Find an IT job that pays well and doesn't destroy my sanity, health, or saving account

tw14

The current I.T. help desk support job that I've been on at for the past several years, started out extremely well paid for the type of technical support position it was, especially considering it has a lot of customer service aspects to it. About 25% of the calls are primarily customer support, while 65% is technical support, and there's also about 10% that would easily be considered technical writing and editing. As I'm often editing other coworkers submitted tickets...due to the type of work. Additionally the hours are consistently 40 straight hours a week.With full benefits of health insurance, and vacation/sick time paid.

The issues I've been facing beginning about three years ago, is that the annual pay increase is now only roughly ten cents per hour increase. My starting wage that was $15.50 an hour several years back, is today at just $17.70 an hour. Within the past several months I've been making use of remote connection/access software to do admin related elevated installs and other required tasks. I'm also now supporting mobile phones the same I would support laptops, tablets, and workstations. And, well, a wide assortment of other tasks. Additionally some users now "expect" detailed outline-ish email to be typed up and emailed to them about steps that I went through during the calls, so that they can have the "essay's" for various reasons. Along with that there are just a lot more users contacting in for all varieties of technical (and occasionally customer assistance) support then in the past.

The company I work for does have advancement opportunities....but, that's for individual's willing to work double the hours, And can support multiple users at the same time, calls, emails, and messenger at the same time.Though the additional increase in pay for that is only roughly $2.00 per hour, which comes out to between $3,840 and $7,680 additional a year for an extreme amount of extra work.

I certainly don't mind a reasonable amount of increase in work, so long as there's a comparable pay increase, and so long as I can still have a "life" in my free time. The other big issue I've been facing is that when searching for jobs, the jobs are paying lower then what I started making in my present job. Or the jobs that do have a very nice pay, are in fact temporary contract work, which I've learned better then to touch those. Other jobs yet that I've seen that have reasonable looking pay and benefits, fall into that "sweat shop" factor regarding work hours and work loads.

I've only found a few jobs that are right in the "goldie lock" zone of reasonable work load for a reasonable nice pay (and considerably more than my current pay. But apparently those have a lot of people applying for those as I've not been hearing back from any of those.

So I'm still looking for a IT job that's a great step up from what I'm currently doing, where the pay is comparable for the technical skills and knowledge that are used,

itdept

These questions get asked often. Generally the responses are about where do you live, will you relocate?
Do you have any certs?
There probably won't be "advancement opportunities", you get your biggest pay raises moving on.

JDMurray

itdept said:

There probably won't be "advancement opportunities", you get your biggest pay raises moving on.

Yes, where in-place promotions are rare, you will need to move to a different department or project to get a higher salary level. This is just the way the game is played in many large corporations.

Johnhe0414

Try looking into local government jobs, such as with the city, county, state. Many of them have good starting positions that will help you with your career in IT. www.governmentjobs.com