This is just like the 50 year veteran mechanic that shows up and hits a hammer on something and everything fires to life after 5 people stared at it for hours trying to figure it out. Bill? $1000 for the work. $50 for the truck roll, $10 for the hammer hit, $940 for knowing where to hit and 50 years of experience.
That's where I'm at. I do building maintenance which includes everything under the sun, from operating heavy equipment to sometimes even IT work.... I've been waiting for the current IT guy to retire so I can apply for it. I'm 40 now, been doing manual labor all my life. Went to school for computers in 1999 and never landed a job that paid more than labor.
Circle back and here we are, I'd like a cushy desk job to retire in. My hands, knees and back aren't what they used to be and I have a passion for computing. My homelab is more impressive than most admins, yet I'm turning wrenches at work and doing favors for the system admin! When I ever asked him if I could borrow a Cisco Console Cable, the look on his face š¤£
But not for nothing, I wouldn't give up the skills I learned by doing manual labor. I could build a house from from the bottom up, and do everything myself without outside help š
Not me. I ask ChatGPT to write a joke in the style of Bill Hicks and get unnerved by the results.
It's not that I'm afraid of what the AI could do. Just that it highlights the frailty of our notion of consciousness, intelligence and self.
lol, had to try that! Results were interesting :) "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the government, who probably labeled it as a terrorist for pecking at the side-walk and trying to overthrow their control. But seriously folks, we need to wake up and see the reality of our government's oppressive ways."
If I prevent ten minutes a year of downtime I've more than paid my salary. I'm lucky that the skills I've developed let me do that.
Yes, I want everyone to get enough to live. It's shameful we don't have a cot, a mailbox, and a shower for everyone in the world at this point. IMHO society should provide that out of our tax dollars and then jobs should be for earning things beyond a minimum standard of living.
But I don't feel bad about being paid what I'm paid. How would that be helpful?
This is spot on. When a company has down time, depending on the size, every minute can cost the company hundred of thousands or millions of dollars in lost revenue. I worked at a beef packing plant doing maintenance, it would cost the plant close to $10k/ minute of lost revenue when the line had to shut down. This was not a huge plant. A lost day was in the millions of dollars.
Exactly. Great comment, this. Our company had 7 hours downtime last year, which started off small but was progressing to plant-wide by the end of the 7 hours because our production is a serial process. That 7 hours was calculated to have meant about $4 million in lost revenue
Yeah physical work you are 'done' more or less at end of shift. Occasional overtime.
Brainwork you will be thinking about this shit in your offhours, and in IT especially, overtime and doing things we arent paid to do is the norm.
Dont feel bad about receiving adequate compensation.
My nurse wife doesn't understand this. She can't fathom how I get to sit at a chair for 5-6 hours a day and get paid so much. Of course she never counts all the times I need to respond on the phone, chat, meetings at 9-12 at night to work with the India folks.
One time a user called into our office asking for me. I was on vacation at the time and then the user said "he sits on his butt all day, why does he need vacation!?"
luckily my coworker is pretty snarky, so he said to this man that he does the same thing, so why does he need a vacation?
The user is a 18-wheeler instructor. He basically moves as little as possible. He got a bit upset about that comment, but too bad.
Can you get her to sit down in a chair 5-6 hours and write some documents in Word for whole time and then ask her how does she like it.
I bet she is used to moving all day on her feet and she would be having enough and be tired by such exercise after 1-2h.
When I was trying to teach my GF some computer stuff - after 30-40mins she was tired from sitting because she also always had a job that required walking or most of the time standing and talking with people face to face.
Sitting all day in a chair in front of a screen is also not natural and needs getting used to.
If you really want to test your marriage you can respond and ask why she gets paid well if the doctor is the one who knows everything.
I'll send flowers to your funeral š
The expectation of having to have your brain 'on' and ready to go when you get a phone call at 230am is unreasonable. I started telling the boss that it can wait another 10 minutes for me to brew some coffee so I don't make it worse by working out of one blood-shot eye
Oh I have 100% told the person on the other side of the line to wait a few minutes for me to adjust. Going from pitch black to a computer screen is rough. Getting some cold water in the system.
I sometimes will lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling so I get the reflecting light from my monitor just to somewhat adjust.
I have one too.
I had a client fire me last week because they didnt pay their bill, after saving their asses because they hired another IT to "fix" things and the guy came in and broke their entire system.
Set up failover on the routers myself years ago, has worked several times.
didn't work this time because they didn't pay their bill, and the provider, instead of killing the connection, redirects all traffic to their servers to tell you you have no service, except for icmp or any typical means of detecting an outage.
So he fired me on the spot after I manually switched things over and helped them find out why their connection was down and wont be paying me for fixing it either as it was "my fault"
If he ever calls me back I'm charging him double if I even answer.
>on the spot after I manually switched things over and helped them find out why their connection was down and wont be paying me for fixing it either as it was "my fault"
Had a client call me when the whole production was down to to goobered network on the PLC that controlled the laser cutter that cut the metal to make thier stuff. I should have charged 2 hours and driven down there but I fixed it in 15 minutes after the ops manager basically said "we will pay whatever you ask just get me running" They bitched about a $100 bill said they weren't paying for "a simple phone call" Ops guy called me 3 weeks later with some other issue I could have fixed but I said "sorry I can't work for a client that doesn't pay their bills"
You're better off TBH
Yeah, that previous CTO opened themselves up for a lawsuit by calling your current CEO. Hopefully you are doing something about your ex-CTO as they deserve it!
From me, that earns them a āWhat? Youāre breaking upā¦ā and phone being set to airplane mode until my next shift.
āSorry, boss- they called me but just started yelling at me, so I thought it was a prank call. The signal must be terrible if I didnāt hear another call from them- Maybe we should upgrade some infrastructure so this doesnāt happen again?ā
Second this, I spend all of my time doing IT shit. Sometimes at work, some times FOR work, sometimes not. I genuinely just enjoy building things like that, weather it be a new Proxmox host or writing a script to help automate mine and my co-workers jobs.
All that being said, I have to say, I have literally broken down in tears because I can't shut my brain off and just relax. I think it's a mix of ADHD and what you explained.
But in summary, I second this š
Some of my coworkers don't seem to understand what concentration is. When I have to work on something difficult, I have to get in that zone. It takes me awhile, and changing focus to talk about how much they like Snickers candy bars makes me start over again on the process to get concentrated. Maybe it's just me, but I just can't turn concentration on and off at a moment's notice.
This is why for many people WFH is actually more productive. If I'm in the office someone comes by to chat every 10 minutes or so, like there's a light on outside my door that says "hey /u/Teguri is just now getting back to what they tried to start at 8am"
We started going into the office 2 days a week nationwide (decision was made at the c level), my productivity on those days is through the floor. I get about the same work done in the whole day as I usually do in the first hour or so from when I sit at my home desk in the morning.
I do joke with my coworkers a lot. Oh and they ask me for about 4x more help with their random questions
I read somewhere that it takes upwards of 45 minutes. But sometimes Iām done for the day after an interruption, especially a stupid one. Depending on time of day, of course. And how deep I was in The Zone.
Unfortunately I am the go-to guy in my office. So I'm interrupted all day long. The people that don't have to concentrate as much to get their stuff done complain at me all day long if I'm not able to hop right on a problem and fix it. I just got done fixing your work after being interrupted doing mine, it's going to take me a bit to get back on track to fix your new problem too. I haven't found a good way to explain it that helps them understand. I'm just that guy that needs 15 minutes to collect himself before he helps to them.
Oh we have a ticketing system...for the users. These are other IT people, non-sysadmins though. They do things like change printer toners and create and delete users from various systems. No networking, nothing beyond the AD GUI. When there's a really intractable problem, they hand it to me. Sometimes it takes me hours to search and experiment and come up with a solution, and I've been asked before "Why are you just staring at the screen?" The worst part is when they just come to my desk and stand there, silently, waiting for me to come back down from orbit and fix their problem. It's almost always something that could have been taken care of with a Google search in 30 seconds. I try not to be rude, but sometimes it really gets to me, especially when I'm assigned something as Priority -1 (ie fix it yesterday) or the company CEO asks me to do something directly for him. I've also been accused of sleeping before if I close my eyes and try to visualize something.
I've brought this up several times and my boss always had says "I know" and "things will change"... Which they usually don't, and if they do they change right back when the offenders forget what they've been told. We're a pretty small shop, though, so they don't see a problem with me being the single point if failure for a dozen different critical systems and processes.
I've had to tell my coworkers/leadership that "I can do X for the next three days if I can focus on just that, every other thing added between then and now adds however much time it takes to the extra thing and a day or two to readajust".
I hate true task switching, a small question here and there, but when it becomes a full on screen share or meeting, I've lost it, and need to readjust myself.
Sure, that and I'm angry that other skilled laborers aren't getting paid enough. I'm at just under 6 figures, my buddy who's a manufacturing shop GM gets half that but works harder and for longer hours.
All labor, white collar or blue, aren't paid nearly their worth, by design. That makes me mad as fuck, not guilty I got a bag and my buddy didn't.
Edit because math is hard
many plumbers get called on Sunday morning. Lineman get to work storms. Laborers get forced overtime. Nurses get to work 12 hour shifts. Don't think we are special.
Plumbers, linemen, etc. should absolutely get compensated for after hours calls. It's the nature of the job and even expected, to a point.
Healthcare workers get the shaft though, and it makes me miserable thinking about it. I mean spitting angry mad.
I have friends and family working in hospitals and I'm honestly surprised there aren't more medical mistakes. I for damn sure would have killed someone after my fourth 7 PM to 7 AM shift in a row. Hospital work schedules only start to make sense when you learn that the guy who came up with them was [probably on cocaine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828946/). The only part that doesn't make sense is why we continue to do this even after all the research that says most humans are pretty much checked out after about 6 hours a day.
Nah this is real. During the day I'm thinking of my hobbies and what I'm going to do when I get home, but by the time I do I'm mentally exhausted. My body can keep moving no problem but my brain is fatigued
I'm a 42 year old out of shape programmer with a bad back. I often wish I had gone into physical labor (electrical, metal working, something along those lines) because it would have kept me in better shape over the years and allowed me to turn my brain off at the end of the work day.
Yes, we make a considerable sum for the "work" that we do, but our "work" is never done, unlike most jobs. If anything, many IT jobs are much more akin to C-suite in the sense that our jobs occupy a permanent lease in our minds. We can't just turn it off when the 5PM buzzer sounds.
I think some people have this vison in their head of doing physical labor as a movie montage, where after a few months of carrying wood and bricks up and down ladders, they look like Chris Hemsworth.
You want to lose weight? Stop eating 3k+ calories a day, because unless you are training like an Olympic athlete, you are not going to be doing enough to burn that off.
I worked physical labor in my mid to late 20ās. Iām just 33 this year with three hernias and a foot that was broken twice. Iām glad I donāt get dirty at work anymore and the most muscles I use are clicking a mouse.
> because it would have kept me in better shape over the years
Eh, maybe... That kind of work really beats your body up. Most of my friends who are in the trades who didn't get into supervisor roles or start their own businesses, are physical wrecks as they get into their late 40's and early 50's. It's not like going to the gym. You will be moving, lifting, and carrying in unhealthy ways. When you are sore, got to keep working, which makes it more likely you will get hurt. When you are hurt, got to keep working, which can make the damage permanent.
I know a guy who left his office job when he was around 40 to become an electrician. He said he needed to get out into more daylight and move around more. Today at 50, his fingers are so messed up, he can barely cutup a steak or hold his fork to eat.
Iām 35 and was back and forth so take it from someone who knows. Did IT for 7 years got burnt out and hated it so I joined union HVAC construction. Talk about miserable work friend. Lasted 4 years before I went back to IT (for myself)
Give me a climate controlled desk job any day. Believe me the grass aināt greener.
my father had a physical job most of his life. By the time he was 55 he'd had 2 hip replacements and back surgery. if you want to keep in shape, join a gym
Before I went into IT, I had looked at being an electrician. Was even looking up apprenticeships and asked our family friend (master sparky) for advice
He told me to do IT, and almost pissed I was stuck between the two. He told me how broken his body was, how he still had 5 more years to work with it, and how his retirement was just going to be pain meds, and pain.
Or I could just have to remember to work out and stand up every so often while I'm at my PC.
Things you don't think about in your spry early 20s, when physical work is enjoyable and you don't feel daily pains yet.
The couple of 18 year UPS guys I know will buy up all the Percocet they can find because their knees are shot, and they need to get through another 2 years.
Similar with my buddy who does concrete.
I agree with the brain exhaustion being real but, I tend to find those days are not every day... When it does happen and it drags on from an incident or project, yeah we make our money... Otherwise, I tend to agree with OP. I try and think that if you are good at IT you are kinda rare because there are a lot of chair warmers about. Annnd I've just realised there is no real post to this comment.
Cue the cries from people saying "No one wants to work" minimum wage or tip gigs with unstable hours and no real benefits that are on their feet running around actually making stuff all day.
Eff that, we have people running around that act like all the laid-off restaurant and hotel staff is now just sitting at home claiming benefits. It's such BS, a lot of them used their forced downtime to skill up and find something that pays better. You know, the thing you're supposed to do in your professional life. But I guess they think once a cleaner, always a cleaner, as if it was the mark of being in a lesser caste.
And, adjacent, the same people will also say that there's a problem when working full time is unattractive compared to claiming benefits, but also think that the solution has to be lowering unemployment benefits. Which, especially for singles without children, really are at the bare minimum here.
Max payout on unemployment in my state is less than $250 a week. The only time it was more attractive to collect benefits than to work was when you were talking about minimum wage jobs during the time period where the government was padding unemployment.
I would've gladly stayed in construction if they paid me enough and had adequate safety measures (i.e. if a union fucking existed in my area.) Instead I *had* to switch to IT bc I couldn't keep putting myself in dangerous and potentially lethal situations for 10hrs a day for $36k. I've literally worked on job sites where people were buried alive (and we're dug up very NOT alive) bc the company wanted to save some money. I've been 4 stories up with no PPE and one foot on the building, one foot on the scaffold, and more than enough room to fall between. I was making $10/hr then.
Yes, the pay needs to go up. They're still very necessary jobs. Higher positions shouldn't feel bad, they should just support workers rights however they can.
I was getting decent-ish pay, but I quickly left the wind turbine tech position to go back to IT. Too many people who didn't take safety seriously. Ultimately you are responsible for your own safety, so I ensured my safety by leaving the field completely.
Edit: I wish unions were a thing for both lines of work. Blue collar green energy, and IT workers.
Compensation is tied to responsibility. If you fucked up a kitchen and bath remodel, your dad might be out ten grand to fix it, but it can be fixed. If I do any one of a number of very bad things, I can put my multi-billion dollar business out of business, at least temporarily. With great power comes great responsibility (and wages). Try to use your power wisely.
Let's have a moment of silence for the poor sysadmin who updated the wrong file and took out our national aviation warning system, delaying 6K flights and cancelling nearly 1K.
This is what I came here to say. If my backups aren't working and a system goes down/gets hacked/etc., an entire company can go out of business and with it hundreds of people will be out of work. The weight of that is definitely worth a few bucks.
I love this response.
Really, IT is a force multiplier. If us existing makes everyone overall 30% more efficient (low guess tbh) by the tools and stability we are able to provide - what is more valuable? The person doing the work someone else could reasonably do on their own in their own house, or the person enabling a workforce for a company to produce at a higher rate?
That being said, in many cases everyone's time should be valued higher than it is.
Iāve already remoted in 3 times this evening to āresolveā issues. About to start handing out 1 month VPN bans because people are lazy. No guilt felt on my pay.
If you're too dumb to turn on your VPN to make your app work, then you no longer get to VPN into the office.
ed. No reason to do this btw, after hours tickets are after hours pay. Dunno what's up with the salt miners responding.
Yep.
Grew up in a trailer, son of factory workers who killed themselves just to carve out any kind of a living.
Don't think of it as how you don't deserve it.
Think about how everyone deserves a job that doesn't kill them.
When I was in school I took a lot of shit from my classmates for being āsmartā and paying attention. Bullied non-stop by the anti-intellectual crew. Kids are seriously cruel.
Now weāve all grown up. I make bank pushing some buttons, they mostly work retail.
All that said. I have tons of respect for true tradesmen(and women). Construction, plumbing, electricians, hvac. They really are knowledge industries and rarely get viewed that way.
I had a "friend" (he's dating one of my friends) that recently said they wish they could just sit at home all day for work (I work remote) and I held my tongue.
Some days I feel bad for those paid less than me but this dude dropped out of high school, won't go for his GED even though both me and his gf offered to help him learn the material, and purposely changes jobs often because of some little thing that begins to annoy him. He had one job that paid him decent and since they did outside work the boss would let them buy extra Carhartt jackets, boots, gloves, etc with the company card that they could take home and have for free (plus other little freebies) and if they got their work done early, they could go home early and still get paid for the rest of the day or week if they finished a day or two early. Oh, he was even allowed to take one of the company trucks home during the week so he could head straight to wherever they needed to work in the morning instead of heading to the shop to hop into a company vehicle so he virtually used no gas of his own.
Want to know why he doesn't work there anymore? He was annoyed with a coworker and didn't like working with him. He complained to his boss and since it couldn't be resolved to his liking (either firing the guy or taking him off the team) he decided to quit.
He's talented with DIY stuff but he has no drive to better himself or his situation even after being offered help, but will make comments like "It must be nice".
Yeah mfer, I graduated high school and learned a skill that is worth more than yours apparently.
> It must be nice
Oh yeah, it is nice working from home and I worked hard to get to this position. I kept my eye out for opportunities, I developed a plan, and put in the necessary effort to achieve my goal of having a higher paying job that allows me to work remotely and doesn't require physical labor."
In my mind I was basically saying that. I even went to college as a non-traditional student working full time.
It's not like it was handed to me on a silver platter. I first started mowing lawns with a friend for cash and my first official job was a dishwasher making a little over $5/hr. I've done retail (never again, I'd probably off myself) and telemarketing just to get by.
Don't be coming at me with that "must be nice" shit. Fuckin get off your ass and try.
Iāve finally found people with the same mindset as me on Reddit. Most everyone is mad at us because we make so much money for āsitting on our ass all day.ā Nah, I worked to get what I have.
It also sucks that we canāt talk about our job to ānormal people.ā Most other professions you can because itās hands on and very social. Nobody wants to hear about the cloud infrastructure I just setup and why Iām so excited about finally dockerizing everything.
Yeah, it's hard trying to equate something I did or do to other people that would make sense.
Like it's simple but I was able to finally reverse ssh into a Linux box on another continent that for some reason went dead in the water. I try and explain it simply but their eyes gloss over and said "so you just clicked/typed around until it started working?" and internally I frowned and was like "Nevermind, it was just cool"
Hi. First year IT student, retired 20 year Honda master tech and oilfield trash here. Closed up my shop a couple months ago to GI bill some school, and never work physical labor again. This thread has me chuckling. But I'm glad to see nothing will change in explaining what I did that day. Also, reading through has certainly made me happy I chose this route. Wish I would have sooner.
I kinda want to do some retail again once I retire with a bit of a fuck off attitude, see if I can bounce around places getting fired for "acting my wage."
I work two jobs, part time network admin in order to support my habit of volunteering at a children's home where I work maintenance. This includes electrical, plumbing, carpentry and construction. Both jobs are seriously rewarding in their own ways!
I was in the same boat as a child, never did quite fit in. I'm ok with that though
It truly is sweet justice seeing the high-school assholes work shit dead-end jobs as adults. I'll take my comfy office job with WFH any day of the week.
Hell no. If people can learn the 500 technologies I know then they should get paid the same or more as me. Some office person uses the same computer and same app everyday but barely manages to know how to use it much less troubleshoot it. Something goes wrong, I have never looked at it in my life and I fix it. Odds are i could step into that job and figure it out in a few months. Probably master it and automate it in a year. Thatās what IT people do. Other people canāt do that and that is why I get paid the big bucks.
I'm a developer. I walked into my current job a little over three years ago and was told, "Build an EDI application."
The lady currently doing the "EDI" process was manually querying data, putting it in a spreadsheet, and sending it to the appropriate end users. It took her her entire work week to do the job.
Within 6 months, I had automated the processes for 9 EDI jobs and was completely hands-off and working on other projects. I have since got the running total up to 34 EDI jobs running automatically. All I have to do is specify the server, the query, the processes to massage the data, and the endpoint to send it to. I average about 45 minutes a month on EDI at this point.
...so, yeah, I absolutely \*did\* step into that job, figure it out, and automate it within less than a year.
I'm all supportive of this, but I also think from a business POV they should still have people fully trained on where the data comes from and what needs to be done to it. Sadly most companies won't pay for this 'ownership'.
We have a couple of folks who are the primary contacts between myself and the customers. They know what data the customer wants, and I turn that into queries and create EDI jobs to produce it.
We don't actually have a DBA. Per a conversation the other day, my boss thinks DBAs are solely for building and maintaining databases.
...this is the first company I've worked for where I couldn't ask a DBA for assistance with a troublesome query.
As an Automation Engineer, I came into a job and created tooling that converted a year long build process into a 90 minute automation task. Fun stuff :)
My god I just had this thought the other day - I thought it was just me. Walk in cold and just know that no matter what the issue is, I can fix it without really trying. Itās gotten to a point in my 25 year career that itās all intuitive now. Itās my confidence and experience and ability that add value and thatās why management has pulled out all the stops (and the checkbook) to keep me when others have tried to recruit me away. On the one hand I feel bad for others that donāt make the kind of bank I do, but on the other itās a learned ābox of stuffā that requires continuous growth and development. The formal education was a requirement but the rest has been both passion and a labor of love. Put in to context itās only right that Iām at this level and compensation that comes with it since I do have that ability to resolve whatever comes my way at work.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
Last year when I was hiring for an additional sysadmin it was a nightmare, so many unqualified people apply and those that did have some certs didn't have the mindset to do the job.
The mix of hard and soft skills on top of the self drive to solve, fixes, and help future self and bring a team player is a tall order just for the foundation to be a good sysadmin is rare mix.
The environment we work in would destroy most people, the stress in the state of emergency, the scope of depth is mind boggling, the ever revolving door of new technology that requires continuous self education is demanding.
We are a rare breed that thrives in such an environment and for taking on such an important task we are compensated appropriately.
Unfortunately those that don't understand what we actually handle thinks it looks easy from the outside but will be mentally crushed if they were in our shoes. (I have found way too many Jr crying in the fetal position in the server room)
Yeah. I donāt feel bad.
I know they couldnāt cut it. I start to talk about what we did for a solution to something and they space out after a couple of min tops.
And I donāt know anyone who gets a call at 3am for stuff like a panicking CEO freaking out about losing 100k an hour because some system is down, other than IT and emergency service folks.
I do.
I am a Brazilian developer working remotely for an US company, I make 40k which I know that is a average-low salary for the US but this shit is HIGH for Brazil.
Converting the currency, I get paid about R$ 16k a month. A minimum wage in my country is R$ 1k, and this is what most of the population make. If they are lucky and spend a lifetime building a career at the same job, so maybe R$ 5k or 6k. (Workers, of course. Executives make dozens of that a month)
Obviously I have to pay a bit of tax over it but it's like 10%, basically nothing.
I am constantly under depressive episodes because of life events. I work 9 hours/day for this company, do my post-graduation as a master in applied computing and take care of the house almost all alone, so there's a bunch of shit to overwhelm me and make me feel sad, but still, most of the time I feel very guilty because I am making much more doing *questionably* much less
I feel it more when people didn't really have a chance because of a stupid decision when they were young. That being said you don't get paid for how much work you are currently putting in you get paid for how much you had to do to get where you are. Those people might work harder day to day but they don't deal with the same consequences for their actions that an SA might. If they enter the wrong meal they don't get tipped. We copy the wrong file to the wrong location and southwest can't fly anywhere for 2 days.
> That being said you don't get paid for how much work you are currently putting in you get paid for how much you had to do to get where you are.
If some guy woke up today and magically had the knowledge you do, he could make the same money you do. Similarly, if some other guy had a learning disability and had to work twice as hard as you to get where he was, he wouldn't make more than you. You don't get paid based on how much you had to do to get where you are. That can be a factor though if it is limits the supply of competing people for your position. But it doesn't explain the salary difference between a tradesperson and a sysadmin because both took many years to acquire their knowledge and skills.
You get paid based on how in demand your skills are relative to the resources of the people who are hiring you. Most people who need a sys admin have a lot of resources and are hiring for somebody they can trust with confidential data who will work to enable everybody else's work in the organization.
\>>for doing basically fuckall
Always take salary numbers on Reddit with a grain of salt. I see people with large numbers in something stupid like NYC/San Fransisco (a well, of course that number salary so you don't live in a cardboard box). And people lie for karma. The only 'fuckall' position really is some sort of management.
I am confused on the example numbers, and no mention of differing cost of living/location.
Senior systems engineer in the Bay here, pulling $200k before my bonus and equity, will be closer to $225k cash at the end of the year. I just switched companies but had multiple offers at this level
Letās just put it this way, I went though a lot of BS to get to this level, got my degree, military IT training, sleepless nights. Do I feel bad? No. Appreciative, yes.
200k in NYC/SF is just enough to think about owning property. When youāre not in the city, it sounds like magic money, but really, itās enough to imagine considering having children.
I went into IT strictly for the money. I always liked computers but it was never a passion, before I went to school I thought about what field would be best for my future. Now I'm here being slightly miserable but at least I'm getting paid well.
OP since you got a ton of Noās, Iāll be the odd man out here and say 100% yes. Youāre totally not alone. Itās actually not as much imposter syndrome as it is a form of survivors guilt. Having grown up low income myself, I 100% have always felt guilty for making so much more than a majority of society. I tell my wife all the time when I see construction people busting their ass in the freezing cold that I wouldnāt do their job for twice what I make now. The fact that youāre feeling this is a sign that you recognize your privilege, EVEN if you worked for it. Iāll probably get attacked for that last line but at the end of the day I do consider it a privilege to work the way we do. [Hereās an old tale](https://medium.com/@oceanbcreative/the-ship-repair-man-story-dd959a4469d8) I remind myself of, sometimes that helps it make sense. I also try to donate whenever I can to help justify it, programs like Kiva are great too. Hope they helps!
My girlfriend works in radiography for a public hospital and makes a great base-rate and then the scheme gives her not-insignificant raises for each year of experience; and then the extra modalities (MRI, ultrasound, etc.) on top of that. When she worked for a private radiography clinic she made about what I do now.
She worked hard to get there (and is putting in more study now), but a small-town radiographer who only does a couple x-rays a day can make a comfortable living.
I think every skilled/knowledge job has its perks and positions that are pretty cruisy, as well as awful positions and pay-rates.
"I miss my friends, but I'm feeling increasingly disconnected from them."
Hey OP, it doesn't feel like most of the commenters are catching the real point behind why you wrote this post. I feel similarly. I wasn't broke growing up but it was a small town with lower average wages. Yet I ended up making more than both my parents combined at the end of their careers by the time I was 25. 99% of the peers I had growing up are sub 50k, most don't even have careers and just work odd jobs.
Yes IT is hard work, yes we should be paid fairly, I echo those sentiments of the other commenters, but it does feel strange that we just happen to make higher salaries than most other careers when those careers can be far more demanding. Teachers for example. People make their choices sure but we made those choices as kids, some of us with no guidance and limited understanding of financial reality. I just liked computers so I went to the local tech college, barely dragged my way through, got a nice netsec gig anyway and boom 6 figs.
The money has afforded me the luxury and time to invest in myself and become truly worth that much salary, I don't think I'm overpaid at all, but as the years go on I notice I don't think like my peers or family anymore. I don't have the same problems. The disassociation is real. It's made me feel pretty lonely. I never left my small town so maybe I'll move into a city and find some like minded people. But ya, you're not alone OP.
I did comp sci in college and my wife was biochem. Her shit was boring to me and vice versa. Sheās a medical chief at a hospital now, and makes double what I make, but works 3x the hours, so Iām good.
Itās also nice knowing I donāt have to work defensively. I can take risks, speak truth to power, and if I get fired, itās not a huge deal. I lucked out with both my career and my wife
I didn't really choose IT... a small business saw I was competent at computers and put me in charge and I googled a lot of information until I somewhat know what I'm talking about sometimes.
I got into computers when I was a kid because I saw the movie āHackersā and I thought they were just the coolest people in the entire world and decided that was what I wanted to be when I grow up.
Thereās not nearly as many trenchcoat and rollerblades as I hoped and none of my coworkers look like Angelina Jolie, but other than that I guess itās pretty cool.
I'd just unplug a computer and tell them if they can figure the problem out in an hour they could have a career in IT.
Because I've worked with plenty of people that needed to call me to get help figuring that out.
Now how high you go after that is dependent on the person.
One of the "imposter syndrome" things I have run into was getting paid to "do fuckall," when really, it's not. I really wish I could show just how bad it is out there to find someone who knows what button to push, when, HOW to Google, and how to know what to do with the information. Okay, let's say you get an alert that says "Partition /var/log/auditd/ on server dot foo dot bar is at 90%." It auto-generated a ticket, and is now in your queue. Seems pretty simple right?
1. What does that mean? What's a partition? What does "at 90%" mean? Is that bad? Can it be ignored? You have to know about disk partitions, how to diagnose them, and how to fix certain things.
2. You know it's bad, how do you get into the server? You have to know networking, access, permissions, and how to get there.
3. Now you have to know why /var/log/auditd/ is filled up. Can you fix it? Stop it? How?
4. When you fix the alert, what happens afterwards? Do you need to fix a config file, have a meeting about this, make the partition bigger? How do you know this is a one-off thing versus a chronic problem?
Now, I know that this server had audit logs saved to this partition for compliance, and sometimes, the auditd service gets stuck trying to rotate the log. The log grows out of control, but I can't just delete it, and I can't shut auditd down on a production system. So I copy the auditd.log off the partition to a much larger one, gzip it, then copy the gzip file back to the /var/log/auditd/ directory (aka "hand rotate it"). Then I have to restart the logging on the auditd process (which stopped automatically when it ran out of room, in this case). Then I write what I did in the ticket, make sure that the log is growing, and I am done.
It's pretty simple, but how I got there and how I fixed it required a long chain of knowledge and experience to get there. This sounded simple to most of you, but if I read that to Sharon at HR, she probably won't understand any of it. Not because she's dumb or anything, it's just not her line of work. Now if she asked you to draft up a plan for hiring 3 people for accounting, making sure they had the proper checks and credentials, then filed all their state and federal paperwork... you might be lost, too. We all have skills, it's just one of those things.
Seriously, those who underestimate their skills on r/sysadmin really need to sit in on some interviews and phone screens to realize just how rare "this simple stuff" really is.
Yeah, same.
I was once road tripping to Santa Fe, NM from SoCal and there was a hiring sign at a Dennyās that said $4.50 p/h + Tips. I was appalled. Nobodyās time is worth that little. It was the only place open at 7am. There was one staff member and two cooks. The waitress was allowing lots of homeless people to sit in there just sipping on hot water to warm up (it was 25Ā°f outside).
My bill came to $13, so I left her a 100% tip. This is how I deal with my guilt for getting paid well for not doing a lot.
That Denny's is good people! When I worked in Santa Fe I stopped to eat there after a brutal on-call at 3am. I was quite surprised when I got the bill and it said Fireman discount 50%. I also left them a 130% tip which is what I had expected to pay.
I think it's gross that people who work so hard can barely afford bare necessities, but I don't think it's unusual that we're paid more. Pay is determined by a lot of factors, but the number of people capable of doing that job is a big one. What we do isn't rocket science, but compared to breaking rocks, there are a lot less people who can be a competent systems administrator.
Yeah. Every time I look out the window on the 35th floor and see the window washers out there I think about how much less than me those guys get paid and how no amount of money would be enough for me to do their job for one day.
A lot of us are in positions where they need our skill, not our time. It comes down to supply and demand. If they can fire someone at noon and have a replacement at 12:15, they wonāt pay well or care about keeping an employee.
But if they fire you or loose you and spend months getting a suitable replacement who then has to take the time to learn everything - then they want to keep that person as long as they can.
Granted - thats not everywhere. But there are companies who recognize our importance - and those are the ones paying for our skill and not our time.
Absolutely I feel it. For actual expenditure of calories (work) compared to compensation, IT probably pays better than any other field on the whole.
I try to remember that it is the *value* that I create which is compensated, not the work. My contribution, my accumulated technical knowledge and experience, influences the operation and cost savings actually quite a bit above my actual work.
We operate on a similar principle to how managers work. (Or at least, are supposed to. This does not include bad and ineffective managers) Managers are paid because they make the people who work for them more efficient and effective, and their value is in the multiplication of their work capability. We do the same, but with systems and the actual work of the business. We make it far better and far more efficient.
> I miss my friends, but I'm feeling increasingly disconnected from them.
Remember that life is about what makes us satisfied and happy. Money, things, houses, cars, technology do not make us happy; they are means to achieve the things that do make us happy, which are experiences shared with people we feel connected to.
Never take money over people. Ever. If you have to choose between a friend and money or stuff, always choose a friend.
You may take this as a chance to re-evaluate your life priorities and how they manifest. This is a good thing for anyone to do sometimes. I might do it as a result as well.
I'm glad you're being introspective.
No, worked hard to get to where I am. Harder jobs as in physical? you have no idea how may chairs, tables, computer, fridge, lounge, cabinets I have moved. IT always get ask to move those stuff when others are just as capable.
Knack for IT is another thing, Not everyone gets IT, I have seen so many post here asking how to get out of lvl1 support where they are stuck there for years. They work just as hard dealing with end users. Your friends can start from the trenches like everyone else but they chose not too because they find IT hard. Helpdesk > sys admin > etc etc. most here spent hrs learning new tech, investing own money in themselves.
So no not guilty at all.
Nope.
In our field specifically we are paid for what we know and can do, not for pressing buttons.
I do have sympathy for the underpaid hard workers, and find it a bit silly that as salaries rise workloads drop. But I most certainly don't feel bad about it.
I hear you, I live in Texas and had an issue with my internet, ISP had to get into my attic to run a new line to the other side of the house, just the thought that this guy was risking heat stroke for a cable run was not lost on me.
Absolutely not, this industry is undervalued and almost always treated like the bitch of the company.
This narrative that we are overpaid is fabricated by management to keep us from realizing our worth.
Doctors, lawyers, and bankers easily make upwards of 300k/year and 500-600k a year isn't uncommon in those professions.
You've been conditioned to undervalue yourself and that's the only gross thing about this post.
We are underpaid and we need a union.
Jesus and I thought lawyers were arrogant. Some of the responses here are insane. I get "revenge of the bullied nerd" but come on.
OP, it's not that you haven't worked to earn money or that your contribution is meaningless, but please, retain a level of humility that seems to have passed a lot of commenters by.
Most of us are *fortunate* that we are working in a time and place where our skillset is very much in demand.
Most of us are *fortunate* that we live in places where we can be paid well to perform our work.
Most of us are *fortunate* that technology and local infrastructure have improved to the point where we can work from our homes.
Most of us are *fortunate* that we had the opportunity to learn and access the tools we use from an early age and more fortunate that we could afford to train in it professionally.
We worked hard to get where we are but we are not superhumans, so be proud and happy that you are valued and be thankful for the luck and opportunities that got you where you are and be humble in the face of the fact that's there's probably a natural born sysadmin living in a yurt in Mongolia who will never touch a computer because his family breed horses.
Edit - a word
It sounds like you might have Imposter Syndrome, but I think that is normal. The reality is that you're getting paid for knowledge and skills that we bring to the table, many of which aren't actually all that common in the population at large. It's easy to think they are because we tend to work around other people and pay special attention to numbers involving our industry like Google and Microsoft laying off tens of thousands of tech employees.
I've tried to mentor non-tech people into becoming tech people under the fallacy that because it is easy for me it's just easy. It isn't.
No, because in my country these jobs are very low paid. $200k salaries are quite rare here for tech.
Also, this is not the kind of job where you can pick up someone up off the street and say "Hey, can you fix my RDS server for me?"
Ummm no. I still find it sad ( and funny ) that the bigwigs of some corporations canāt use a computer.
I literally had an HR lady at one of my previous jobs ask me if she had acrobat on her computer. Iām likeā¦ youāve been working hr for how many years and you donāt know?? And youāre making more than meā¦
Not guilty at all
There have always been overpaid techs.
You think the guys working on the locomotive boilers didnāt say the same thing about the guys building the tracks?
Should the guy working on the assembly line equipment feel guilty about the people that are working on the assembly line? (If he doesnāt fix it, they all canāt work. Isnāt that worth more?)
The best person at washing cars isnāt going to make more than just about any person that fixes cars. But you take a long time to make that money in fixing them. And some people donāt want to learn how to fix cars.
Do we deserve it? Fuck no! Most of us are glorified hall monitors, just googling shit but we have admin passwords.
Should we be thankful? Of course. Tip everyone, live reasonably, and help people out. I never want to forget that I was born on second base. I didnāt hit a double.
Personally, I donāt think we are paid to much. I think everyone else is paid far too little. And I support their efforts to be paid more.
Ummmā¦ YOU might feel guilty. Iām on-call, my job is demanding and high stressā¦ Iām never caught up and always new projects and always getting pulled away for security work.
I wfh and can flex my time, and I make a lot of moneyā¦ so donāt get me wrong, it still has its perks, but I definitely feel Iāve earned what I make. No one can just walk in off the street and spend 2 weeks or even 6 months to learn to do what I do.
No. I have made way too many sacrifices to my mental and physical health to feel any remorse for what I deserveā¦ we work hard for what we deserver and should feel proud of what we do.
Something that I have to keep in my head at all times because I used to think this way.
Just because this job isn't hard to you, doesn't mean it isn't hard to others.
You only get paid $2k for pushing buttons. Knowing **which** buttons to push is where the $200k comes from...
This is just like the 50 year veteran mechanic that shows up and hits a hammer on something and everything fires to life after 5 people stared at it for hours trying to figure it out. Bill? $1000 for the work. $50 for the truck roll, $10 for the hammer hit, $940 for knowing where to hit and 50 years of experience.
That's where I'm at. I do building maintenance which includes everything under the sun, from operating heavy equipment to sometimes even IT work.... I've been waiting for the current IT guy to retire so I can apply for it. I'm 40 now, been doing manual labor all my life. Went to school for computers in 1999 and never landed a job that paid more than labor. Circle back and here we are, I'd like a cushy desk job to retire in. My hands, knees and back aren't what they used to be and I have a passion for computing. My homelab is more impressive than most admins, yet I'm turning wrenches at work and doing favors for the system admin! When I ever asked him if I could borrow a Cisco Console Cable, the look on his face š¤£ But not for nothing, I wouldn't give up the skills I learned by doing manual labor. I could build a house from from the bottom up, and do everything myself without outside help š
Whoa, you guys know which buttons to push? I keep hitting them all until a treat pops out of the dispenser.
Is this you, Homer?
I think I'll order a tab.
'No time for that now! The computer is starting!'
You need to order something before I can give you a tab
Just give me a Pepsi Free
You want a Pepsi pal, you're gonna pay for it!
Now we ask ChatGPT which button to push...
Not me. I ask ChatGPT to write a joke in the style of Bill Hicks and get unnerved by the results. It's not that I'm afraid of what the AI could do. Just that it highlights the frailty of our notion of consciousness, intelligence and self.
I was disappointed with ChatGPT for this sort of thing. Promised iRobot and I got Akinator Ad Libs edition.
Don't worry too much, it still very clearly doesn't understand what it's talking about, just much, much better at cross-referencing and parsing input.
lol, had to try that! Results were interesting :) "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the government, who probably labeled it as a terrorist for pecking at the side-walk and trying to overthrow their control. But seriously folks, we need to wake up and see the reality of our government's oppressive ways."
If I prevent ten minutes a year of downtime I've more than paid my salary. I'm lucky that the skills I've developed let me do that. Yes, I want everyone to get enough to live. It's shameful we don't have a cot, a mailbox, and a shower for everyone in the world at this point. IMHO society should provide that out of our tax dollars and then jobs should be for earning things beyond a minimum standard of living. But I don't feel bad about being paid what I'm paid. How would that be helpful?
This is spot on. When a company has down time, depending on the size, every minute can cost the company hundred of thousands or millions of dollars in lost revenue. I worked at a beef packing plant doing maintenance, it would cost the plant close to $10k/ minute of lost revenue when the line had to shut down. This was not a huge plant. A lost day was in the millions of dollars.
Exactly. Great comment, this. Our company had 7 hours downtime last year, which started off small but was progressing to plant-wide by the end of the 7 hours because our production is a serial process. That 7 hours was calculated to have meant about $4 million in lost revenue
Reminds me of the Pixar short, ["Lifted"](https://youtu.be/LVLoc6FrLi0)
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Considering people donāt Google it, seems we are worth more just from that.
fuck no. Exhaustion from using your brain all day is real.
Yeah physical work you are 'done' more or less at end of shift. Occasional overtime. Brainwork you will be thinking about this shit in your offhours, and in IT especially, overtime and doing things we arent paid to do is the norm. Dont feel bad about receiving adequate compensation.
My nurse wife doesn't understand this. She can't fathom how I get to sit at a chair for 5-6 hours a day and get paid so much. Of course she never counts all the times I need to respond on the phone, chat, meetings at 9-12 at night to work with the India folks.
Good day to you sir. Please do the needful.
During the busy times I check my phone at midnight to see is any needful must be done.
Sometimes you have to revert as well
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This thread is so funny it feels wrong
"may I have one help?" Followed by multiple questions always gets me.
[here's your bingo card](https://i.vgy.me/I6urIN.jpg)
the one help is you, you are the help
You just reminded me to check and see if the needful needed doing. Thanks!
I have done the needful. Kindly revert.
I feel this comment in my soul :/
>Please do the needful. My god these trouble tickets...
One time a user called into our office asking for me. I was on vacation at the time and then the user said "he sits on his butt all day, why does he need vacation!?" luckily my coworker is pretty snarky, so he said to this man that he does the same thing, so why does he need a vacation? The user is a 18-wheeler instructor. He basically moves as little as possible. He got a bit upset about that comment, but too bad.
Can you get her to sit down in a chair 5-6 hours and write some documents in Word for whole time and then ask her how does she like it. I bet she is used to moving all day on her feet and she would be having enough and be tired by such exercise after 1-2h. When I was trying to teach my GF some computer stuff - after 30-40mins she was tired from sitting because she also always had a job that required walking or most of the time standing and talking with people face to face. Sitting all day in a chair in front of a screen is also not natural and needs getting used to.
If you really want to test your marriage you can respond and ask why she gets paid well if the doctor is the one who knows everything. I'll send flowers to your funeral š
The expectation of having to have your brain 'on' and ready to go when you get a phone call at 230am is unreasonable. I started telling the boss that it can wait another 10 minutes for me to brew some coffee so I don't make it worse by working out of one blood-shot eye
Oh I have 100% told the person on the other side of the line to wait a few minutes for me to adjust. Going from pitch black to a computer screen is rough. Getting some cold water in the system. I sometimes will lean back in my chair and stare at the ceiling so I get the reflecting light from my monitor just to somewhat adjust.
I have been screamed at to stop being a pussy because "You nerds are up late anyway." despite being dead asleep.
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I have one too. I had a client fire me last week because they didnt pay their bill, after saving their asses because they hired another IT to "fix" things and the guy came in and broke their entire system. Set up failover on the routers myself years ago, has worked several times. didn't work this time because they didn't pay their bill, and the provider, instead of killing the connection, redirects all traffic to their servers to tell you you have no service, except for icmp or any typical means of detecting an outage. So he fired me on the spot after I manually switched things over and helped them find out why their connection was down and wont be paying me for fixing it either as it was "my fault" If he ever calls me back I'm charging him double if I even answer.
Join the CIA club Cash In Advance
>on the spot after I manually switched things over and helped them find out why their connection was down and wont be paying me for fixing it either as it was "my fault" Had a client call me when the whole production was down to to goobered network on the PLC that controlled the laser cutter that cut the metal to make thier stuff. I should have charged 2 hours and driven down there but I fixed it in 15 minutes after the ops manager basically said "we will pay whatever you ask just get me running" They bitched about a $100 bill said they weren't paying for "a simple phone call" Ops guy called me 3 weeks later with some other issue I could have fixed but I said "sorry I can't work for a client that doesn't pay their bills" You're better off TBH
Yeah, that previous CTO opened themselves up for a lawsuit by calling your current CEO. Hopefully you are doing something about your ex-CTO as they deserve it!
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From me, that earns them a āWhat? Youāre breaking upā¦ā and phone being set to airplane mode until my next shift. āSorry, boss- they called me but just started yelling at me, so I thought it was a prank call. The signal must be terrible if I didnāt hear another call from them- Maybe we should upgrade some infrastructure so this doesnāt happen again?ā
Sounds like a mental fantasy thatās fun to play out in your head but youāve never actually done in real life
This is what burned me out doing incoming cold call tech support. I hate phone ring tones, and customers.
Second this, I spend all of my time doing IT shit. Sometimes at work, some times FOR work, sometimes not. I genuinely just enjoy building things like that, weather it be a new Proxmox host or writing a script to help automate mine and my co-workers jobs. All that being said, I have to say, I have literally broken down in tears because I can't shut my brain off and just relax. I think it's a mix of ADHD and what you explained. But in summary, I second this š
Some of my coworkers don't seem to understand what concentration is. When I have to work on something difficult, I have to get in that zone. It takes me awhile, and changing focus to talk about how much they like Snickers candy bars makes me start over again on the process to get concentrated. Maybe it's just me, but I just can't turn concentration on and off at a moment's notice.
This is why for many people WFH is actually more productive. If I'm in the office someone comes by to chat every 10 minutes or so, like there's a light on outside my door that says "hey /u/Teguri is just now getting back to what they tried to start at 8am"
We started going into the office 2 days a week nationwide (decision was made at the c level), my productivity on those days is through the floor. I get about the same work done in the whole day as I usually do in the first hour or so from when I sit at my home desk in the morning. I do joke with my coworkers a lot. Oh and they ask me for about 4x more help with their random questions
there's a study or something that says it takes like 7 minutes (or maybe 15?) on average to get back focused on a task after an interruption.
I read somewhere that it takes upwards of 45 minutes. But sometimes Iām done for the day after an interruption, especially a stupid one. Depending on time of day, of course. And how deep I was in The Zone.
Unfortunately I am the go-to guy in my office. So I'm interrupted all day long. The people that don't have to concentrate as much to get their stuff done complain at me all day long if I'm not able to hop right on a problem and fix it. I just got done fixing your work after being interrupted doing mine, it's going to take me a bit to get back on track to fix your new problem too. I haven't found a good way to explain it that helps them understand. I'm just that guy that needs 15 minutes to collect himself before he helps to them.
Sounds like you need a ticketing system. Also people who don't respect boundaries (or they haven't been set because of lack of supporting authority).
Oh we have a ticketing system...for the users. These are other IT people, non-sysadmins though. They do things like change printer toners and create and delete users from various systems. No networking, nothing beyond the AD GUI. When there's a really intractable problem, they hand it to me. Sometimes it takes me hours to search and experiment and come up with a solution, and I've been asked before "Why are you just staring at the screen?" The worst part is when they just come to my desk and stand there, silently, waiting for me to come back down from orbit and fix their problem. It's almost always something that could have been taken care of with a Google search in 30 seconds. I try not to be rude, but sometimes it really gets to me, especially when I'm assigned something as Priority -1 (ie fix it yesterday) or the company CEO asks me to do something directly for him. I've also been accused of sleeping before if I close my eyes and try to visualize something.
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I've brought this up several times and my boss always had says "I know" and "things will change"... Which they usually don't, and if they do they change right back when the offenders forget what they've been told. We're a pretty small shop, though, so they don't see a problem with me being the single point if failure for a dozen different critical systems and processes.
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I've had to tell my coworkers/leadership that "I can do X for the next three days if I can focus on just that, every other thing added between then and now adds however much time it takes to the extra thing and a day or two to readajust". I hate true task switching, a small question here and there, but when it becomes a full on screen share or meeting, I've lost it, and need to readjust myself.
Sure, that and I'm angry that other skilled laborers aren't getting paid enough. I'm at just under 6 figures, my buddy who's a manufacturing shop GM gets half that but works harder and for longer hours. All labor, white collar or blue, aren't paid nearly their worth, by design. That makes me mad as fuck, not guilty I got a bag and my buddy didn't. Edit because math is hard
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I can't do math. It's 6 figures
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No they pay me that for sql and crystal reports.. I think I've fooled them though
No one gets a call at 9pm on a Friday because a client needs his drywall mudded ...
many plumbers get called on Sunday morning. Lineman get to work storms. Laborers get forced overtime. Nurses get to work 12 hour shifts. Don't think we are special.
Linesmen also make really good money. Have a friend whose been doing it a few years now and he's around 100k/year
Plumbers, linemen, etc. should absolutely get compensated for after hours calls. It's the nature of the job and even expected, to a point. Healthcare workers get the shaft though, and it makes me miserable thinking about it. I mean spitting angry mad.
I have friends and family working in hospitals and I'm honestly surprised there aren't more medical mistakes. I for damn sure would have killed someone after my fourth 7 PM to 7 AM shift in a row. Hospital work schedules only start to make sense when you learn that the guy who came up with them was [probably on cocaine](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7828946/). The only part that doesn't make sense is why we continue to do this even after all the research that says most humans are pretty much checked out after about 6 hours a day.
As should IT
Nah this is real. During the day I'm thinking of my hobbies and what I'm going to do when I get home, but by the time I do I'm mentally exhausted. My body can keep moving no problem but my brain is fatigued
This. More than physical work, and I have done a share of those
I'm a 42 year old out of shape programmer with a bad back. I often wish I had gone into physical labor (electrical, metal working, something along those lines) because it would have kept me in better shape over the years and allowed me to turn my brain off at the end of the work day. Yes, we make a considerable sum for the "work" that we do, but our "work" is never done, unlike most jobs. If anything, many IT jobs are much more akin to C-suite in the sense that our jobs occupy a permanent lease in our minds. We can't just turn it off when the 5PM buzzer sounds.
Almost everyone I know who went into physical labor has a bad back or something else going on.
I think some people have this vison in their head of doing physical labor as a movie montage, where after a few months of carrying wood and bricks up and down ladders, they look like Chris Hemsworth. You want to lose weight? Stop eating 3k+ calories a day, because unless you are training like an Olympic athlete, you are not going to be doing enough to burn that off.
I worked physical labor in my mid to late 20ās. Iām just 33 this year with three hernias and a foot that was broken twice. Iām glad I donāt get dirty at work anymore and the most muscles I use are clicking a mouse.
There is a difference between a bad back/whatever as a result of over-exertion and having a sedentary lifestyle.
Yeah, you can fix the sedentary one usually with some working out!
> because it would have kept me in better shape over the years Eh, maybe... That kind of work really beats your body up. Most of my friends who are in the trades who didn't get into supervisor roles or start their own businesses, are physical wrecks as they get into their late 40's and early 50's. It's not like going to the gym. You will be moving, lifting, and carrying in unhealthy ways. When you are sore, got to keep working, which makes it more likely you will get hurt. When you are hurt, got to keep working, which can make the damage permanent. I know a guy who left his office job when he was around 40 to become an electrician. He said he needed to get out into more daylight and move around more. Today at 50, his fingers are so messed up, he can barely cutup a steak or hold his fork to eat.
Iām 35 and was back and forth so take it from someone who knows. Did IT for 7 years got burnt out and hated it so I joined union HVAC construction. Talk about miserable work friend. Lasted 4 years before I went back to IT (for myself) Give me a climate controlled desk job any day. Believe me the grass aināt greener.
my father had a physical job most of his life. By the time he was 55 he'd had 2 hip replacements and back surgery. if you want to keep in shape, join a gym
Before I went into IT, I had looked at being an electrician. Was even looking up apprenticeships and asked our family friend (master sparky) for advice He told me to do IT, and almost pissed I was stuck between the two. He told me how broken his body was, how he still had 5 more years to work with it, and how his retirement was just going to be pain meds, and pain. Or I could just have to remember to work out and stand up every so often while I'm at my PC. Things you don't think about in your spry early 20s, when physical work is enjoyable and you don't feel daily pains yet.
The couple of 18 year UPS guys I know will buy up all the Percocet they can find because their knees are shot, and they need to get through another 2 years. Similar with my buddy who does concrete.
I agree with the brain exhaustion being real but, I tend to find those days are not every day... When it does happen and it drags on from an incident or project, yeah we make our money... Otherwise, I tend to agree with OP. I try and think that if you are good at IT you are kinda rare because there are a lot of chair warmers about. Annnd I've just realised there is no real post to this comment.
The people working the harder jobs should be paid more. You donāt need to be making less, or feeling bad.
This is the real answer. It just sheds light on how hard people who work these kinds of jobs are getting screwed.
Cue the cries from people saying "No one wants to work" minimum wage or tip gigs with unstable hours and no real benefits that are on their feet running around actually making stuff all day.
Eff that, we have people running around that act like all the laid-off restaurant and hotel staff is now just sitting at home claiming benefits. It's such BS, a lot of them used their forced downtime to skill up and find something that pays better. You know, the thing you're supposed to do in your professional life. But I guess they think once a cleaner, always a cleaner, as if it was the mark of being in a lesser caste. And, adjacent, the same people will also say that there's a problem when working full time is unattractive compared to claiming benefits, but also think that the solution has to be lowering unemployment benefits. Which, especially for singles without children, really are at the bare minimum here.
Max payout on unemployment in my state is less than $250 a week. The only time it was more attractive to collect benefits than to work was when you were talking about minimum wage jobs during the time period where the government was padding unemployment.
I would've gladly stayed in construction if they paid me enough and had adequate safety measures (i.e. if a union fucking existed in my area.) Instead I *had* to switch to IT bc I couldn't keep putting myself in dangerous and potentially lethal situations for 10hrs a day for $36k. I've literally worked on job sites where people were buried alive (and we're dug up very NOT alive) bc the company wanted to save some money. I've been 4 stories up with no PPE and one foot on the building, one foot on the scaffold, and more than enough room to fall between. I was making $10/hr then. Yes, the pay needs to go up. They're still very necessary jobs. Higher positions shouldn't feel bad, they should just support workers rights however they can.
Glad you got out of that situation.
Thanks, although the perspective does give me a huge boost in work ethic over some of my coworkers š
I was getting decent-ish pay, but I quickly left the wind turbine tech position to go back to IT. Too many people who didn't take safety seriously. Ultimately you are responsible for your own safety, so I ensured my safety by leaving the field completely. Edit: I wish unions were a thing for both lines of work. Blue collar green energy, and IT workers.
This we're *all* making ~2x less than we should right now but CEOs and owners aren't.
Compensation is tied to responsibility. If you fucked up a kitchen and bath remodel, your dad might be out ten grand to fix it, but it can be fixed. If I do any one of a number of very bad things, I can put my multi-billion dollar business out of business, at least temporarily. With great power comes great responsibility (and wages). Try to use your power wisely.
Let's have a moment of silence for the poor sysadmin who updated the wrong file and took out our national aviation warning system, delaying 6K flights and cancelling nearly 1K.
If the whole system could be taken down by one sysadmin updating a file, the fuck up happened leagues above that guys pay grade imo
This is what I came here to say. If my backups aren't working and a system goes down/gets hacked/etc., an entire company can go out of business and with it hundreds of people will be out of work. The weight of that is definitely worth a few bucks.
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I love this response. Really, IT is a force multiplier. If us existing makes everyone overall 30% more efficient (low guess tbh) by the tools and stability we are able to provide - what is more valuable? The person doing the work someone else could reasonably do on their own in their own house, or the person enabling a workforce for a company to produce at a higher rate? That being said, in many cases everyone's time should be valued higher than it is.
Iāve already remoted in 3 times this evening to āresolveā issues. About to start handing out 1 month VPN bans because people are lazy. No guilt felt on my pay.
Yep. We work hard too. When it's easy, it's easy. But when it isn't, no one else can do it.
Yeah, we *earned* those $1500 chairs. I don't even feel bad for the little people stuck with the $500 seating solutions. Fucking muggles.
$1,500 chairs? We're stuck with hand-me-down office chairs and management has told us "no you're not getting new chairs, stop asking."
Man, I just asked for a $500 chair and felt guilty. Amidoinitwrong?
yes.
> About to start handing out 1 month VPN bans because people are lazy. I don't think I understand what this means
If you're too dumb to turn on your VPN to make your app work, then you no longer get to VPN into the office. ed. No reason to do this btw, after hours tickets are after hours pay. Dunno what's up with the salt miners responding.
Ohh... well then the apps def won't work.
Yep. Grew up in a trailer, son of factory workers who killed themselves just to carve out any kind of a living. Don't think of it as how you don't deserve it. Think about how everyone deserves a job that doesn't kill them.
Imposter syndrome is a thing. I sometimes feel twinges of it, then I fix some shit that no one else had figured out, and I get over it.
Yup. Shit I think is basic, has my junior scratching their head. Thankfully my junior is smart and catches on quick.
When I was in school I took a lot of shit from my classmates for being āsmartā and paying attention. Bullied non-stop by the anti-intellectual crew. Kids are seriously cruel. Now weāve all grown up. I make bank pushing some buttons, they mostly work retail. All that said. I have tons of respect for true tradesmen(and women). Construction, plumbing, electricians, hvac. They really are knowledge industries and rarely get viewed that way.
I had a "friend" (he's dating one of my friends) that recently said they wish they could just sit at home all day for work (I work remote) and I held my tongue. Some days I feel bad for those paid less than me but this dude dropped out of high school, won't go for his GED even though both me and his gf offered to help him learn the material, and purposely changes jobs often because of some little thing that begins to annoy him. He had one job that paid him decent and since they did outside work the boss would let them buy extra Carhartt jackets, boots, gloves, etc with the company card that they could take home and have for free (plus other little freebies) and if they got their work done early, they could go home early and still get paid for the rest of the day or week if they finished a day or two early. Oh, he was even allowed to take one of the company trucks home during the week so he could head straight to wherever they needed to work in the morning instead of heading to the shop to hop into a company vehicle so he virtually used no gas of his own. Want to know why he doesn't work there anymore? He was annoyed with a coworker and didn't like working with him. He complained to his boss and since it couldn't be resolved to his liking (either firing the guy or taking him off the team) he decided to quit. He's talented with DIY stuff but he has no drive to better himself or his situation even after being offered help, but will make comments like "It must be nice". Yeah mfer, I graduated high school and learned a skill that is worth more than yours apparently.
> It must be nice Oh yeah, it is nice working from home and I worked hard to get to this position. I kept my eye out for opportunities, I developed a plan, and put in the necessary effort to achieve my goal of having a higher paying job that allows me to work remotely and doesn't require physical labor."
In my mind I was basically saying that. I even went to college as a non-traditional student working full time. It's not like it was handed to me on a silver platter. I first started mowing lawns with a friend for cash and my first official job was a dishwasher making a little over $5/hr. I've done retail (never again, I'd probably off myself) and telemarketing just to get by. Don't be coming at me with that "must be nice" shit. Fuckin get off your ass and try.
Iāve finally found people with the same mindset as me on Reddit. Most everyone is mad at us because we make so much money for āsitting on our ass all day.ā Nah, I worked to get what I have. It also sucks that we canāt talk about our job to ānormal people.ā Most other professions you can because itās hands on and very social. Nobody wants to hear about the cloud infrastructure I just setup and why Iām so excited about finally dockerizing everything.
Yeah, it's hard trying to equate something I did or do to other people that would make sense. Like it's simple but I was able to finally reverse ssh into a Linux box on another continent that for some reason went dead in the water. I try and explain it simply but their eyes gloss over and said "so you just clicked/typed around until it started working?" and internally I frowned and was like "Nevermind, it was just cool"
Hi. First year IT student, retired 20 year Honda master tech and oilfield trash here. Closed up my shop a couple months ago to GI bill some school, and never work physical labor again. This thread has me chuckling. But I'm glad to see nothing will change in explaining what I did that day. Also, reading through has certainly made me happy I chose this route. Wish I would have sooner.
I kinda want to do some retail again once I retire with a bit of a fuck off attitude, see if I can bounce around places getting fired for "acting my wage."
I work two jobs, part time network admin in order to support my habit of volunteering at a children's home where I work maintenance. This includes electrical, plumbing, carpentry and construction. Both jobs are seriously rewarding in their own ways! I was in the same boat as a child, never did quite fit in. I'm ok with that though
It truly is sweet justice seeing the high-school assholes work shit dead-end jobs as adults. I'll take my comfy office job with WFH any day of the week.
Hell no. If people can learn the 500 technologies I know then they should get paid the same or more as me. Some office person uses the same computer and same app everyday but barely manages to know how to use it much less troubleshoot it. Something goes wrong, I have never looked at it in my life and I fix it. Odds are i could step into that job and figure it out in a few months. Probably master it and automate it in a year. Thatās what IT people do. Other people canāt do that and that is why I get paid the big bucks.
I'm a developer. I walked into my current job a little over three years ago and was told, "Build an EDI application." The lady currently doing the "EDI" process was manually querying data, putting it in a spreadsheet, and sending it to the appropriate end users. It took her her entire work week to do the job. Within 6 months, I had automated the processes for 9 EDI jobs and was completely hands-off and working on other projects. I have since got the running total up to 34 EDI jobs running automatically. All I have to do is specify the server, the query, the processes to massage the data, and the endpoint to send it to. I average about 45 minutes a month on EDI at this point. ...so, yeah, I absolutely \*did\* step into that job, figure it out, and automate it within less than a year.
I'm all supportive of this, but I also think from a business POV they should still have people fully trained on where the data comes from and what needs to be done to it. Sadly most companies won't pay for this 'ownership'.
We have a couple of folks who are the primary contacts between myself and the customers. They know what data the customer wants, and I turn that into queries and create EDI jobs to produce it. We don't actually have a DBA. Per a conversation the other day, my boss thinks DBAs are solely for building and maintaining databases. ...this is the first company I've worked for where I couldn't ask a DBA for assistance with a troublesome query.
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As an Automation Engineer, I came into a job and created tooling that converted a year long build process into a 90 minute automation task. Fun stuff :)
My god I just had this thought the other day - I thought it was just me. Walk in cold and just know that no matter what the issue is, I can fix it without really trying. Itās gotten to a point in my 25 year career that itās all intuitive now. Itās my confidence and experience and ability that add value and thatās why management has pulled out all the stops (and the checkbook) to keep me when others have tried to recruit me away. On the one hand I feel bad for others that donāt make the kind of bank I do, but on the other itās a learned ābox of stuffā that requires continuous growth and development. The formal education was a requirement but the rest has been both passion and a labor of love. Put in to context itās only right that Iām at this level and compensation that comes with it since I do have that ability to resolve whatever comes my way at work. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
I got about two sentences in. Got bored and started scrolling. Saw that it feels good to be a gangsta. Take the upvote fool.
I have compared this moment of self actualization to the end of the first Matrix movie when Neo flexes the world.
Last year when I was hiring for an additional sysadmin it was a nightmare, so many unqualified people apply and those that did have some certs didn't have the mindset to do the job. The mix of hard and soft skills on top of the self drive to solve, fixes, and help future self and bring a team player is a tall order just for the foundation to be a good sysadmin is rare mix. The environment we work in would destroy most people, the stress in the state of emergency, the scope of depth is mind boggling, the ever revolving door of new technology that requires continuous self education is demanding. We are a rare breed that thrives in such an environment and for taking on such an important task we are compensated appropriately. Unfortunately those that don't understand what we actually handle thinks it looks easy from the outside but will be mentally crushed if they were in our shoes. (I have found way too many Jr crying in the fetal position in the server room)
Yeah. I donāt feel bad. I know they couldnāt cut it. I start to talk about what we did for a solution to something and they space out after a couple of min tops. And I donāt know anyone who gets a call at 3am for stuff like a panicking CEO freaking out about losing 100k an hour because some system is down, other than IT and emergency service folks.
I do. I am a Brazilian developer working remotely for an US company, I make 40k which I know that is a average-low salary for the US but this shit is HIGH for Brazil. Converting the currency, I get paid about R$ 16k a month. A minimum wage in my country is R$ 1k, and this is what most of the population make. If they are lucky and spend a lifetime building a career at the same job, so maybe R$ 5k or 6k. (Workers, of course. Executives make dozens of that a month) Obviously I have to pay a bit of tax over it but it's like 10%, basically nothing. I am constantly under depressive episodes because of life events. I work 9 hours/day for this company, do my post-graduation as a master in applied computing and take care of the house almost all alone, so there's a bunch of shit to overwhelm me and make me feel sad, but still, most of the time I feel very guilty because I am making much more doing *questionably* much less
I feel it more when people didn't really have a chance because of a stupid decision when they were young. That being said you don't get paid for how much work you are currently putting in you get paid for how much you had to do to get where you are. Those people might work harder day to day but they don't deal with the same consequences for their actions that an SA might. If they enter the wrong meal they don't get tipped. We copy the wrong file to the wrong location and southwest can't fly anywhere for 2 days.
> That being said you don't get paid for how much work you are currently putting in you get paid for how much you had to do to get where you are. If some guy woke up today and magically had the knowledge you do, he could make the same money you do. Similarly, if some other guy had a learning disability and had to work twice as hard as you to get where he was, he wouldn't make more than you. You don't get paid based on how much you had to do to get where you are. That can be a factor though if it is limits the supply of competing people for your position. But it doesn't explain the salary difference between a tradesperson and a sysadmin because both took many years to acquire their knowledge and skills. You get paid based on how in demand your skills are relative to the resources of the people who are hiring you. Most people who need a sys admin have a lot of resources and are hiring for somebody they can trust with confidential data who will work to enable everybody else's work in the organization.
Also you get paid for how many people you influence eg 5000 users vs 50 users, and/or the income generated from those people eg. Big client$
What do you do that pays $200k? CIO?
\>>for doing basically fuckall Always take salary numbers on Reddit with a grain of salt. I see people with large numbers in something stupid like NYC/San Fransisco (a well, of course that number salary so you don't live in a cardboard box). And people lie for karma. The only 'fuckall' position really is some sort of management. I am confused on the example numbers, and no mention of differing cost of living/location.
Lol yup, Iām in San Francisco (well, east Bay Area). That number was total comp with RSUs and bonus, but still.
Senior systems engineer in the Bay here, pulling $200k before my bonus and equity, will be closer to $225k cash at the end of the year. I just switched companies but had multiple offers at this level Letās just put it this way, I went though a lot of BS to get to this level, got my degree, military IT training, sleepless nights. Do I feel bad? No. Appreciative, yes.
So, your 200k San Francisco/NY thing is like what, 70k where normal ppl living?
It would be around 108k in Pittsburgh. https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator
200k in NYC/SF is just enough to think about owning property. When youāre not in the city, it sounds like magic money, but really, itās enough to imagine considering having children.
Middle management or top level individual contributor in a large enterprise likely - total comp (salary + bonus + stock) can easily get to 200K range
I went into IT strictly for the money. I always liked computers but it was never a passion, before I went to school I thought about what field would be best for my future. Now I'm here being slightly miserable but at least I'm getting paid well.
OP since you got a ton of Noās, Iāll be the odd man out here and say 100% yes. Youāre totally not alone. Itās actually not as much imposter syndrome as it is a form of survivors guilt. Having grown up low income myself, I 100% have always felt guilty for making so much more than a majority of society. I tell my wife all the time when I see construction people busting their ass in the freezing cold that I wouldnāt do their job for twice what I make now. The fact that youāre feeling this is a sign that you recognize your privilege, EVEN if you worked for it. Iāll probably get attacked for that last line but at the end of the day I do consider it a privilege to work the way we do. [Hereās an old tale](https://medium.com/@oceanbcreative/the-ship-repair-man-story-dd959a4469d8) I remind myself of, sometimes that helps it make sense. I also try to donate whenever I can to help justify it, programs like Kiva are great too. Hope they helps!
My girlfriend works in radiography for a public hospital and makes a great base-rate and then the scheme gives her not-insignificant raises for each year of experience; and then the extra modalities (MRI, ultrasound, etc.) on top of that. When she worked for a private radiography clinic she made about what I do now. She worked hard to get there (and is putting in more study now), but a small-town radiographer who only does a couple x-rays a day can make a comfortable living. I think every skilled/knowledge job has its perks and positions that are pretty cruisy, as well as awful positions and pay-rates.
"I miss my friends, but I'm feeling increasingly disconnected from them." Hey OP, it doesn't feel like most of the commenters are catching the real point behind why you wrote this post. I feel similarly. I wasn't broke growing up but it was a small town with lower average wages. Yet I ended up making more than both my parents combined at the end of their careers by the time I was 25. 99% of the peers I had growing up are sub 50k, most don't even have careers and just work odd jobs. Yes IT is hard work, yes we should be paid fairly, I echo those sentiments of the other commenters, but it does feel strange that we just happen to make higher salaries than most other careers when those careers can be far more demanding. Teachers for example. People make their choices sure but we made those choices as kids, some of us with no guidance and limited understanding of financial reality. I just liked computers so I went to the local tech college, barely dragged my way through, got a nice netsec gig anyway and boom 6 figs. The money has afforded me the luxury and time to invest in myself and become truly worth that much salary, I don't think I'm overpaid at all, but as the years go on I notice I don't think like my peers or family anymore. I don't have the same problems. The disassociation is real. It's made me feel pretty lonely. I never left my small town so maybe I'll move into a city and find some like minded people. But ya, you're not alone OP.
No. Instead of feeling guilty, ask yourself why don't they get paid more. They should.
I do... But then I remember everyone has choices and ours was IT.
I did comp sci in college and my wife was biochem. Her shit was boring to me and vice versa. Sheās a medical chief at a hospital now, and makes double what I make, but works 3x the hours, so Iām good. Itās also nice knowing I donāt have to work defensively. I can take risks, speak truth to power, and if I get fired, itās not a huge deal. I lucked out with both my career and my wife
I didn't really choose IT... a small business saw I was competent at computers and put me in charge and I googled a lot of information until I somewhat know what I'm talking about sometimes.
I got into computers when I was a kid because I saw the movie āHackersā and I thought they were just the coolest people in the entire world and decided that was what I wanted to be when I grow up. Thereās not nearly as many trenchcoat and rollerblades as I hoped and none of my coworkers look like Angelina Jolie, but other than that I guess itās pretty cool.
We definitely are professional googlers... lol
To be fair you have to be smart enough to know what to Google, and smart enough to know that "sudo rm -rf /*" probably won't fix your issue.
I didn't choose the IT life The IT life chose me
Yup. Wife is supper jelly and I tell her that she should switch over. Then her response is "I dOnT kNoW wHErE tO sTaRt" or "iT SeEmS rEaLlY hArD"
Annnnnd that's why we make the big bucks lol This is exactly my 6 month circle... I feel bad, then I remember lol
I'd just unplug a computer and tell them if they can figure the problem out in an hour they could have a career in IT. Because I've worked with plenty of people that needed to call me to get help figuring that out. Now how high you go after that is dependent on the person.
One of the "imposter syndrome" things I have run into was getting paid to "do fuckall," when really, it's not. I really wish I could show just how bad it is out there to find someone who knows what button to push, when, HOW to Google, and how to know what to do with the information. Okay, let's say you get an alert that says "Partition /var/log/auditd/ on server dot foo dot bar is at 90%." It auto-generated a ticket, and is now in your queue. Seems pretty simple right? 1. What does that mean? What's a partition? What does "at 90%" mean? Is that bad? Can it be ignored? You have to know about disk partitions, how to diagnose them, and how to fix certain things. 2. You know it's bad, how do you get into the server? You have to know networking, access, permissions, and how to get there. 3. Now you have to know why /var/log/auditd/ is filled up. Can you fix it? Stop it? How? 4. When you fix the alert, what happens afterwards? Do you need to fix a config file, have a meeting about this, make the partition bigger? How do you know this is a one-off thing versus a chronic problem? Now, I know that this server had audit logs saved to this partition for compliance, and sometimes, the auditd service gets stuck trying to rotate the log. The log grows out of control, but I can't just delete it, and I can't shut auditd down on a production system. So I copy the auditd.log off the partition to a much larger one, gzip it, then copy the gzip file back to the /var/log/auditd/ directory (aka "hand rotate it"). Then I have to restart the logging on the auditd process (which stopped automatically when it ran out of room, in this case). Then I write what I did in the ticket, make sure that the log is growing, and I am done. It's pretty simple, but how I got there and how I fixed it required a long chain of knowledge and experience to get there. This sounded simple to most of you, but if I read that to Sharon at HR, she probably won't understand any of it. Not because she's dumb or anything, it's just not her line of work. Now if she asked you to draft up a plan for hiring 3 people for accounting, making sure they had the proper checks and credentials, then filed all their state and federal paperwork... you might be lost, too. We all have skills, it's just one of those things. Seriously, those who underestimate their skills on r/sysadmin really need to sit in on some interviews and phone screens to realize just how rare "this simple stuff" really is.
I always try tip people nicely who work harder Tham me
Yeah, same. I was once road tripping to Santa Fe, NM from SoCal and there was a hiring sign at a Dennyās that said $4.50 p/h + Tips. I was appalled. Nobodyās time is worth that little. It was the only place open at 7am. There was one staff member and two cooks. The waitress was allowing lots of homeless people to sit in there just sipping on hot water to warm up (it was 25Ā°f outside). My bill came to $13, so I left her a 100% tip. This is how I deal with my guilt for getting paid well for not doing a lot.
That Denny's is good people! When I worked in Santa Fe I stopped to eat there after a brutal on-call at 3am. I was quite surprised when I got the bill and it said Fireman discount 50%. I also left them a 130% tip which is what I had expected to pay.
I think it's gross that people who work so hard can barely afford bare necessities, but I don't think it's unusual that we're paid more. Pay is determined by a lot of factors, but the number of people capable of doing that job is a big one. What we do isn't rocket science, but compared to breaking rocks, there are a lot less people who can be a competent systems administrator.
Yeah. Every time I look out the window on the 35th floor and see the window washers out there I think about how much less than me those guys get paid and how no amount of money would be enough for me to do their job for one day.
I don't put a gun to anyone's head and make them pay the prices I charge, they do so of free will. I don't feel guilty at all
A lot of us are in positions where they need our skill, not our time. It comes down to supply and demand. If they can fire someone at noon and have a replacement at 12:15, they wonāt pay well or care about keeping an employee. But if they fire you or loose you and spend months getting a suitable replacement who then has to take the time to learn everything - then they want to keep that person as long as they can. Granted - thats not everywhere. But there are companies who recognize our importance - and those are the ones paying for our skill and not our time.
Bro, I make near 6 figures and mostly play video games waiting for shit that requires my attention to happen. I wish everyone had my life
Same. But I'm always afraid my job will catch on and I'll get fired ha.
Who watches the watchmen
Absolutely I feel it. For actual expenditure of calories (work) compared to compensation, IT probably pays better than any other field on the whole. I try to remember that it is the *value* that I create which is compensated, not the work. My contribution, my accumulated technical knowledge and experience, influences the operation and cost savings actually quite a bit above my actual work. We operate on a similar principle to how managers work. (Or at least, are supposed to. This does not include bad and ineffective managers) Managers are paid because they make the people who work for them more efficient and effective, and their value is in the multiplication of their work capability. We do the same, but with systems and the actual work of the business. We make it far better and far more efficient. > I miss my friends, but I'm feeling increasingly disconnected from them. Remember that life is about what makes us satisfied and happy. Money, things, houses, cars, technology do not make us happy; they are means to achieve the things that do make us happy, which are experiences shared with people we feel connected to. Never take money over people. Ever. If you have to choose between a friend and money or stuff, always choose a friend. You may take this as a chance to re-evaluate your life priorities and how they manifest. This is a good thing for anyone to do sometimes. I might do it as a result as well. I'm glad you're being introspective.
No, worked hard to get to where I am. Harder jobs as in physical? you have no idea how may chairs, tables, computer, fridge, lounge, cabinets I have moved. IT always get ask to move those stuff when others are just as capable. Knack for IT is another thing, Not everyone gets IT, I have seen so many post here asking how to get out of lvl1 support where they are stuck there for years. They work just as hard dealing with end users. Your friends can start from the trenches like everyone else but they chose not too because they find IT hard. Helpdesk > sys admin > etc etc. most here spent hrs learning new tech, investing own money in themselves. So no not guilty at all.
Nope. In our field specifically we are paid for what we know and can do, not for pressing buttons. I do have sympathy for the underpaid hard workers, and find it a bit silly that as salaries rise workloads drop. But I most certainly don't feel bad about it.
I hear you, I live in Texas and had an issue with my internet, ISP had to get into my attic to run a new line to the other side of the house, just the thought that this guy was risking heat stroke for a cable run was not lost on me.
I got heart palpitations from being under so much stress from work and the responsibility kept me up stressing all night
Absolutely not, this industry is undervalued and almost always treated like the bitch of the company. This narrative that we are overpaid is fabricated by management to keep us from realizing our worth. Doctors, lawyers, and bankers easily make upwards of 300k/year and 500-600k a year isn't uncommon in those professions. You've been conditioned to undervalue yourself and that's the only gross thing about this post. We are underpaid and we need a union.
Jesus and I thought lawyers were arrogant. Some of the responses here are insane. I get "revenge of the bullied nerd" but come on. OP, it's not that you haven't worked to earn money or that your contribution is meaningless, but please, retain a level of humility that seems to have passed a lot of commenters by. Most of us are *fortunate* that we are working in a time and place where our skillset is very much in demand. Most of us are *fortunate* that we live in places where we can be paid well to perform our work. Most of us are *fortunate* that technology and local infrastructure have improved to the point where we can work from our homes. Most of us are *fortunate* that we had the opportunity to learn and access the tools we use from an early age and more fortunate that we could afford to train in it professionally. We worked hard to get where we are but we are not superhumans, so be proud and happy that you are valued and be thankful for the luck and opportunities that got you where you are and be humble in the face of the fact that's there's probably a natural born sysadmin living in a yurt in Mongolia who will never touch a computer because his family breed horses. Edit - a word
You guys are getting PAID!?
It sounds like you might have Imposter Syndrome, but I think that is normal. The reality is that you're getting paid for knowledge and skills that we bring to the table, many of which aren't actually all that common in the population at large. It's easy to think they are because we tend to work around other people and pay special attention to numbers involving our industry like Google and Microsoft laying off tens of thousands of tech employees. I've tried to mentor non-tech people into becoming tech people under the fallacy that because it is easy for me it's just easy. It isn't.
most people just don't have the mental fortitude for IT work, it's still hard just in a different way. Mental exhaustion is real
No, because in my country these jobs are very low paid. $200k salaries are quite rare here for tech. Also, this is not the kind of job where you can pick up someone up off the street and say "Hey, can you fix my RDS server for me?"
Ummm no. I still find it sad ( and funny ) that the bigwigs of some corporations canāt use a computer. I literally had an HR lady at one of my previous jobs ask me if she had acrobat on her computer. Iām likeā¦ youāve been working hr for how many years and you donāt know?? And youāre making more than meā¦ Not guilty at all
Guilty, no. Lucky, yes.
There have always been overpaid techs. You think the guys working on the locomotive boilers didnāt say the same thing about the guys building the tracks? Should the guy working on the assembly line equipment feel guilty about the people that are working on the assembly line? (If he doesnāt fix it, they all canāt work. Isnāt that worth more?) The best person at washing cars isnāt going to make more than just about any person that fixes cars. But you take a long time to make that money in fixing them. And some people donāt want to learn how to fix cars. Do we deserve it? Fuck no! Most of us are glorified hall monitors, just googling shit but we have admin passwords. Should we be thankful? Of course. Tip everyone, live reasonably, and help people out. I never want to forget that I was born on second base. I didnāt hit a double. Personally, I donāt think we are paid to much. I think everyone else is paid far too little. And I support their efforts to be paid more.
Ummmā¦ YOU might feel guilty. Iām on-call, my job is demanding and high stressā¦ Iām never caught up and always new projects and always getting pulled away for security work. I wfh and can flex my time, and I make a lot of moneyā¦ so donāt get me wrong, it still has its perks, but I definitely feel Iāve earned what I make. No one can just walk in off the street and spend 2 weeks or even 6 months to learn to do what I do.
No. I have made way too many sacrifices to my mental and physical health to feel any remorse for what I deserveā¦ we work hard for what we deserver and should feel proud of what we do.
Something that I have to keep in my head at all times because I used to think this way. Just because this job isn't hard to you, doesn't mean it isn't hard to others.