What BASH and SSH Mean for Windows Systems Administration
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Pretty much every job conversation that I have with people who are unhappy with their current situation comes down to the same factor... location. I talk to people about this all the time and almost never is "you learned the wrong technologies a factor." Oh sure, I might nudge them to pick up PowerShell or whatever, but that is not what holds them back. It's that they are in a location where no one is hiring. Every time.
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Here is a limited example....
If you want to work in systems administration in the US, once you cross the $150K mark, there are just four markets that really hire in the US (other than one off jobs) and those are NYC, NOVA, Chicago and San Fran.
However, NYC, NOVA and Chicago mostly hire only traditional system admins and San Fran almost exclusively DevOps. But you can't get into DevOps without a lot of non-DevOps experience.
There is almost no path from wherever you start to DevOps within San Fran. For any reasonable option, you have to do your early career elsewhere and then move there. And that's why I've never met a person who did their IT career in that market, even though it is insanely large.
Nearly all markets, outside of NYC and London, have huge gaps in the skill sets that they have in their market. Often these gaps are in the middle of the "ladder" or at the "top". SF is weird that it is at the bottom. To get around these gaps either you have to be insanely lucky or you have to move to a place that doesn't have the gap that you are ready to fill.
IT suffers a lot from this.
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OK, so you're not talking about most people. Most people don't earn 6 figure salaries by the time they're 30. Most people don't move that much.
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Studies show that careers do best (people are happiest, learn the most, advance the quickest, gain experience faster and get paid far more) when there is a high density of good people doing the same thing in the same region. They feed off of each other. This is why VCs and developers all congregate in the valley, it's the network effect.
IT is the same. If you work in a lone location without peers you tend to, just like any career, not excel like you do if you have a support network.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
OK, so you're not talking about most people. Most people don't earn 6 figure salaries by the time they're 30. Most people don't move that much.
I specifically said not most people, just most IT career people. People who have careers mostly move (or get to NYC/London and then don't have to) relatively often or accept that they are letting their careers slow or stop. A few get lucky, but it seems to be pretty few.
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Not that moving to London will necessarily help that much. If only it were that easy. Do an IT job search for jobs over $150k - I bet there won't be much. How many wage earning, non-managerial, IT people earn over $150k, either in London, NY, or anywhere?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Not that moving to London will necessarily help that much. If only it were that easy. Do an IT job search for jobs over $150k -
Well, I know that my circles are skewed, especially in London as I was the cheap offsite labour for London for a long time, but 200K quid, not dollars, I might now 500 or so non-management IT people getting that in London personally.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I specifically said not most people, just most IT career people.
Wait, just because I don't earn over $150k I don't have a career? What do I have?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
How many wage earning, non-managerial, IT people earn over $150k, either in London, NY, or anywhere?
More than you think. I know places paying $175K that can't get people in at all anymore because they are so far below market.
System Admin in San Fran is a $200K job and people who have worked for me have hit $300K there. NYC, $200K isn't uncommon. Chicago I've interviewed many places for $300K, and that's a cheap market. Rural Switzerland and London I've interviewed in the $300K range.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I specifically said not most people, just most IT career people.
Wait, just because I don't earn over $150k I don't have a career? What do I have?
Where did I say that? I just said that IT people tend to move for career options. But not those in London.
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So you weren't even included in the "people who have stagnated from being unwilling to move."
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I know that $150K in IT is not common, it is also not the rare thing that people imagine. Those jobs are out there and plentiful. And at $150K you are still in a pretty core group of people, not a crazy fringe of high pay. Going over $300K you are pretty much into an elite pay category and getting above $500K without management is super rare, but certainly out there and you can go looking for it.
Highest that I know of is $1.2M USD for non management and $3.2M USD for pure IT but management (e.g. not a mixed role.) I'm sure there are those much higher, but don't know any for sure.
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Development pay is similar to IT pay. If you are willing to move, getting to $200K isn't that hard. And I've seen the same $1.2M USB upper bound that I've run into. So I think that they track pretty closely.
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How do you find these jobs, because I've never seen them advertised anywhere?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
How do you find these jobs, because I've never seen them advertised anywhere?
I never have either, so I doubt that they are. I've worked as a hiring manager on jobs like that and we did not advertise anywhere that I have been involved.
These jobs, in my experience, work through head hunters (not standard recruiters.) They work from a pool of known people who have gotten to a certain level. At some point in your career you get introduced to head hunters and from there the pool of people that you compete with and the pool of jobs you go after are totally different. I don't think much of anyone at that level advertises as ... where would they advertise?
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Well, I know that there are only 236,000 people in the whole of the UK who earn more than 150k. That's in all jobs in all parts of the country. So if we only look at IT jobs in London, there can't be more than 10,000. Of those, I'd be surprised if there are more than 5,000 who aren't in management. I'd guestimate it's more like 1000. So for you to know over 500 of them personally means you must be pretty in-the-know.
It's certainly not the norm.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Well, I know that there are only 236,000 people in the whole of the UK who earn more than 150k.
What? That's crazy!!
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'd guestimate it's more like 1000. So for you to know over 500 of them personally means you must be pretty in-the-know.
It's certainly not the norm.
Apparently! That's so weird. Of course, I know tons and tons of people in two of those three really high towers down by the water....
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
really? You think most people in this world are willing to relocate, but somehow IT personal aren't? Why would that be?
You asked about careers, I thought. Most people just worked low end jobs wherever they are. Whatever is available. Unskilled work, not in a career.
You inferred careers. But I suppose I'll give ya that one - still most people I know haven't moved.
But... you live in a place where people would only move FROM not TO, right? So that should be expected.
that's not entirely true - I've heard of people locating in for tech jobs at the crappy company I talk about from time to time.
but again, way less than once a year - but then again, I'm not really connected in this city.Omaha is a town of 1 million, we barely register on the US map for cities.
We are definitely not a Move To location by default.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Vibrant meaning getting to do awesome IT work, being taken seriously, making respectable money, continuously being able to move forward in your career, getting creative and business challenges.... all the things people understand with a vibrant career in any field.
What percentage of the population are we talking about that have these vibrant careers? 1%, maybe 10% at most? These things sound more like the 1%'ers of wealthy people. Sure they exist, and you can certainly try to be one of them, but it's really more like winning life's lottery to be one of them.
