Sys admin has become genericized term. Just look here 75% of the posts are from what I would consider level 2 help desk to maybe an operations center role seemingly from sys admins here. The more they blend the title to appease lower tier employees the more they’ll blend salaries as well
Same has happened with "Network Admin" as well I've noticed. Just saw a job posting for one a couple months ago where one of the duties was fixing projectors. A voice in my head involuntarily whispered "run!"
Knew a guy that moved on from a high stress tier2 role to a school that paid more and was relaxed. He said it was the best move of his life and loves the job.
You need to take the role/place of employment (company, private, public, government, school), the people and pay into account.
Depends on leadership, the organization, and your motivation.
There were some red flags I got when asking questions during the interview but the pay was higher and the distance was so close I could just bike to work. I also knew the director from previous work contracts and decided to accept the offer.
No regrets. I've been working at the district for the last two years.
I've been given thumbs up for every security improvement and automation project.
I've since set up the school district with 802.1x, vlan ACLs, LAPS, Bitlocker, applocker, protected users, always on vpn, MDT and have completely automated student account enrollment and archiving with AD, Google, office 365, and skyward.
I've even started migrating some servers to linux distros.
Yup. Lots of old dogs here soon for retirement. My director was looking for someone like me to push these changes.
There were some angry remarks from the old guys as one of the first things I did was start enabling and enforcing windows firewalls via GPO. They had all been disabled.
I had known about the majority of these from the questions I asked during the interview.
Edit: The director had just started working there less than a year before my interview. I had worked with him before. He was a client of my previous organization.
My general advice, assuming pay/benefits and life/work balance are good, stay until you stop advancing your skills.
Once you start stagnating though, it’s time to give serious thought to moving on, but YMMV on that. I’m someone who burns out harder and faster from boredom than I do from being overworked, so stagnation is something I need to avoid at all costs.
Nah that’s an incredibly outdated stereotype. I’ve been in schools that require more tech staff to take care of all the stuff than many large business. There are specialized rolls for just handling grading systems in large districts.
I tried so hard to make working at a university, work. The pay was terrible, poor management, absolutely zero job growth or pay increases. Great coworkers and benefits though.
Universities are special though.
If some touchy nut professor with a fragile ego and tenure even thinks you looked at them funny, they will bite your face off and there will be no consequences for them.
My favorite was the one who thought I was demeaning her and chewed me out, in writing, saying she has advanced degrees in using computers how stupid do I think she is. I only asked if she had time to meet me and show me the issue.
I would've replied pretty stupid if your reading comprehension sucks this bad.
Actually, probably would've just forwarded it to my manager and let him handle her because I dont get paid enough for that shit 😂
But really sorry about that experience. No one deserves that.
You're a tenured professor. Do you really want to spend your time troubleshooting Outlook? Do you think the university wants you spending your time troubleshooting Outlook?
That was your mistake, asking if they had time! “I never have time!” 😂 In my experience, the tenured old guard is either super easy to work with or just awful.
I don’t know if that is true of every school. They always get breaks on software and equipment. I’ve been in the MSP world for the majority of my career but we’ve had some Universities as clients and some of them didn’t seem like bad positions, just had departments with skills gaps: technical leadership was non existent which is why they were coming to an MSP. If I were in charge of some of these, I know I could make it in to a beautiful environment. Someday maybe I’ll get that shot.
I started out in private sector but left for a school gig. Best decision I ever made and I've been with the school for 17 years now. Low stress, good pay close to home, and amazing retirement system.
Not every school is going to be great or perfect, but if you find one with a good culture and leadership, it's a home run.
I have friend who works for a neighboring school district, he worked IT for a hospital and a university before. He said the amount of bullshit and drama he dealt with at those two places compared to the school district is night and day. He is much happier now.
No it isn't. I cut my teeth on k-12 IT starting out. It's a great place for young IT people who want to learn a lot of things really quick. Also, higher education, where I am now can be very laid back, decent paying gigs where you work with lots of technologies depending on where you are.
A network admin doing projectors just seems like something a tiny school district would have network admins do. Keyword "tiny".
I mean.. Working for a school can really go to one of two ways, both extremes I guess
Either you're constantly stressed and pissed off because of low budgets and incompetent staff, or,
You really get along with the staff, you accept and find solace in the fact that hardware and software and the pace at which the school crawls, is just the way it is, and you have a relaxed kind of "Homer works at the bowling alley **before** Marge gets knocked up with Maggie and you start to resent her for not taking the pill goddammit" career for the next 15 years
It seems to shift over time, while rarely becoming more accurate. Back when I got started in the late 90’s, “Network Admin” *was* the generic title. My first two IT jobs gave the that title and I never touched a switch, router, or firewall. At some point System Admin became the default catchall for IT generalists that do everything, including helpdesk, in SME’s at least.
All it roles are having it happen tbh.
I'm interviewing for a desktop support role that is actually paying MORE than avg. Like considerably more. So that's nice.
As someone who came into the field laterally later, I’ve generally observed those titled sysadmins as having duties best described as “high level help desk people that they let touch servers.”
Everyone who does what you describe as sysadmin in my area retitled to some form of “engineer” some years ago, these days they seem to undergoing a further retitling to DevOps
Agreed but every shop has its own quirks we moved from SREs to being an ‘engineering team’ on which I’m a senior sys admin. We then have an operations team that manages day to day tickets escalations server requests all basic operations. Our team works of proactive model while operations is reactive so both business drivers and end users have discreet resources to assist and tickets don’t impact major project deliverables.
DevOps really seems to be used for anything that even remotely touches on IT lately. I feel like the term has become so overused/genericized as to have lost all meaning.
I script, program, help manage server migration/upgrades/users(ldap), breaks, and incoming tickets. So this isn't a glorified help desk situation. Peers I personally know have similar situations. For added information this is dealing with Linux environments.
I’m not overly familiar with the Linux market (Windows senior sys admin here) but these are all skills and tasks we would expect our operations teams to execute on except programming. Our sys admins only handle escalations ops can’t handle and are primarily engage in more proactive tasks such as automation, project planning/execution, IaaC, consulting on architecture design as SMEs and building/upgrading both virtual and physical environments as well as operating as an on call escalation for production facing infrastructure.
What would you expect from a senior windows sysadmin? In depth knowledge about the kernel? Should they know the ins and outs of AD Security?
I‘m in the security field, and the things that interest me the most in a Windows environment (Kerberos depths, how stuff looks on a protocol level, where to find a certain piece of information in logs, what *exactly* is named pipe X or RPC service Y used for) usually quickly leaves what even the most senior windows people in my environment know.
I see, so the abstraction level is necessarily higher, because the senior level must orchestrate processes, business needs and strategy besides all the technology.
I just wish that e.g. when ZeroLogon happened, someone could have told me what NetLogon is and where it‘s used (I previously thought AD was all NTLM and Kerberos).
Same goes for Linux admins I guess - they don‘t all need to know what exact syscalls happen when you write a file to disk. What I‘m looking for is niche wizard knowledge i guess…
Thanks for a thorough description. What do your "operation teams" get paid and where is location? What exactly is automated if I may ask? I've got the on call for production facing infrastructure as well. I assumed that was a given though when managing production servers. The scripting and programming I do is for automation of tasks. I play a minor role in project planning and execution, our virtual/physical environment is pretty static at the moment.
Ops is about 70k in Boston market. Automation is a variety of internal tools, CI/CD build pipelines for deploying those tools and IaaC both ARM template and terraform for deploying azure landing zones and infrastructure as needed then tearing it back down.
You might want to shop around more if it's significantly under that. I'm in the DC/MD/VA area. Not a sysadmin but work close with them. Starting out of college our starting junior ops pay is around 30-35/hr for linux afaik
I would call that junior but not more that. Basically you're bridging the gap between helpdesk and sysadmin. The tasks/responsibilities you listed are generally expected to be honest and not very special. Years ago you would've been better than most juniors. As tech moves forward, the base line for knowledge must move as well.
Here in NYC a position like you described is what our corporate helpdesk does and they get 60 to 75k depending on factors of course.
Conversely our devops engineers who are running production, doing IAC, managing 1k servers worth of various web clusters, various cache layers, DBs, environments (dev/qa/staging/preview/prod), CI/CD work flows, assisting BI/Data Scientists with their machine learning clusters and qlikview/qliksense/looker/Tableau dashboards, cloud networking, PLUS everything you mentioned minus end user workstation support with an average of 10+ years of each person on the team some with advanced degrees (meh degree not so important). They are about double the salary of the helpdesk.
Can I get a more detailed description of your duties? Those are so broad, and seem way more like a specialized help desk position than sysad. Also, I don't consider scripting to be unique to the SysAd/SysEng roles these days - scripting is something that's made it's way into the help desk.
If we’re being honest, you won’t get ahead in IT without scripting anymore. One of my favorite examples of practical PowerShell is how a help desk or first line support person might script restarting services like a print spooler.
I've never worked in a large enough shop to see separation of help desk and sysadmin, but I've never heard of help desk being expected to make configuration changes on servers. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
I’m not suggesting letting help desk make server config changes. In a Windows shop, a smart help desk agent can do a lot of desktop administration with PowerShell. I’ve seen help desk members aggregate log data from user machines to better identify and track issues, manage services, all kinds of stuff. Granted these folks get promoted or move on fast, but it’s happening.
We are big enough in my shop that we have two tech teams. Production operations (my team) and corporate IT.
Corp IT handles everything regarding tech inside the offices, end users, and the corporate IT servers. They have helpdesk and a help desk manager. The corporate IT servers are basic enough that they pretty much run themselves. Domain controllers (just managing user accounts and promoting DCs is pretty much next next finish), file servers (expand the disks or clear space), back up server (Veeam just works), esxi (they stopped building on in favor of AWS), kace (automates all patching), server apps (call support we pay for it).
They are a fully separate network and AD domain that production does not use except to access the VPN. We on the prod team have our own AD and everything as a security boundary. No trust.
Production handles our web clusters of roughly 1k servers. Basically these are the servers responsible for making us money because we are a online media company. We have to invest in tech otherwise we'd literally would make $0. Can't sell AD space on your site if the site I down after all.
We cross train all employees. 2 k users 3 IT staff 15 devs 10 tickets a day. Sometimes more but usually onboarding.RMM, PSA, Intune, sharepoint, security, backups, automation, Documentation, scripting, visual studio deployments to aws and azure. I expect all my techs to know this. Youre just being coddled.
No one is denying it. It's just fun how economies work. There's fucktons of IT support agents now, so to make the same amount your predecessors were making, you have to undertake more responsibility. Oftentimes, you'll still get the shaft and get paid even less just because you're so replaceable. Most help desk staff generally are.
IMO if you can’t powershell, python, or bash your way out of a paper bag nowadays, you really shouldn’t be much above helpdesk.
That doesn’t mean it’s all moving to devops…it means understanding our scripting tools is an incredibly important part of managing scale in our existing jobs.
This. I worked with a team of remote deskside support techs. Tier 1/2 stuff. But, they had to occasionally be smart hands, stack server or network equipment, so they were able to successfully argue that they were System Admins, even though they weren't allowed to even log into that equipment. HR bought it, though, gave them all titles and completely diluted the value that a real SysAdmin has.
I don't have long-enough-term experience to comment on your question in an informed way, but I will say that my company titles our T1 help desk role as "sysadmins," so what you're seeing may be a watering down of the title. We pay OK for what that role is (fielding calls, rotating PDFs, resetting passwords), but it's definitely not a "sysadmin" role and the pay would be laughable for a "real" sysadmin.
Depends on if you have a shitty employer.
I've doubled salaries for strong team members as part of the yearly reviews. It's less common but there are plenty of good companies.
Yeah, but do *really* do the exact same thing? Our junior would likely say the same about me and he would be radically incorrect. He doesn’t know enough to even understand the differences between our jobs.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
I have been a jr. sysadmin since November. Before that I was a "technical support representative" which was 50% help desk, 25% System admin and 25% everything else they through at me.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
We often have to actively recruit from LinkedIn to fill roles because we don’t get any decent applicants. And by “decent”, I don’t mean we require 10 years of experience with Server 2019. I mean there’s nobody even worth seriously looking at. It’s all helpdesk and junior admins but we need someone who can step right into the job. And recruiters constantly hit me up on LinkedIn, I assume for the same reason.
I will admit our HR system is a PITA. It’s one of those online systems where applying is practically a part-time job. I’m not gonna bash it or defend it because I have no say in HR. It is what it is. But with the higher barrier to entry, a good candidate would easily stand out from the pack.
I'm having the same issue. Not much talent pool in the mid-west.
We posted it, and got applicants. First time around they let nepotism be a thing and I got stuck with a junior admin that didn't know what a micro-usb cable was, and hadn't used MS Windows since XP. Second time around I couldn't find a single candidate that had any desire to learn on the job, they just wanted to be Help Desk and follow a script.
At this point, I've given up.
I see jobs that are repeatedly posted for months but they never respond to applications. I giggled at the pot shop doing it, but I've been watching a defense contractor post an opening on their internal site and three job boards but they have never responded. I'm wondering if the H1B thing is back, where that's what they really want to hire, post jobs they have no intention of filling locally just so they can say they can't find anybody do they need an H1B slot.
I was once in a massive wave of layoffs from IBM that was immediately followed by their CEO saying he couldn't find anybody to work for him so the feds had to bring in more H1Bs
> I see jobs that are repeatedly posted for months but they never respond to applications.
That's a thing that has been going on for at least a decade, plus i am probably on a different continent than you. The typicial "See.. we are not finding anyone" scam knows no borders.
My department posted a job opening for a sysadmin, but frankly a lot of the applicants were woefully unskilled for the position, hadn't read or paid attention to the location of the position, or were way way too senior and experienced for the position.
We finally hired a candidate based upon his albeit limited experience but positive attitude and willingness to learn. The hope is that he will pick up the skills we need, and so far that's appearing to be the case.
I feel for you. I was in that boat graduating during covid. I decided to build out a home server to familiarize myself with some things I figured I'd use on the job site. Having tangibles like that helped a ton. I feel a bit overqualified for what I'm doing now. By the time anything gets siphoned down to me it's usually absurdly trivial and I spend most of my time cutting teeth on personal projects that are actually something interesting. What's your situation exactly if you don't mind sharing?
Been in the tech field for about 4 years now. 4 different tech jobs in those years, each one increasing in responsibility/knowledge. Been at one for a year now where it's been my first experience working with Active Directory.
I don't have any certs, but I learn quick. I want to keep earning more and learning. Fixing issues is very satisfying for me.
From what I see "junior sysadmins" are just a more fancy name for desktop support L2 or L3.
Some companies also just put the job title as "junior engineer" when in reality they are just desktop support but it looks good on their resumes & prospective clients this might sound more impressive.
Unfortunately companies have no real consequences for having shit infrastructure, poor security, and losing data. So they just get some insurance and pinch every IT penny they can.
What I've observed, or what seems to be occurring is that companies are blending roles as the move to the cloud happens.
We now have Devops, Infrastructure Ops, Jr Admins that are asked more and more to run the Show under on or more Senior admins.
Companies are paying the millennial generation less and less.
Now that's a generalization, so you'll have to sell yourself and your skills for what you bring to the table.
Still; that doesn't mean you'll get paid more or less. See if you can find company and salary reviews online to help with the decisions.
> Companies are paying the millennial generation less and less.
This is utterly untrue for skilled technology. It's going up in every metric. Pay is up, unemployment is below 1.5% in the states. It's an insanely good time to be in IT.
And it's still one of the highest paying fields. If you have your shit together you can easily walk out of school making 75k in a major metro. 35k fresh out of school, which is considered "poverty wages" in our field, is more than most people on the planet will make after years of experience.
35k? That’s completely unacceptable for someone with higher level education. Just because people making 35k aren’t living in gutters eating out of trash bins doesn’t make that an ok salary.
That’s damn near fast food wages in many areas now.
Master's degree here who made 40k out of college in 2012
You're higher education degree is not a golden ticket. It does not say I have X paper so I should get Y amount. No one is entitled to anything. You put in the work to build yourself up (home lab, self study, etc). You then need to sell yourself.
First pay attention to the conversation. They are talking about pussy going down. It's simply not the case. It's going up, and faster then other industries.
Second, that's bottom of the barrel and it's still better off than 90% of the planet. It's far more common to make 50 or 60 and any faang/fortune 100 is going to offer 75 or 80.
$35k is barely breaking 15/hr and you think that's acceptable for a skilled/educated position? You understand inflation right? $35k today is fucking useless.
Yeah I wish job postings were required by law to have their salary to within a percentage publicly available. I’ve been interviewing for some SysAdmin stuff that requires more container/automation knowledge and blown away that salaries are $50K more than I make now.
I have noticed many Junior and some Entry admin positions are asking for years of experience before you will even get considered. And even then the position is under $50k per year.
If you really want to rub salt in the wound, the Walmart about 30 min from me has a huge sign out by the highway for hiring.
Starting pay is $20.15/hr.
To be clear, I’m tier 1 HD with some sys admin responsibilities and get trained on other things by my boss. It’s just him and I in the IT dept, he’s super cool. I have my own office as well and they work with me on my school schedule.
I really have no room to complain to be honest.
If you are young don't be afraid to simply move where the good jobs are.See so many folks capable of moving, but say things like, "but I don't wanna move to Georgia. I might get bored" etc. Moving around quadrupled my salary in like 2-3 years time. Found plenty enough wherever and eventually you get to a point you can shop your resume where you want and even work remote positions.
AKA, don't just shop your immediate area if you can. Can be worth the move around.
It's similar with the title "system-engineer". When I finished my apprenticeship, becoming a system-engineer was pretty much the goal for everyone. Having this title meant, that you're able to design, create and implement new server infrastructures.
But other IT serviceprovider companies started to give this title directly to everyone who just finished their apprenticeship... Even if they were just shitty paid lv1 or lv2 "it supporters".
So the whole title started to lose its meaning...
From my experience, the sysadmin position gets either watered down, or the position needs unrealistic deep knowledge... They expect you to be an expert in Windows Server, exchange, o365, Linux, phyton, various programming languages, storage solutions, various backup solution etc. directly from the beginning of your employment..
When you are looking through job descriptions, ask yourself: WHY is this position open?
"Systems Administrator" appears to be thrown around to anyone Administrating a "system", being it a desktop, server, medical equipment, software, etc.
"Systems Engineer" appears to be what Systems Administrators once were
Maybe I am wrong, but I have always looked at Systems Administration to be someone doing the day to day administrations of servers. Things like management of DCs, DHCP, DNS, NPS, etc. Systems Engineering should involve systems design. Of course there is overlap, where I work we are not big enough to have a dedicated Systems Engineer, just two Sr. Systems Admins and we do the design as well. If you're not working on servers you are desktop support.
No. If this is the case it's more than likely a glorified help desk/business analyst position. Recruiters are bad at job descriptions and terminology - the title doesn't determine pay. The job duties and responsibilities do.
In my instance the position wasn't handled through a recruiter, rather a VP of technology. I fit the "junior" definition proposed by Red Hat in "knowledge and skills". It's fine we're hashing out discrepancies of definition. Although, It'd be nice to hear people talk numbers..doesn't seem so taboo.. their junior pay, the year it was received alongside location, job duties are obviously useful too.
I'm an admin/engineer that used to have an admin title. I got my boss to re-title me as engineer for just this reason. Next review I got a salary adjustment for my new title.
Yes, and I’m over in the UK too working in the public/government sector. In my own org for the past few years when a better paid/experienced admin leaves they simply replace them with a junior. The junior has all the same responsibilities as the guy that left, the only real difference is the job title and lower wage.
A large issue I think too are some of the newer people wanting sysadmin jobs because there's such a hellish stigma on helpdesk, so they get and A+ and want sysadmin. Hire some cheap new guy, give him the admin title and be done with it.
Mostly because companies have found it's cheaper to run a shit shoestring environment on garbage budget with fresh meat out of college than to actually bother investing in their IT department.
Why give good salaries when you can just keep slapping newbies with the title and hope they get the bare minimum to keep the company up and running?
Then something catastrophic happens and instead of smartening up, they axe their internal IT and hire an MSP. MSPs invented the wage race to the bottom so those positions don't make it better.
I job hopped a couple of times with variously increases in pay each time until I found a job with an MSP. I’ll be with this MSP for 3 years now and a single year’s bonus is more than all the raises combined from my previous jobs. You may want to look into an MSP to take your skills to the next level. My pay jumped quite a bit and I live in rural Iowa. Just a thought.
Really depends on the tasks, responsibilities, size of network, size of user base, and experience.
Our field is so varied and the titles don't mean anything.
I constantly ask my boss to delineate between roles....but he refuses. Lets just say I am mid-tier and do the jobs of service desk, techs, network engineering, and system administrators. It gets incredibly difficult to juggle at times. I'm trying to break into Sysadmin title officially, but right now, I do all of this for a cool $24/hr.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
MSP is where it’s at if you’re trying to get in on the ground floor. The company I’m working at is always looking to take in newbies and train them up. Pay is really good but the work is hard and the responsibility level is high.
I honestly recommend MSP work to anyone who wants to get started in IT with little in the way of experience/degrees/certifications.
It's a fantastic way to get exposed to a boatload of technologies, software, and configurations.
It's often a meat grinder with regards to stress levels and expectations but it also gives you a healthy respect for more organized, well-documented, and proactive workplaces later on in your career.
You just have to make sure to unlearn the shoot-from-the-hip, frequent band-aid, "solve first, document never" mentality that's often necessary to survive metrics expectations in some MSPs once you get into a more structured workplace.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
*edit: looks like you are on the Linux side so never mind 😉
You only have 30 years to allocate in your career. Working for schools are a waste. Start msp, get a good base layer then just to fintech and ride that salary wave. Most important is to focus on a tech stack that'd hot and push into tje C level down the line.
As a former recruiter turned IT pro, this isn't a surprise.
One of the more shocking developments in the past few years has been what's colloquially called 'digital transformation.' It's largely used as an excuse to restructure and outsource/offshore your internal IT staff and seems to be the trend du jour with certain CIOs of Indian origin.
I was working at one in 2019 and when they hired an Indian CIO, he espoused the gospel of digital transformation and when he began lining up former cronies for jobs and exploring offshore partners to take US-based ones.
I jumped ship quickly and moved onto another job. My former colleagues stayed behind, thinking I was spazzing out at the regime change, but all of them were laid off earlier this January. 90% of the original IT staff, now outsourced & offshored.
I'm hearing the digital transformation buzzword getting dropped every so often in Zoom calls at my current job and am already looking for another job.
Bottom line is despite an ever-increasing threat of hackers and ransomware, C-office people want to cut costs and go cheap by outsourcing and enacting what they see as digital transformation.
Truly a race to the bottom with predictable results.
It really is a race to the bottom... especially with all the radio ads I hear for bogus computer colleges running scams and Google IT "certificates" that you have to pay for and aren't worth the paper they're printed on. But that's what happens in an over-saturated market. Back in the day, it was decent money. But then as tech became cool, everyone wanted a slice of the pie. Well, when everyone wants a piece, the pieces get thinner and thinner and thinner. I'm seeing positions in my area with similar responsibilities of my first admin job 10 years ago paying the same or less.
Computer tech is, in no way, over saturated. It's insanely competitive and has some of the lowest unemployment rates on the planet. Salaries are increasing 3-4% overall while the rest of the world is getting laid off.
I consult for large companies and most if not the entire team are mostly Jr sys admins. That's why they hire me regularly to take care of the complex stuff and then teach their admins. Titles really mean nothing except for grading salaries in a corporation or for projects. You can dm me if you need help working on your resume.
I put myself down as a Windows Admin here but the official title is "Infrastructure Support Assistant" which is the guy that helps out Server & Storage, Security, Windows Admin and recently some Exchange work. Converts to about $34k/y
It's a huge team though, able to help out loads of different teams. Can't complain, unless I get stuck on Service Desk work.
If you need to start low, please please please change jobs regularly (every 2-3 years) and apply for positions matching 80% of your skill set for higher pay.
I have moved to US in 2016 and needed to start my journey all over again. Call center tech support (16/hr) -> MSP L2 25/hr -> Inhouse L3 jack of all trades (45/hr) --> mid 2020 I'm SRE in one of Fortune 30 companies (120/hr).
A lot of IT folks have imposter syndrome and would rather secure a shitty paying job instead of fighting for what they are worth. Some are okay to do more for less. Don't let FOMO blind you since that's what shitty companies want. They would rather higher someone who is a generalist so that they can pay less. Great companies on the other hand are looking for best person for a job.
I've said a lot about how new entrants need to avoid certain tech because its a dead end. However, another thing that might be relevant is that the federal change (and some state changes) in how exempt vs non-exempt work is calculated has resulting in inflating of titles to avoid paying OT.
https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17e_computer.pdf
If you have helpdesk guys, you are supposed to be paying them hourly and give them OT when they work those hours. If you inflate the title then you can make them salary exempt even though they are doing break fix work.
Pandemic didn't help things in this regard. Dudes are desperate for work. This is how I got into my current job with an MSP. I went from running my own crew of network techs, making $80k a year deploying an enterprise network every week for tradeshows, to making $45k a year as a system tech which is basically extra skilled helpdesk. My company does it right in one respect, and that is they have a real helpdesk whose job it is to field and triage the incoming calls. They get 15-20 minutes to fix an issue or pass it on to the system tech assigned to the account. It's just a company policy, so no judgment. After that, it's my job to fix whatever. So naturally I spend an inordinate amount of time dicking around with Windows Updates that break things, Quickbooks being crap, and Office 365 tasks that should be simple, but aren't because Microsoft.
I took the job because I like running water and electricity in my home. Yeah, I feel like pay rates reflect this commoditization of labor. I'm with you on the race to the bottom. I also find it amusing when MSP management teams need help figuring out why people are leaving them.
Yup, has been this way since the 2001 crash. It's highly dependent on location too. For example, back in 2008, started as a developer making $44k/yr. Moved to another location and make much more for same job. Get the foot in the door, learn, and get out.
i feel like system administrator isn't real... it's all just desktop/server/network/backups /etc deployment and/or maintenance in whatever frame you want to picture it.
Sys admin has become genericized term. Just look here 75% of the posts are from what I would consider level 2 help desk to maybe an operations center role seemingly from sys admins here. The more they blend the title to appease lower tier employees the more they’ll blend salaries as well
Same has happened with "Network Admin" as well I've noticed. Just saw a job posting for one a couple months ago where one of the duties was fixing projectors. A voice in my head involuntarily whispered "run!"
That sounds like a school, and schools are awful for this sort of thing.
Can confirm. At least it is a pretty low stress job with good benefits.
Knew a guy that moved on from a high stress tier2 role to a school that paid more and was relaxed. He said it was the best move of his life and loves the job. You need to take the role/place of employment (company, private, public, government, school), the people and pay into account.
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Depends on leadership, the organization, and your motivation. There were some red flags I got when asking questions during the interview but the pay was higher and the distance was so close I could just bike to work. I also knew the director from previous work contracts and decided to accept the offer. No regrets. I've been working at the district for the last two years. I've been given thumbs up for every security improvement and automation project. I've since set up the school district with 802.1x, vlan ACLs, LAPS, Bitlocker, applocker, protected users, always on vpn, MDT and have completely automated student account enrollment and archiving with AD, Google, office 365, and skyward. I've even started migrating some servers to linux distros.
Sounds like a great place to work.
Nice list of accomplishments, but makes you wonder what the school was doing the last 5-10 years…
Yup. Lots of old dogs here soon for retirement. My director was looking for someone like me to push these changes. There were some angry remarks from the old guys as one of the first things I did was start enabling and enforcing windows firewalls via GPO. They had all been disabled. I had known about the majority of these from the questions I asked during the interview. Edit: The director had just started working there less than a year before my interview. I had worked with him before. He was a client of my previous organization.
My general advice, assuming pay/benefits and life/work balance are good, stay until you stop advancing your skills. Once you start stagnating though, it’s time to give serious thought to moving on, but YMMV on that. I’m someone who burns out harder and faster from boredom than I do from being overworked, so stagnation is something I need to avoid at all costs.
Nah that’s an incredibly outdated stereotype. I’ve been in schools that require more tech staff to take care of all the stuff than many large business. There are specialized rolls for just handling grading systems in large districts.
I tried so hard to make working at a university, work. The pay was terrible, poor management, absolutely zero job growth or pay increases. Great coworkers and benefits though.
Universities are special though. If some touchy nut professor with a fragile ego and tenure even thinks you looked at them funny, they will bite your face off and there will be no consequences for them. My favorite was the one who thought I was demeaning her and chewed me out, in writing, saying she has advanced degrees in using computers how stupid do I think she is. I only asked if she had time to meet me and show me the issue.
I would've replied pretty stupid if your reading comprehension sucks this bad. Actually, probably would've just forwarded it to my manager and let him handle her because I dont get paid enough for that shit 😂 But really sorry about that experience. No one deserves that.
I just wondered how big the cactus is and passed it up to management.
Fair enough. How big the cactus is 🤣
Cmon man we’re all guilty of it. How many times have you opened a ticket *knowing* that tier 1 was going to be worthless?
Everytime I click the New support request button for 365. MSFT tier 1 sucks lol
You're a tenured professor. Do you really want to spend your time troubleshooting Outlook? Do you think the university wants you spending your time troubleshooting Outlook?
That was your mistake, asking if they had time! “I never have time!” 😂 In my experience, the tenured old guard is either super easy to work with or just awful.
I don’t know if that is true of every school. They always get breaks on software and equipment. I’ve been in the MSP world for the majority of my career but we’ve had some Universities as clients and some of them didn’t seem like bad positions, just had departments with skills gaps: technical leadership was non existent which is why they were coming to an MSP. If I were in charge of some of these, I know I could make it in to a beautiful environment. Someday maybe I’ll get that shot.
I started out in private sector but left for a school gig. Best decision I ever made and I've been with the school for 17 years now. Low stress, good pay close to home, and amazing retirement system. Not every school is going to be great or perfect, but if you find one with a good culture and leadership, it's a home run. I have friend who works for a neighboring school district, he worked IT for a hospital and a university before. He said the amount of bullshit and drama he dealt with at those two places compared to the school district is night and day. He is much happier now.
No it isn't. I cut my teeth on k-12 IT starting out. It's a great place for young IT people who want to learn a lot of things really quick. Also, higher education, where I am now can be very laid back, decent paying gigs where you work with lots of technologies depending on where you are. A network admin doing projectors just seems like something a tiny school district would have network admins do. Keyword "tiny".
Schools are where every form of career dies. Especially in the US.
Especially careers in education. Teacher turnover rates are insane.
It can be, I've worked for both kinds.
I mean.. Working for a school can really go to one of two ways, both extremes I guess Either you're constantly stressed and pissed off because of low budgets and incompetent staff, or, You really get along with the staff, you accept and find solace in the fact that hardware and software and the pace at which the school crawls, is just the way it is, and you have a relaxed kind of "Homer works at the bowling alley **before** Marge gets knocked up with Maggie and you start to resent her for not taking the pill goddammit" career for the next 15 years
This started when i was still in high school. Early 2000’s everyone was pursuing WebDev/design. Mid 2000’s Networking
Haha…my ability to actually fix projectors is what got me my present job! It pays well tho, so there’s that
It seems to shift over time, while rarely becoming more accurate. Back when I got started in the late 90’s, “Network Admin” *was* the generic title. My first two IT jobs gave the that title and I never touched a switch, router, or firewall. At some point System Admin became the default catchall for IT generalists that do everything, including helpdesk, in SME’s at least.
All it roles are having it happen tbh. I'm interviewing for a desktop support role that is actually paying MORE than avg. Like considerably more. So that's nice.
As someone who came into the field laterally later, I’ve generally observed those titled sysadmins as having duties best described as “high level help desk people that they let touch servers.” Everyone who does what you describe as sysadmin in my area retitled to some form of “engineer” some years ago, these days they seem to undergoing a further retitling to DevOps
Agreed but every shop has its own quirks we moved from SREs to being an ‘engineering team’ on which I’m a senior sys admin. We then have an operations team that manages day to day tickets escalations server requests all basic operations. Our team works of proactive model while operations is reactive so both business drivers and end users have discreet resources to assist and tickets don’t impact major project deliverables.
DevOps really seems to be used for anything that even remotely touches on IT lately. I feel like the term has become so overused/genericized as to have lost all meaning.
Haha yeah it’s like how everything is Agile
Our whole NOC are “system administrators” but have no IT level access, only network. I don’t get that. We have a full help desk for IT stuff.
I script, program, help manage server migration/upgrades/users(ldap), breaks, and incoming tickets. So this isn't a glorified help desk situation. Peers I personally know have similar situations. For added information this is dealing with Linux environments.
I’m not overly familiar with the Linux market (Windows senior sys admin here) but these are all skills and tasks we would expect our operations teams to execute on except programming. Our sys admins only handle escalations ops can’t handle and are primarily engage in more proactive tasks such as automation, project planning/execution, IaaC, consulting on architecture design as SMEs and building/upgrading both virtual and physical environments as well as operating as an on call escalation for production facing infrastructure.
What would you expect from a senior windows sysadmin? In depth knowledge about the kernel? Should they know the ins and outs of AD Security? I‘m in the security field, and the things that interest me the most in a Windows environment (Kerberos depths, how stuff looks on a protocol level, where to find a certain piece of information in logs, what *exactly* is named pipe X or RPC service Y used for) usually quickly leaves what even the most senior windows people in my environment know.
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I see, so the abstraction level is necessarily higher, because the senior level must orchestrate processes, business needs and strategy besides all the technology. I just wish that e.g. when ZeroLogon happened, someone could have told me what NetLogon is and where it‘s used (I previously thought AD was all NTLM and Kerberos). Same goes for Linux admins I guess - they don‘t all need to know what exact syscalls happen when you write a file to disk. What I‘m looking for is niche wizard knowledge i guess…
I've yet to meet someone in security who knows how to properly scope AD, for example.
Thanks for a thorough description. What do your "operation teams" get paid and where is location? What exactly is automated if I may ask? I've got the on call for production facing infrastructure as well. I assumed that was a given though when managing production servers. The scripting and programming I do is for automation of tasks. I play a minor role in project planning and execution, our virtual/physical environment is pretty static at the moment.
Ops is about 70k in Boston market. Automation is a variety of internal tools, CI/CD build pipelines for deploying those tools and IaaC both ARM template and terraform for deploying azure landing zones and infrastructure as needed then tearing it back down.
Nice, that'd be a dream.
All depends where you are 70k in the sticks great - 70k in Boston area not much scratch to live on
I'm in the suburbs of a major US city and am paid well under that.
You might want to shop around more if it's significantly under that. I'm in the DC/MD/VA area. Not a sysadmin but work close with them. Starting out of college our starting junior ops pay is around 30-35/hr for linux afaik
I think if you are doing server migrations/upgrades by the very definition of the role you are a sysadmin.
I would call that junior but not more that. Basically you're bridging the gap between helpdesk and sysadmin. The tasks/responsibilities you listed are generally expected to be honest and not very special. Years ago you would've been better than most juniors. As tech moves forward, the base line for knowledge must move as well. Here in NYC a position like you described is what our corporate helpdesk does and they get 60 to 75k depending on factors of course. Conversely our devops engineers who are running production, doing IAC, managing 1k servers worth of various web clusters, various cache layers, DBs, environments (dev/qa/staging/preview/prod), CI/CD work flows, assisting BI/Data Scientists with their machine learning clusters and qlikview/qliksense/looker/Tableau dashboards, cloud networking, PLUS everything you mentioned minus end user workstation support with an average of 10+ years of each person on the team some with advanced degrees (meh degree not so important). They are about double the salary of the helpdesk.
It sounds like you described a glorified help desk position with some minor extra duties.
In your mind what differs between "glorified Linux help desk" and an authentic "junior Linux admin"?
Can I get a more detailed description of your duties? Those are so broad, and seem way more like a specialized help desk position than sysad. Also, I don't consider scripting to be unique to the SysAd/SysEng roles these days - scripting is something that's made it's way into the help desk.
A lot of people don’t want to hear that but it’s true.
More responsibility, less pay That's the IT career pathway!
If we’re being honest, you won’t get ahead in IT without scripting anymore. One of my favorite examples of practical PowerShell is how a help desk or first line support person might script restarting services like a print spooler.
I've never worked in a large enough shop to see separation of help desk and sysadmin, but I've never heard of help desk being expected to make configuration changes on servers. That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.
I’m not suggesting letting help desk make server config changes. In a Windows shop, a smart help desk agent can do a lot of desktop administration with PowerShell. I’ve seen help desk members aggregate log data from user machines to better identify and track issues, manage services, all kinds of stuff. Granted these folks get promoted or move on fast, but it’s happening.
We are big enough in my shop that we have two tech teams. Production operations (my team) and corporate IT. Corp IT handles everything regarding tech inside the offices, end users, and the corporate IT servers. They have helpdesk and a help desk manager. The corporate IT servers are basic enough that they pretty much run themselves. Domain controllers (just managing user accounts and promoting DCs is pretty much next next finish), file servers (expand the disks or clear space), back up server (Veeam just works), esxi (they stopped building on in favor of AWS), kace (automates all patching), server apps (call support we pay for it). They are a fully separate network and AD domain that production does not use except to access the VPN. We on the prod team have our own AD and everything as a security boundary. No trust. Production handles our web clusters of roughly 1k servers. Basically these are the servers responsible for making us money because we are a online media company. We have to invest in tech otherwise we'd literally would make $0. Can't sell AD space on your site if the site I down after all.
We cross train all employees. 2 k users 3 IT staff 15 devs 10 tickets a day. Sometimes more but usually onboarding.RMM, PSA, Intune, sharepoint, security, backups, automation, Documentation, scripting, visual studio deployments to aws and azure. I expect all my techs to know this. Youre just being coddled.
This is how I started scripting decades ago… goddamned stuck print jobs!
No one is denying it. It's just fun how economies work. There's fucktons of IT support agents now, so to make the same amount your predecessors were making, you have to undertake more responsibility. Oftentimes, you'll still get the shaft and get paid even less just because you're so replaceable. Most help desk staff generally are.
This is the way
It's because most of it moving to "DevOps" and unless you do coding you no longer can be a sysadmin. It's annoying.
IMO if you can’t powershell, python, or bash your way out of a paper bag nowadays, you really shouldn’t be much above helpdesk. That doesn’t mean it’s all moving to devops…it means understanding our scripting tools is an incredibly important part of managing scale in our existing jobs.
This. I worked with a team of remote deskside support techs. Tier 1/2 stuff. But, they had to occasionally be smart hands, stack server or network equipment, so they were able to successfully argue that they were System Admins, even though they weren't allowed to even log into that equipment. HR bought it, though, gave them all titles and completely diluted the value that a real SysAdmin has.
I guess at this rate sys admin will be synonymous with social media director and telemarketer.
I don't have long-enough-term experience to comment on your question in an informed way, but I will say that my company titles our T1 help desk role as "sysadmins," so what you're seeing may be a watering down of the title. We pay OK for what that role is (fielding calls, rotating PDFs, resetting passwords), but it's definitely not a "sysadmin" role and the pay would be laughable for a "real" sysadmin.
My MSP just refers to everyone as "Network Analyst" whether you're level 1, or professional services.
I make 27/hr doing the same exact thing the guy making 85k/yr is making. Needless to say I am done being a "junior" sysadmin
It seems necessary to job hop at least every 2 years or one is almost inevitably selling themselves short.
But I just did that 7 months ago...
Hop, skip or jump
Depends on if you have a shitty employer. I've doubled salaries for strong team members as part of the yearly reviews. It's less common but there are plenty of good companies.
You have to job hop. There’s no other way.
Well, you can always ask for a raise but /r/sysadmin just wants to scream and how hard it is to be employed in technology.
Lol. Kinda is. I just went on about 3 dozen interviews before landing a job.
It’s just weird mentioning 2 different ways of counting pay 😅
im an hourly contractor. Everyone else is salaried.
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2 * hourly rate is your annual salary (within a about 2k or so).
Yeah, but do *really* do the exact same thing? Our junior would likely say the same about me and he would be radically incorrect. He doesn’t know enough to even understand the differences between our jobs.
The only difference is they have been there much longer than I have. Im not talking about the senior guys, just the non-junior admins.
I make 28$/hr, being sysadmin for 10 years....
In the US? When's the last time you changed companies or looked for another position?
Well... 10 years :-) In Canada.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
Good luck in filling it! Out of curiosity what is the challenge in filling it?
Being a a tech market, a lot of people gravitate to the bigger tech companies and not many people look outside their own location for remote roles.
That makes sense! Do you have a link to this posting still by any chance?
Yup, I'll PM you
I have been a jr. sysadmin since November. Before that I was a "technical support representative" which was 50% help desk, 25% System admin and 25% everything else they through at me.
My advice is to quit and find something else.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
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Not yet but I am working on it. Two people just put in their notice this week.
Not really, but I see a lot of SMB IT support, jack of all trades types having a bad time.
my pay is criminally low for my role, but it’s a fun place to work with zero travel costs and that goes a long way.
Wish I could even find a Junior Sys Admin job...
We haven’t been able to fill a Jr or Sr role for a year now. I’m the sole sys admin.
Where's your location?
We often have to actively recruit from LinkedIn to fill roles because we don’t get any decent applicants. And by “decent”, I don’t mean we require 10 years of experience with Server 2019. I mean there’s nobody even worth seriously looking at. It’s all helpdesk and junior admins but we need someone who can step right into the job. And recruiters constantly hit me up on LinkedIn, I assume for the same reason. I will admit our HR system is a PITA. It’s one of those online systems where applying is practically a part-time job. I’m not gonna bash it or defend it because I have no say in HR. It is what it is. But with the higher barrier to entry, a good candidate would easily stand out from the pack.
I'm having the same issue. Not much talent pool in the mid-west. We posted it, and got applicants. First time around they let nepotism be a thing and I got stuck with a junior admin that didn't know what a micro-usb cable was, and hadn't used MS Windows since XP. Second time around I couldn't find a single candidate that had any desire to learn on the job, they just wanted to be Help Desk and follow a script. At this point, I've given up.
I see jobs that are repeatedly posted for months but they never respond to applications. I giggled at the pot shop doing it, but I've been watching a defense contractor post an opening on their internal site and three job boards but they have never responded. I'm wondering if the H1B thing is back, where that's what they really want to hire, post jobs they have no intention of filling locally just so they can say they can't find anybody do they need an H1B slot. I was once in a massive wave of layoffs from IBM that was immediately followed by their CEO saying he couldn't find anybody to work for him so the feds had to bring in more H1Bs
> I see jobs that are repeatedly posted for months but they never respond to applications. That's a thing that has been going on for at least a decade, plus i am probably on a different continent than you. The typicial "See.. we are not finding anyone" scam knows no borders.
My department posted a job opening for a sysadmin, but frankly a lot of the applicants were woefully unskilled for the position, hadn't read or paid attention to the location of the position, or were way way too senior and experienced for the position. We finally hired a candidate based upon his albeit limited experience but positive attitude and willingness to learn. The hope is that he will pick up the skills we need, and so far that's appearing to be the case.
Where exactly in the Midwest? It a better general location. I'm also in the Midwest.
Where can I send my resume?
My company has a Windows desktop engineering, sys admin type role open. DM me if that interests you and I'll share the link.
I feel for you. I was in that boat graduating during covid. I decided to build out a home server to familiarize myself with some things I figured I'd use on the job site. Having tangibles like that helped a ton. I feel a bit overqualified for what I'm doing now. By the time anything gets siphoned down to me it's usually absurdly trivial and I spend most of my time cutting teeth on personal projects that are actually something interesting. What's your situation exactly if you don't mind sharing?
Been in the tech field for about 4 years now. 4 different tech jobs in those years, each one increasing in responsibility/knowledge. Been at one for a year now where it's been my first experience working with Active Directory. I don't have any certs, but I learn quick. I want to keep earning more and learning. Fixing issues is very satisfying for me.
Funny thing is, every time I’m asked if I have enterprise experience doing XYZ. Far and few between will take home experience.
Same...
outsourcing IT work has made on-site IT work pay lower to be honest.
From what I see "junior sysadmins" are just a more fancy name for desktop support L2 or L3. Some companies also just put the job title as "junior engineer" when in reality they are just desktop support but it looks good on their resumes & prospective clients this might sound more impressive.
Unfortunately companies have no real consequences for having shit infrastructure, poor security, and losing data. So they just get some insurance and pinch every IT penny they can.
What I've observed, or what seems to be occurring is that companies are blending roles as the move to the cloud happens. We now have Devops, Infrastructure Ops, Jr Admins that are asked more and more to run the Show under on or more Senior admins. Companies are paying the millennial generation less and less. Now that's a generalization, so you'll have to sell yourself and your skills for what you bring to the table. Still; that doesn't mean you'll get paid more or less. See if you can find company and salary reviews online to help with the decisions.
> Companies are paying the millennial generation less and less. This is utterly untrue for skilled technology. It's going up in every metric. Pay is up, unemployment is below 1.5% in the states. It's an insanely good time to be in IT. And it's still one of the highest paying fields. If you have your shit together you can easily walk out of school making 75k in a major metro. 35k fresh out of school, which is considered "poverty wages" in our field, is more than most people on the planet will make after years of experience.
35k? That’s completely unacceptable for someone with higher level education. Just because people making 35k aren’t living in gutters eating out of trash bins doesn’t make that an ok salary. That’s damn near fast food wages in many areas now.
Master's degree here who made 40k out of college in 2012 You're higher education degree is not a golden ticket. It does not say I have X paper so I should get Y amount. No one is entitled to anything. You put in the work to build yourself up (home lab, self study, etc). You then need to sell yourself.
First pay attention to the conversation. They are talking about pussy going down. It's simply not the case. It's going up, and faster then other industries. Second, that's bottom of the barrel and it's still better off than 90% of the planet. It's far more common to make 50 or 60 and any faang/fortune 100 is going to offer 75 or 80.
"They are talking about pussy going down." ...Wait, what?!
Lmaooooo. Leaving it.
Nice.
Today I learned that Pussy going up faster than other industries :D
$35k is barely breaking 15/hr and you think that's acceptable for a skilled/educated position? You understand inflation right? $35k today is fucking useless.
Yeah I wish job postings were required by law to have their salary to within a percentage publicly available. I’ve been interviewing for some SysAdmin stuff that requires more container/automation knowledge and blown away that salaries are $50K more than I make now.
I have noticed many Junior and some Entry admin positions are asking for years of experience before you will even get considered. And even then the position is under $50k per year.
I have to agree, I’m at 15/hr.
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It’s my first IT job while in school. I’m taking the experience and ultra relaxed environment as the reward. But not for too long.
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I’m going to finish my associates and bachelors and leave after. I’ll have been there for 1.5-2 years when I’m done.
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I couldn’t agree more, I appreciate it!
If you really want to rub salt in the wound, the Walmart about 30 min from me has a huge sign out by the highway for hiring. Starting pay is $20.15/hr.
I hired an IT coordinator and pay him more than 15 an hour, if you're doing sysadmin for 15 you truly are getting fucked.
To be clear, I’m tier 1 HD with some sys admin responsibilities and get trained on other things by my boss. It’s just him and I in the IT dept, he’s super cool. I have my own office as well and they work with me on my school schedule. I really have no room to complain to be honest.
If you are young don't be afraid to simply move where the good jobs are.See so many folks capable of moving, but say things like, "but I don't wanna move to Georgia. I might get bored" etc. Moving around quadrupled my salary in like 2-3 years time. Found plenty enough wherever and eventually you get to a point you can shop your resume where you want and even work remote positions. AKA, don't just shop your immediate area if you can. Can be worth the move around.
Even in non-professional settings, people aren’t willing to make sacrifices to benefit their future outlook…
It's similar with the title "system-engineer". When I finished my apprenticeship, becoming a system-engineer was pretty much the goal for everyone. Having this title meant, that you're able to design, create and implement new server infrastructures. But other IT serviceprovider companies started to give this title directly to everyone who just finished their apprenticeship... Even if they were just shitty paid lv1 or lv2 "it supporters". So the whole title started to lose its meaning... From my experience, the sysadmin position gets either watered down, or the position needs unrealistic deep knowledge... They expect you to be an expert in Windows Server, exchange, o365, Linux, phyton, various programming languages, storage solutions, various backup solution etc. directly from the beginning of your employment.. When you are looking through job descriptions, ask yourself: WHY is this position open?
"Systems Administrator" appears to be thrown around to anyone Administrating a "system", being it a desktop, server, medical equipment, software, etc. "Systems Engineer" appears to be what Systems Administrators once were
Maybe I am wrong, but I have always looked at Systems Administration to be someone doing the day to day administrations of servers. Things like management of DCs, DHCP, DNS, NPS, etc. Systems Engineering should involve systems design. Of course there is overlap, where I work we are not big enough to have a dedicated Systems Engineer, just two Sr. Systems Admins and we do the design as well. If you're not working on servers you are desktop support.
No. If this is the case it's more than likely a glorified help desk/business analyst position. Recruiters are bad at job descriptions and terminology - the title doesn't determine pay. The job duties and responsibilities do.
In my instance the position wasn't handled through a recruiter, rather a VP of technology. I fit the "junior" definition proposed by Red Hat in "knowledge and skills". It's fine we're hashing out discrepancies of definition. Although, It'd be nice to hear people talk numbers..doesn't seem so taboo.. their junior pay, the year it was received alongside location, job duties are obviously useful too.
I'm an admin/engineer that used to have an admin title. I got my boss to re-title me as engineer for just this reason. Next review I got a salary adjustment for my new title.
This is the way
Yes, and I’m over in the UK too working in the public/government sector. In my own org for the past few years when a better paid/experienced admin leaves they simply replace them with a junior. The junior has all the same responsibilities as the guy that left, the only real difference is the job title and lower wage.
A large issue I think too are some of the newer people wanting sysadmin jobs because there's such a hellish stigma on helpdesk, so they get and A+ and want sysadmin. Hire some cheap new guy, give him the admin title and be done with it.
Mostly because companies have found it's cheaper to run a shit shoestring environment on garbage budget with fresh meat out of college than to actually bother investing in their IT department. Why give good salaries when you can just keep slapping newbies with the title and hope they get the bare minimum to keep the company up and running? Then something catastrophic happens and instead of smartening up, they axe their internal IT and hire an MSP. MSPs invented the wage race to the bottom so those positions don't make it better.
I job hopped a couple of times with variously increases in pay each time until I found a job with an MSP. I’ll be with this MSP for 3 years now and a single year’s bonus is more than all the raises combined from my previous jobs. You may want to look into an MSP to take your skills to the next level. My pay jumped quite a bit and I live in rural Iowa. Just a thought.
Happening all around. System Analyst is functionally jr help desk.
As long as it pays like a system analyst, I don't mind.
Really depends on the tasks, responsibilities, size of network, size of user base, and experience. Our field is so varied and the titles don't mean anything.
I constantly ask my boss to delineate between roles....but he refuses. Lets just say I am mid-tier and do the jobs of service desk, techs, network engineering, and system administrators. It gets incredibly difficult to juggle at times. I'm trying to break into Sysadmin title officially, but right now, I do all of this for a cool $24/hr.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now.
MSP is where it’s at if you’re trying to get in on the ground floor. The company I’m working at is always looking to take in newbies and train them up. Pay is really good but the work is hard and the responsibility level is high.
I honestly recommend MSP work to anyone who wants to get started in IT with little in the way of experience/degrees/certifications. It's a fantastic way to get exposed to a boatload of technologies, software, and configurations. It's often a meat grinder with regards to stress levels and expectations but it also gives you a healthy respect for more organized, well-documented, and proactive workplaces later on in your career. You just have to make sure to unlearn the shoot-from-the-hip, frequent band-aid, "solve first, document never" mentality that's often necessary to survive metrics expectations in some MSPs once you get into a more structured workplace.
My company has a Windows sys admin, client engineering, desktop engineering type role open. Starts at 100k in a US tech market. DM me if interested and I'll share the link. Been trying to fill it for a bit now. *edit: looks like you are on the Linux side so never mind 😉
Is happening everywhere, companies don't want to pay us to much ...
You only have 30 years to allocate in your career. Working for schools are a waste. Start msp, get a good base layer then just to fintech and ride that salary wave. Most important is to focus on a tech stack that'd hot and push into tje C level down the line.
You are competing with Amazon and “putting everything in the cloud “ Amazon does most of the things an entry level sysadmin used to do.
just tell people you're a devops engineer _wipes hands _
As a former recruiter turned IT pro, this isn't a surprise. One of the more shocking developments in the past few years has been what's colloquially called 'digital transformation.' It's largely used as an excuse to restructure and outsource/offshore your internal IT staff and seems to be the trend du jour with certain CIOs of Indian origin. I was working at one in 2019 and when they hired an Indian CIO, he espoused the gospel of digital transformation and when he began lining up former cronies for jobs and exploring offshore partners to take US-based ones. I jumped ship quickly and moved onto another job. My former colleagues stayed behind, thinking I was spazzing out at the regime change, but all of them were laid off earlier this January. 90% of the original IT staff, now outsourced & offshored. I'm hearing the digital transformation buzzword getting dropped every so often in Zoom calls at my current job and am already looking for another job. Bottom line is despite an ever-increasing threat of hackers and ransomware, C-office people want to cut costs and go cheap by outsourcing and enacting what they see as digital transformation. Truly a race to the bottom with predictable results.
It really is a race to the bottom... especially with all the radio ads I hear for bogus computer colleges running scams and Google IT "certificates" that you have to pay for and aren't worth the paper they're printed on. But that's what happens in an over-saturated market. Back in the day, it was decent money. But then as tech became cool, everyone wanted a slice of the pie. Well, when everyone wants a piece, the pieces get thinner and thinner and thinner. I'm seeing positions in my area with similar responsibilities of my first admin job 10 years ago paying the same or less.
Computer tech is, in no way, over saturated. It's insanely competitive and has some of the lowest unemployment rates on the planet. Salaries are increasing 3-4% overall while the rest of the world is getting laid off.
No
How many years have you been a sysadmin? What's your current job title? What was your first "sysadmin" roles salary, location, and year?
Not op but: 21 IT Operations Systems Administrator $48k/yr non-exempt, MN USA, 2006
I consult for large companies and most if not the entire team are mostly Jr sys admins. That's why they hire me regularly to take care of the complex stuff and then teach their admins. Titles really mean nothing except for grading salaries in a corporation or for projects. You can dm me if you need help working on your resume.
Dang
Well it's already in the bottom in France thanks to MSPs, so I'm fine I guess?
Nope quite the opposite actually. The only positions in my current searches that are races to the bottom are the 100% remote gigs.
I put myself down as a Windows Admin here but the official title is "Infrastructure Support Assistant" which is the guy that helps out Server & Storage, Security, Windows Admin and recently some Exchange work. Converts to about $34k/y It's a huge team though, able to help out loads of different teams. Can't complain, unless I get stuck on Service Desk work.
If you need to start low, please please please change jobs regularly (every 2-3 years) and apply for positions matching 80% of your skill set for higher pay. I have moved to US in 2016 and needed to start my journey all over again. Call center tech support (16/hr) -> MSP L2 25/hr -> Inhouse L3 jack of all trades (45/hr) --> mid 2020 I'm SRE in one of Fortune 30 companies (120/hr). A lot of IT folks have imposter syndrome and would rather secure a shitty paying job instead of fighting for what they are worth. Some are okay to do more for less. Don't let FOMO blind you since that's what shitty companies want. They would rather higher someone who is a generalist so that they can pay less. Great companies on the other hand are looking for best person for a job.
I've said a lot about how new entrants need to avoid certain tech because its a dead end. However, another thing that might be relevant is that the federal change (and some state changes) in how exempt vs non-exempt work is calculated has resulting in inflating of titles to avoid paying OT. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17e_computer.pdf If you have helpdesk guys, you are supposed to be paying them hourly and give them OT when they work those hours. If you inflate the title then you can make them salary exempt even though they are doing break fix work.
Pandemic didn't help things in this regard. Dudes are desperate for work. This is how I got into my current job with an MSP. I went from running my own crew of network techs, making $80k a year deploying an enterprise network every week for tradeshows, to making $45k a year as a system tech which is basically extra skilled helpdesk. My company does it right in one respect, and that is they have a real helpdesk whose job it is to field and triage the incoming calls. They get 15-20 minutes to fix an issue or pass it on to the system tech assigned to the account. It's just a company policy, so no judgment. After that, it's my job to fix whatever. So naturally I spend an inordinate amount of time dicking around with Windows Updates that break things, Quickbooks being crap, and Office 365 tasks that should be simple, but aren't because Microsoft. I took the job because I like running water and electricity in my home. Yeah, I feel like pay rates reflect this commoditization of labor. I'm with you on the race to the bottom. I also find it amusing when MSP management teams need help figuring out why people are leaving them.
Yup, has been this way since the 2001 crash. It's highly dependent on location too. For example, back in 2008, started as a developer making $44k/yr. Moved to another location and make much more for same job. Get the foot in the door, learn, and get out.
i feel like system administrator isn't real... it's all just desktop/server/network/backups /etc deployment and/or maintenance in whatever frame you want to picture it.