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New CCNA Salary?

Yarrr

Hello everybody,

Just wanted to get an opinion on a salary.

Position: Network Engineer. Requires a few years of experience, associate's degree, CCNA preferred. Data/voice, cabling, and wireless duties. Major metropolitan area.

Salary offer is $40,000 with insurance/benefits. This is a public sector job, which means zero room for negotiation. It's not a significant increase from my jack-of-all-trades entry-level IT job that I have now.

Payscale.com says this salary is in the 9th percentile in my area, and that this is $10-15k lower than average.

So what's realistic? Is $40k a low salary, or is $50k+ inaccurate?

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Comments

networker050184

What is the area? Public sector for the most part is going to have lower salaries than private though in my experience.

Yarrr

networker050184 wrote: »

What is the area? Public sector for the most part is going to have lower salaries than private though in my experience.

Education.

markulous

That job description is kind of vague. You can't really base a salary off someone asking for a CCNA. Depending on the area, 40k isn't bad at all for an entry level network technician

networker050184

By area I meant location sorry for the confusion!

Yarrr

networker050184 wrote: »

By area I meant location sorry for the confusion!

Chicago area.

danny069

If it is public sector education then that seems about right. That being said, the type of salary given the location is lowball city.

joelsfood

If it's in the city proper, definitely low. Looks more like a network technicain or maybe network administrator salary, though hard to say without a better job description. That being said, I know many of us around here say "Chicago" for anything within 50-60 miles of the city, so a big difference in pay between a job in the Loop and a job south of I80

goldenlight

Chicago seems expensive.. Sounds like an Agency ad, But I could be wrong..

kohr-ah

Chicago area is a large definition.

Chicago area as in downtown or in the loop?
Chicago area as in northern burbs/western burbs/etc?

It really depends. If downtown downtown then yes that is a bit low if asking for a few years experience. But it also depends on if CPS is asking for it, a college is asking for it, etc.

If education in the burbs (like District 303 lets say) they may not have the budget for a high level engineer and bring a lower level on. They ask for a few years experience because that is what all the job ads ask for.

(For those not from Illinois, Chicago isn't bad except for living costs are high, gas is high, and the taxes down here suck. That is why they usually pay more to those in the city)

Yarrr

Suburbs. I don't want to be too specific for reasons of anonymity.

Also, it sucks because everything I've seen in the Chicago area is either:
1. Public position, associate's degree, relevant certifications, 1-3 years of experience preferred, and bottom of the barrel pay, or
2. Private sector, bachelor's required, 7-10 years of experience required, every cert under the sun required.

Edit: Or contract. Can't forget about that. Like a third of the descriptions I see are 6/9/12 month contract.

TheFORCE

Take the contracts, get the experience and aim for better public or private sector jobs.

bpenn

Yarrr wrote: »

Suburbs. I don't want to be too specific for reasons of anonymity.

Also, it sucks because everything I've seen in the Chicago area is either:
1. Public position, associate's degree, relevant certifications, 1-3 years of experience preferred, and bottom of the barrel pay, or
2. Private sector, bachelor's required, 7-10 years of experience required, every cert under the sun required.

Edit: Or contract. Can't forget about that. Like a third of the descriptions I see are 6/9/12 month contract.

Do these contracts have the possibility to stay on permanent?

Yarrr

bpenn wrote: »

Do these contracts have the possibility to stay on permanent?

Some are just contract, some are contract to hire. Having a mortgage, both options terrify me.