Without being On Call it seems you only can get low paying IT Jobs?

Bchen2

Im a firm believer in work life balance as a parent I have kids to attend to after work since someone has to watch them since my wife works the swing shift during the week and someone has to watch the kids
I was lookin to advance more my career but seems im stuck only with help desk and desktop which pay low (45k to 80k) but offered the work life balance i need

My original career path was working with systems now i was goin to take a junior system admin position but the long hours and on call 24/7 made me turn it away i need to be home with my kids

Its hard to advance my career when i need to be home with my family i dont wanna leave IT but may need a different career path advice
Other areas of IT i was interested in was IT business

But im lost at this point where i want to go i personally wanted to make big money learning systems but i also considered IT business or a.Desktop Career maybe where i can lead a team

alxx

Work life balance + reasonable money 70 - 90k wins in my book especially with having kids
but I'm more of a developer/specialist support (digital signage). Sort of a cross between maintenance programming, new feature development, systems development, escalated support and on call (but only mon - fri).

I've got to chance to step into a senior dev role but means 50+ hours weeks.

Can't do an ops or even dev ops role that lets you work from home ?

NetworkVeteran

I specialize in networking, but I and several of my colleagues rake-in $150k+ without being on-call. What have you done to stand out and prove your value-add beyond the competition? The money's out there if you're passionate, knowledgeable, and have basic people skills. I would probably need to become stronger in the managerial realm to break $200k.

BigTone

Don't be afraid of ön-call jobs. I've been in an "on call" position for the past 8 years and its not going to kill your family life. Go after the jobs you think sound great and ask them what typical experiences with being on call is like.

ImThe0ne

BigTone wrote: »

Don't be afraid of ön-call jobs. I've been in an "on call" position for the past 8 years and its not going to kill your family life. Go after the jobs you think sound great and ask them what typical experiences with being on call is like.

Agree, depending on the size of your team and what you are specializing in, on-call are pretty laid back. Have been on-call for the last 3 years either 24/7 365 or rotating 1 week out of every month. You just plan around those weeks. I am on the server side of things, so 99% of my stuff can be done from the house. Most places are like this.

markulous

Some on-call stuff isn't too bad. Big difference from you have to respond to an alert on your day off remotely from your home and getting woken up at 2am because someone forgot their password.

phantasm

On call isn't too bad. Depending on how the company manages it, you could get a call often or not at all. I've been in both situations. I've seen weeks where I worked 70hrs and other's where I work 40hrs and thats it. There are a lot of factors involved in on call rotations, the biggest of which is the Network you work in and the support it has (IE: competent NOC).

dave0212

Unfortunately it is the nature of the IT beast, there is always an expectation to be available 24/7 as the infrastructure has to be, just in case someone wants to do work at 11pm, the impact of on-call will pretty much depend on the nature of the business, I have worked customer facing and internal support over a 10 year period of on-call and generally internal facing is less impacting and I think in that 10 years I have only had to attend site once for a fault and that was a total outage of a data center at 2am, if the infrastructure is well designed you should be able to do everything from a laptop remotely with little impact to family life.

With regard to long hours I have always worked general office hours with the occasional outage happening 5 mins before leaving the door and there is an expectation to hang around and fix

But agree with previous comments if you know the rota ahead of time you can make arrangements during your scheduled on-call

kohr-ah

I did 24x7x365 for 4 years. I got called maybe 10 to 12 times in that span as a total

Don't shy away because of that.

Mitechniq

As a father, I admire your dedication to your children. I've had opportunities to make a significant amount more than I do now. My wife sometimes feels sad, and like my family is holding me back from some really good career moves. I enjoy being able to see my kids play sports and have dinner ready for my wife when she gets home. So I have been conscious of the jobs I've taken, and I still managed to make more than 80k. For reference, I live an hour north of Austin (just to compare your location). You will notice that the amount work and time dedicated to a job is not always a direct correlation to the amount of money you will make. If you develop a skill that is highly valuable, then the importance of the work means more than the amount of work.
It's completely doable, continue to grow as a father and don't give up on your dreams.

NotHackingYou

I've had on call gigs were I was called 2-3x a week on average and gigs where my phone wouldn't ring for months - it just depends on what you are supporting.

networker050184

It's usually the mid level positions that have on call. Once you move higher up the food chain you aren't really in that realm of day to day operations anymore. Put in the time and sacrifice to reap in the rewards. Nothing comes easy!

TheFORCE

My first position I was on call 1 weekend per month.
Second position I was on call 1 week per month.
Third position I was on call on as needed and best effort.
Forth position is a salary position with on call possibility but so far no on call at all.
just because a position has on call doesn't mean you will be the only person doing on call. Besides, if you are ever on call you use a company ownee laptop, log in for 5-10 minutes, do what you have to do and that's it. You get paid for 1.5 hours when you only put in 15 minutes.