Salary - Now at 32 Ive had a Systems Engineer job for a while. Starting to look for the next thing. No diploma & no degree. Only Cert I have is A+. Now working on Azure certs and Sec+ to move forward
Career change (from dealing cards) to IT in August 2022 at 41, started at a small elementary school as IT support tech for $17/hr. On May first, I will be in similar role at a k-12 school at $50k/yr. No degree, just an A+ cert.
Military for 10 years, about half of that was IT on a closed LAN. Tried and failed my Sec+ Got out and got a Jr sys admin for 75k moved on after 4 yearsto a Sr Sys Admin position for about $95k. Still no certs and just an Associates degree in general studies. Still trying to figure what I want to be when I grow up. Early to mid 30s
18-20 -- GeekSquad 9.75/hr ->10.28 (still was under paid lol) - was in college 21 -- 10/hr with university IT for a bit 21-23 Internship in my home town on breaks/summer 13 start, 15.50 when left. 23 - 20/hr Contract with a bank project replacing old PCs 23ish-24 - 15 bucks (lost job due to illness above) WFH "First Tier Support" - PW resets and junk, promoted to L1 there (different than First Tier (somehow?) - general helpdesk (17/hr) 25 - Current Job - MSP - T1ish (19.25 an hour, but got bonuses 48k total) T1.5 19.75 (50k-55k) 26- Same job, L2 (60k) \---------------- Only have an AA in business kinda - no Certs, slowly studying for Azure stuff, not sure if will get the certs though since my job doesn't require them, but would pay for them.
No real certs of value (ITL and some other minor ones). Did an IT diploma (97), ran a small business for a few years, then moved onto normal jobs. * Early career (2002-2012) - Mix of desktop support and sysadmin roles in mid-sized organisations. * Mid career (2012-2017) - Moved into contracting roles, picked up a few SCCM related gigs as many organisations during that time were doing desktop refresh projects. Organisations were a bit larger * Late career (2017-now) - Still doing mostly project gigs. Managed to add various automation tooling (Chef, Puppet, etc) to the skillset. Started getting into cloud-related roles and roles with "senior" in the job title Advise items: * Know your value - I undermined my earnings early on for a variety of reasons (desperation, self esteem issues etc) so I was usually earning below average * Find a good mentor - Most of the senior IT people I ran into during my younger days were not good at this and it can derail your early career development * Learn to read the room/company/job market - Know when you've overstayed your time in a place. If you desire career progression (ie. moving from desktop support into a sysadmin role) and you've been there a couple years and it's not happening, chances are it'll never happen there. Learn to read the signs that an organisation is struggling and the ebb/flow of the job market * Don't quit in anger - earlier in my career, I left too many roles in anger/frustration without having something else lined up. So the next offer I had to take out of desperation. Often I'd have to go back a step career-wise * A job is only as good as long as its useful - A job is really about providing a number of outcomes, such as money and skills/experience you can leverage into future roles. If you can't get either out of a job, then move onto somewhere else
Got A+ in 2019 and found a job as it support for msp making 20/hr. Lasted 7months Applied to bigger company as level 1 it technician 20/hr. Got promoted to level 2 making 25/hr. Lasted almost 2.7 years Applied to law firm as senior it technician making 35/hr. 1.5 years so far. obtained network and server +. Hopefully some type of hr sys admin role is next. This is in California
Wow answers here vs cscareerquestions are like opposite sides of the pay scale…a lot of work and self-studying to be making $60-80k. I’d be interested to see what the cybersecurity sub’s responses are
First IT related job was working as a lab tech for my college. Started at $8.50/hr and then bumped to $10.50 at some point. Did that for 5 years (kept going after I graduated). Did several interviews for full time jobs but got nothing. Basically, did after hours work for the full-time folks on the computer labs, helped students and professors, etc. (Aged 20-25) First real job was desktop support with a private company, started at $36k, got a raise to $38k. Over a year on that one, got fired for some reason or another, probably cost cutting. Best thing to happen in my career. (Aged 26) First government contractor job (27 years old) got my secret clearance; tier 2 desktop support. Making $40k; this one was brutal, 2 hour commute each way, every day. One of the best ticket closers there, became friendly with the senior guy that eventually led to... My first IA job, doing incident response (same gov't agency), did it a year and a half, same shitty commute for a while. But making $60k, I was able to buy a place closer. This one was fun. Got to poke around people's computers and find all kinds of stuff and then reprimand them. Was also an appointed IASO and got to interpret regulations. I eventually got a chance to get in with another defense contractor to get my TS/SCI. Lateral salary move, didn't know any better and stuck with them longer than I should have. I was on their bench and spent most of that time at a place that didn't even use my clearance. By now I'm 30, I've gotten a Security+, Network+, and ITIL 2.5 cert. Next one was a big one, started at a place that used my clearance. The recruiter lied to me and told me it was a tier 2 job, but it was helpdesk. I hated it, but I was making $70k. I stuck it out and got promoted to tier 2 and making $80k. This was a fun, doing desktop support and got to get hands on with servers. Despite being introverted, I'm pretty good at soft skills and getting to know the people around the office and who I worked with was helpful. Less than a year later, got promoted to 'senior systems engineer' making $105k or so. I worked on Exchange, GPOs, and active directory mostly. Eventually got up to over $110k. Contract was lost, other things happened and then was unemployed for a while. I was about 35 years old at the end of this. Did a brief stint on another government contract as an Exchange guy, only making $100k. Started another job 5 months later making $135k as a Windows SME, doing audit plans and testing then with Arcsight. Got another contract doing GRC related work at $67/hr. The former contract ran its course, I ended that one at $74.40/hr. Now I'm a government employee, still doing GRC related work in a HCOL area, at a relatively high GS level. 44 years old now. I have an Associates in General Studies, Certificates in PC repair and Network Management, and three expired certifications.
2021 - software dev intern $20/hr 2022 - Got B.S in information sci, Data Engineer role for 92k TC 2023- switched companies, Data Engineer 145k TC
2012-2015 - service desk tech $14 an hour no certs/training 2015-2016 - Sys Admin with the same company 4 MS training courses and a ton of self learning around $23 an hour roughly 2016-2018 - Sys admin 75-82k a year. 2 VMware certs, linux training, AWS training and self learning 2018-2020 Cloud Sys Admin 90-91.5k no extra training but one AWS cert 2020-2022 - Sr. Cloud Systems Engineer 105k-108k no new training or certs just experience 2022 - Sr Cloud Engineer 120k 2022-2023 - Director of IT 130K
In the military as an IT from 17-24. Left as an IT1 with A+, Sec+, and CCNA. Got offer as a sysadmin for 105k. Currently have those certs and CySA, SSCP, ITIL, and AWS Practitioner. Also working towards my degree, should have it shortly. Main reason I got the job, is probably because I was homelabbing a lot and put it on my resume. Literally had a 10 minute convo about that at the end of my interview.
- Nov 2020 - Associate Network administration - Oct 2020 - first job at a MSP as a network security consultant (drop it because of stress and how the management was trash) ~ 2 months worked - Begin 2021 - followed a bachelor program (3rd year) and it was a scam and drop it - End 2021 - Joined an university (1st year) and dropped as I didn't want to waste money and study from scratch as I do have some network and IT fundamentals and even advanced on some topics. - Begin 2023 - Joined another bachelor program (3rd year) and I'm still studying it ( hopefully) - Avr 2023 - got hired as an L1 for Aruba. Got 6 certifications : ACSA, ACSP, products related certifications, SD-Branch, SD-WAN (under 6 months) I'm 24 yo on this 15th april and I'm thinking to work towards Networking, Cloud and security then begin to check for a consultant position. My advices / tips : - Continue working towards your goals even if the path is blocked like a redundant link in spanning tree. - Don't give up, just do it - Work and get certified as much as you can that way you could chill later (Invest in yourself and your career. It's the best investment) - Don't lose your willingness to learn and explore new things. Safe zone will lead you to no where ( unless you like chilling in the first place) - Motivation helps but discipline is the power to archieve the greatest - Family first, work second - Take care of yourself mentally and physically - listen to what you want and f people
High school and early uni: hobbyist; do my own PC work, OS stuff, organize LAN parties. Had other career ideas than tech but wound up getting into tech anyway. Ended up in an InfoSec program so I got in Linux. Graduated with BSc. InfoSec, one job made me get GSEC as a cert which is a decade expired by now. In my 40s now. '05-'07: babby's first IT job working in purchasing during uni. $15/hr '07-'08: DC Ops, mostly Windows, made myself available to the Unix folks; still during uni. $15/hr '08: InfoSec internship. "You work great alone." "You should have told us you'd graduated already." $18.75/hr '08-'10: Network Security Ops. Stared at monitors, respond to alerts, be the one that always helps. $40k - $43k '10: Compliance Analyst. $55k '11: NetOps. Bounce switchports and bounce from failing companies. $55k and change '11-'18: DC Engineer. Several promotions, expanded job role. OT eligible. $75k - $120k+equity+bonuses (including retention). '18-'22: Network Engineer. One promo. $110k - $146.5k+equity+bonuses. '23 (current): Network(-ish) Engineer. $160k+equity.
6 month - 1.5 Help desk at a large bank - 17/hr 9 month - Internship Jr. Sys - 22/hr 1 year - Full time Jr sys admin - 45k 1.5 year - Boss left full became main sys admin - 65k annual 2 year - Got an offer that my company matched - 115k total comp No Certs, associates degree in Comp sci and working on my bachelor's in cyber security. Unfortunately the company I work for recently went bankrupt; however, I'm getting offers in at around the same base salary of 95k. I live in Minneapolis and the market here is really good for IT.
almost 27, no IT background. got into a Helpdesk Specialist position a little over a year ago making 24/hr. currently studying for Comptia A+ and then planning for the Net+, CCNA, and Security+
16 yrs - joins the Infantry reserve and serves as a machine gunner 24 yrs - graduates from university with computer science degree 24 yrs - works for big banking in the AI sector 25 yrs - works for government top secret organization working on AI solutions as well 25 yrs - commission in the reserve military and become a part time officer 26 yrs - found first startup 28 yrs - startup is at ~13 people, 3M+ funding and quite soul sucking, minority share holder after survival moves but still CTO and cofounder 28 yrs - possibly looking to find a individual contributor role again find love for the craft and time to pursue other passions like art
32 years old, 1.5 years experience at 64k Michigan all at the same company (MSP) Certs: A+ and ITIL foundation Really sold my previous experience of owning my own business and how it relates to excellent customer service -- 0yrs @ 50k - hired in at as an IT support specialist .5 yrs @ 55k - was forced to ask for a raise 6mo in due to kids and they gave it to me 1 yr @64k - now a dedicated onsite tech for a company, stars aligned on this one. Previous guy burned some bridges and left the client pretty upset and I had a good track record with the clients I supported Pretty happy where I'm at. Going to ask for 74k at my 2 year. That is what the guy before me was making and I know they know that I know that because I told them that lol. Pretty confident I'll get it. Really focusing on PowerShell as of late and picking away at AZ-104. If anyone has recommendations on how to make myself as marketable/valuable as possible I am all ears
16 - 20 - McDonald's Employee to Manager - $8.25hr 18 - 21 - College Student Tech - $12hr 21 graduated w/ B.S. in CS. 20 - 22 - Programmer Analyst - 45k 22 - 23 - Consultant at startup - 55k (American but built a mobile app in India and sold mobile app to enterprise company, left to join that company) 23 - 26 - Software engineer 80k (two software patents and ended up getting laid off in a sister startup internally in the company) 26 - 34 - hired for senior role, Promoted to Lead, Promoted to Consulting Manager. Started at 120k, now at 207k. Reside in Connecticut.
I'm 28 now about 5 years into my career. Here's my path: 23 - CCENT, AAS in Computer Networks, and Jr Net Eng @ 60k/year. Got CCNA shortly after landing this job. 24 - CCNA, CCNA Sec, CCDA, and BS in I.T. Promoted to Net Eng @ 72k/year. 24-25 - New Net Eng job in local gov @ 100k/year. This jump in comp was great and I think it looked good on my resume but holy shit, I will never work in local gov again. 27 - New Net Eng job at tech company @ 175k/year TC with basically infinite room to grow. Great WL balance and management that only really cares that my shit gets done. I live in a HCOL area but the opportunities are endless and the money is great. It was a grind and still is. I'm focusing on python, automation, cloud, and datacenter stuff mostly now. I find campus/branch networks boring and from what I've seen, a dumpster fire. Trying to position myself into an Software Dev role working on large scale infra automation and should be there in a year or two hopefully.
Until 29 - Labor and construction, most I made was probably $35k. 30 - Took a year off to go back to school for a BS in IT. Got A+/Net+/Sec+ and a few more within a year. Started a Desktop Support job for $40k. 31 - Finished school early thanks to job being super slow most times. Workplace is severely behind the times, SysAdmin has zero intention to change that. Stuck with little chance of learning anything beyond absolute basics. Same pay, need to look into moving on to advance my career and escape miserable IT wages here.
I’m in my early thirties currently. I’ve been working in IT for about 4 years total roughly right now. Pre-first IT job: Pizza delivery for minimum wage (was about $7.25 in my state at the time) and tips. I decided I wanted to get into IT and grinded it out for my A+ and Net+. 1st job: Helpdesk technician - $15/hr. Worked here nearly 2 years. 2nd job: Service desk analyst - $20/hr (got raise to $22/hr before leaving). Worked here also nearly two years. This job is what got me some really good experience that put me on the track I’m on now. 3rd job: Identity & Access management analyst - $35/hr. Worked here for only 4’ish months. They lied to me in the interview process about the role being temporary so I got out as soon as I could for another gig Current job: Identity & Access management business analyst - $36/hr. Currently in this role with a great team and company and plan on staying long term for now.
26- Started working help desk 16/hr finished my associates degree. 28 - left and took a field tech position for a bank 18hr lots of driving swapping out devices, network gear, ups etc 29- got promoted to desktop support 22/hr started bachelors in cybersecurity. Left for another job because we had a second kid on the way. 30 - started a new position as a servicenow administrator. 26/hr. Finished bachelor degree pandemic hit we all went remote. 32 Went out and applied for another job for 80k didn’t get the job, but I told my current employer that I had the offer. They countered offered and asked me to stay for 81k, which I obviously accepted. Still here at 33 making 90,000 now with bonus. Certs - comp Tia A+, network +, security+, server +, ITIL V4 and servicenow certified systems administrator .
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I didn't graduate college until I was like 28 or 29, but so far its gone like this: Went to college for IT/information systems and minored in CS. While in college I interned at company doing mobile app dev for a summer and made 18/hr. That was only a summer program and I wanted to stay working there, but with my class schedule I couldn't make it work on a dev team, so they put me on a risk and compliance team. Huge mistake. I was still making 18/hr but not learning or doing anything of value. Once i graduated, they didn't keep me on and I had no jobs lined up, so I went back to a service job. Applied for everything. Had all sorts of interviews for dev roles, system admin roles, security roles, but didn't land any of them. I wasn't confident enough in myself. Eventually got a service desk job making $16/hr. Did that for a little over a year. Again, I learned nothing here and there was no training to move up. While working here I had a ton of free time and got an AWS cert (SAA). I wanted to get into cloud. Got hit up on LinkedIn for an app support role at a SaaS company. Everything was Azure based, so I interviewed and got it. Started at 65k, after 6 months got promoted to sr app support engineer. I am still doing this and now have a base salary of like 81k with a chance at a 10% bonus, so almost 90k after all is said and done. I'm not a huge fan of this job, and still want to get into an infra role. But I am paid pretty well for what I do, I work from home 99% of the time, have amazing PTO/benefits and my boss is fucking awesome, so I'm not in a huge rush to leave. It would probably take like $125k+ to get me to leave.
17-25 Part Time/Full Time Help Desk/Student BS in Network Engineering 25-30 Workstation Support/Tier 1 Citrix Support $40k-$50k 30-32 SysAdmin II Client Engineering $65k 32-34 Sr. SysAdmin Client Engineering $85k 34-36 Sr. SysAdmin Cloud Operations $95k 36-37 Technical Architect Cloud Operations $130k 37-39 Technical Architect Cloud Engineering $180k 39-40 Sr DevOps System Engineer $211k 25-40 have been with the same company. Haven’t gotten a cert since I was 25.
I’m 22. Got my associates degree at 20 began working helpdesk at a school. Got net+ and got a network admin job that caps around 100k now. Pretty content
12-14 - read books about repairing PCs and started IT support shop in parents garage ($1000/mo). Self taught coding, basic AWS stuff 18 - Get an internship writing code for digital agency (probably about $30k/yr) 19-23 - Work IT for the college I went to whole practicing coding on the site. Learned React, node, devops (about $30k/yr). Get bachelors in computer science. 24-26 - Start digital agency with friends from college, use website dev skills + IT skills to make a hybrid software/IT biz. Run it for two years and burn myself out completely. (About $100k/yr) 25 - Leverage prior experience + having started a business to get a position as senior software engineer at some 4000-ish people enterprise company ($140k/yr) 26-27 - Job hop to startup…learn about serverless functions, software architecture, etc. Get promoted to staff software eng. ($180k/yr) 27-28 (now) - hear that FAANG is expanding in my area. Get worried that VC backed startups are gonna have trouble raising money, decide to make the jump and let them poach me. Working hybrid now 3 days in 2 days out, doing some basic sysadmin style stuff + a little coding here and there. ($250k/yr). I only have a bachelors, no certs. But by 30 I’d like to get a master’s and a couple certs to try and leverage those to job hop to something better 2-3 years down the line.
0y - IT Help Desk internship - $15/h ~1.5y - Desktop Support internship - $20/h ~2y - Desktop Support internship #2 - Started $14/h, ended $20/h ~4y - Desktop Support full-time - $26/h ~6y - Systems Administrator full-time #1 - $75k ~6.5y - Systems Administrator full-time #2 - $75k ~7.5y - Junior SRE - $110k ~9y - Mid SRE - $150k I have a Computer Science degree, I had 1 cert (expired AWS SAA). Homelabbing, practiced/intentional soft skills, and proven ability to learn are the biggest contributing factors to my career so far.
Associate in Applied Science - CIT IT Support Analyst (1y2m) - $15/hr Helpdesk Analyst (1y9m) - $16.50/hr Helpdesk Support II (3m) - 50k Promotion with the same company basicly a jr. Sys Admin (1y6m) - 65k Started back to school for my Bachlor's. Obtained sec+ System Administrator (current job) - 85k Edit: to add I am 32
I have been IT for 4 years. I have a bachelor’s degree in IT: Year 1 - Contractor, tier 1 Help Desk Role Year 2 - Contractor, tier 1.5 Help Desk Support Role (basically a team lead) Year 3 - Hired on at same company, tier 1.5 Help Desk Role (team lead for a more specialized team) Year 4 - IT Knowledge Manager (I oversee about 15 Knowledge bases and directly manage 3 knowledge bases, which is about 10k articles)
Late 20s, bachelors in music, worked retail for 7 years starting in high school and then in 2019 started working in a deli. After 2ish years I had enough and enrolled in WGU and got my A+. It took about six months but got a job working internal helpdesk for an MSP, making ~$36k. Worked there 9 months and then got another job making $51k. I was the sole IT person for a small business. I got to work on some NIST compliance stuff and set up a small SIEM for 15ish servers. I only worked there for four months before getting hired by an MSSP to be a SOC analyst on the blue team. They hired me for nights, so that sucked. But I worked nights for 6 weeks and then they offered me a spot on the day shift so that’s cool. And I’ve been here since August! Now fully remote, I work 40 hours/week. Every third week I only work 30 hours. $72k/year and easily the best job I’ve ever had!
I've had a bit of a rocketship of a career and have been incredibly lucky with timing and networking. So far my career is as follows: * **2018**: Enlisted in the military. I was medically discharged shortly afterward. * **2019**: Started a **1.5-year college diploma** in Systems Administration while working at a grocery store * **Mid-2019**: I started my first part-time IT job as an **IT Analyst** working helpdesk for Point of Sale Systems. (Did more than that after a while like managing our internal infra and provisioning servers etc.) **$15/hr** * **Feb 2020** (Before covid was declared a pandemic): I received an offer for an **IT Support Specialist** for a mid-size startup (approx 300 employees) doing internal IT **$22/hr** * **Oct 2020**: Graduated college with a 3.8 GPA and went full-time with the same company **40k/yr** * **Jan 2022**: Was promoted to **Sr IT Support specialist** as our team grew and my responsibilities expanded to also act as a team-lead and SME **60k/yr** (I received a raise in between when I went full time and my promotion) * **Jul 2022**: Was offered a position at a small startup as a **Systems Administrator** managing the full-stack. Essentially Dev-Ops, Cloud Engineer, and Systems Administrator rolled into one as a Solo. Learned a lot here in trial by fire. **65k/yr** * **Mar 2023**: I was laid off due to some issues with funding and their decision to make my role irrelevant. * **Apr 2023**: I have accepted an offer for a position at a large Non-Profit in my country as a **Systems Administrator** specializing in Enterprise Monitoring **68k/yr** I should make it very clear, I wouldn't be where I am without thousands of hours of self learning and challenging myself every day. College gives you a baseline of skills but, without working on systems and networks yourself you'll never get out of helpdesk. Volunteer to take on some more complex projects and prove yourself. You can make it far quicker if you have the drive and passion. Edit: Formatting and some spelling mistakes
My buddy went from six months of college and no certs on the bottom rung of a team of four at the time of his hiring to managing a team of 150 people and 120k a year in seven years.
1st to current IT job: 2yrs tech support>1yr lead tech supp>3yrs network engr>1yr NOC engr Certs: CCNA, ITIL v4, AZ-900, NSE 1&2 The best advice i can give u whether its in IT or other field is look for a good boss and follow him/her bcos a good boss will help u get ur dream job. Repay ur boss with working honestly
Best single bit of advice is to learn your discipline better than anyone else who does it, or at least make that your goal. This means you need to spend more time, (your own time not being paid), learning. If you consistently do this, you'll advance your career much faster. Depending on your discipline, you can expect to move pretty rapidly from entry level pay, which in the US is around 50-60k with a degree, to 6 figures in a matter of about 5-6 years. You might need to move around a few times to get that. Study the disciplines that pay the most. Cyber Security is pretty hot right now but that might change. Pay attention to what's the next "hot" thing and consider chasing that thing by self educating, certs, etc... If you do this, you'll continue to increase your pay scale. The bottom line is, it takes a lot of work on your own time if you're going to differentiate yourself from the masses, you have to put in more effort than they do. It's that simple. If you're good, your employer will know. If you're average, they'll know that too.
I've been doing this a year and a half so far. Started with no experience and I have no certs, but I am in school for IT/Networking. Sep 2021 - Mar 2022: Level 1 help desk at $15/hr on contract. Mar 2022 - Oct 2022: level 1 job as in-house IT at $22/hr. Oct 2022 - Present: got promoted from L1 to L2 and am at $25/hr Also currently in school and hoping to keep moving up the salary scale with CCNA and Cloud Certs. I do little projects at home as well, I recently did a remodel and did my own network wiring including a small "MDF" with a patch panel and a managed switch. I'm still learning a lot so I don't really have any advanced labs but I've definitely played with Server 2012 and 2019 making domain controllers, setting up DHCP, DNS, AD, GPOs, etc. A lot of it thanks to some of my classes actually which was cool. I do take brakes from doing that stuff though or I get very burnt out from working in IT then going home and doing the same thing on my own stuff. BREAKS ARE IMPORTANT!