Is There Money in Technology?

In looking at various job sites and in my dealings with various companies I've begin to wonder if you can make great money in technology. If given the right amount of education and experience can you make $200000+ a year? I know it shouldn't be just about the money, but with bills to pay and all the other good things life throws at you I wonder if I'm doomed to be poor my entire life...

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Hyper-Me

I wouldnt consider 200,000$ a year to be poor by any means. I dont consider 60k a year to be "poor" honestly.

Can you make 200k a year in IT? sure.

What percentage of people in IT will? Id say less than .00001%

eMeS

the_Grinch wrote: »

In looking at various job sites and in my dealings with various companies I've begin to wonder if you can make great money in technology. If given the right amount of education and experience can you make $200000+ a year? I know it shouldn't be just about the money, but with bills to pay and all the other good things life throws at you I wonder if I'm doomed to be poor my entire life...

I personally have no problem with career decisions being "just about the money." We all need to get whatever we need. If it was fun to do it would be called something like "s ex" instead of what it is called, "work".

To answer your question, yes. Quite easily in fact depending on what you're willing to do/where you're willing to work. I'd say it's easier to break into that level as an independent vs. as a direct employee at a company. However, there are some direct employees at companies that make that much.

If you did 1099 work that's roughly equivalent to billing yourself at $100 per hour. There are many activities out there that pay this much or more.

It's also not uncommon for management types, once you consider salaries, bonuses and total compensation, to break well past that level. The thing to keep in mind there is that you will likely be giving up hands on technology work.

MS

msteinhilber

You can make plenty of money in IT if you work hard enough. What amount of money is considered to be "great" is really subjective though. Rewind back 5 years ago and I was upset if I wasn't around 100k a year. I've had a lot of life experiences that range from blowing money like it grew on trees back when I had few expenses (no kid, not a homeowner then) to being more frugal after settling down. I was honestly not as happy when I made more money than I do now, partly due to the job I had but in a way it was also partly to just having much more money than I needed and letting that get me away from enjoying the small things in life.

Like you said though, it shouldn't be all about the money but that doesn't mean you should completely exclude money from your career path decisions. But I think you should really set your expectations on where you would like to be and how much money you really need to get there. I make less than half of what I did many years ago at just 45k a year now. I'm sending out $1200+ a month in support to the soon to be ex (as per temp. agreement) and fee's to my lawyer and facing living on my own single income once again. Money is certainly tight, but I've grown past the point of my life where I desire material things and value time with friends, family, and my son far more. Once I let loose of my wishes to be driving around in a nice high end car, build a bigger house all decked out to my liking, and all the other things I felt I needed is when I really found happiness. Now I can be perfectly happy so long as I can pay my bills and have a couple extra bucks here and there for some enjoyment.

Didn't intend for this post to turn into a preach about my own views, but I think a lot of people get hung up on a certain dollar amount thinking that's the happy spot. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind driving something like a Nissan GT-R, building a nice but smaller (500k or so) home as I wanted, etc... but I can be just as happy without em

mikej412

the_Grinch wrote: »

I've begin to wonder if you can make great money in technology.

Absolutely!

rsutton

That's not uncommon here in the SF bay, actually almost all of the IT guys I work with make over 100k, some over 150k as full time employees in the private sector. We also pay a lot more for housing so it's not like we are ballin out of control. Not to sound cheesy, but there is a lot to be said about being content with what you have. I find the times I cherish most are the nights spent with friends.

veritas_libertas

I know a SysAdmin in Michigan making six-figures.

mikedisd2

So cough up, where are the 6-figures jobs to be had?

Security, networking?
Any technical areas or just management / c-titles?

eMeS

mikedisd2 wrote: »

So cough up, where are the 6-figures jobs to be had? Security, networking?
Any technical areas or just management / c-titles?

Some thoughts....

Management
Trainers easily break $100k
Project Management (IT and non-IT)
Business Analysis
Specialized coders/developers
*nix admins
WebSphere installation/support
Various consulting activities
Source code librarians
IT auditors
Mainframe automation
Mainframe system programmers

etc...

Probably for many jobs out there, someone can find an example of someone that was making over $100k doing it....

As always, YMMV...

MS

binarysoul

Unless you get into senior management, e.g. VP of IT operations at a large corporation, making $200,000 as an admin is at least rare if not nonexistent.

GAngel

binarysoul wrote: »

Unless you get into senior management, e.g. VP of IT operations at a large corporation, making $200,000 as an admin is at least rare if not nonexistent.

Exactly the few markets that pay that rate you'd probably be paying 60-80k on housing so you're not better of ahead. 200k is cio territory. 200k non c-suite jobs in general are very uncommon unless you're counting bonuses at large finance companies.

Even the big money off shore contracts are scaling back big time.

eMeS

binarysoul wrote: »

Unless you get into senior management, e.g. VP of IT operations at a large corporation, making $200,000 as an admin is at least rare if not nonexistent.

I would agree to some extent, but I would qualify it by saying that for most of the roles that are discussed on this site, this is true. There are however many IT roles that pay well above $100k, and some into the $200k range.

We're in the process of bidding on one role that pays $3k per day at the moment. We will likely pay the person that does this role between $1000 - $1500 per day.

In most any field it pay often depends on knowing what's both in demand and has a limited supply of people available to do it....

MS

networker050184

eMeS wrote: »

In most any field it pay often depends on knowing what's both in demand and has a limited supply of people available to do it....

MS

Thats what it comes down to basically. There are tons of people that know how to do the day to day admin duties on a MS or Cisco infrastructure so those jobs aren't going to demand the big bucks. There are a lot fewer people that can design those infrastructures from the ground up (properly) so that would demand more money. Its all about supply and demand.

eMeS

networker050184 wrote: »

Thats what it comes down to basically. There are tons of people that know how to do the day to day admin duties on a MS or Cisco infrastructure so those jobs aren't going to demand the big bucks. There are a lot fewer people that can design those infrastructures from the ground up (properly) so that would demand more money. Its all about supply and demand.

Well put.

Most of the jobs/roles discussed here are well supplied and have mediocre demand.

MS

NetworkingStudent

the_Grinch wrote: »

In looking at various job sites and in my dealings with various companies I've begin to wonder if you can make great money in technology. If given the right amount of education and experience can you make $200000+ a year? I know it shouldn't be just about the money, but with bills to pay and all the other good things life throws at you I wonder if I'm doomed to be poor my entire life...

Certification Magazine's 2009 Salary Survey - Certification Magazine
Yes, according to certification magazine..
On the high end, security garnered the greatest number of respondents who make more than $200,000 (2 percent). Security is one area that has bounced back and forth between first place and lower down the top five in recent years, placing fourth last year in terms of average salary by specialization.

The majority of respondents in a wide range of specializations reported an average salary range of $100,000 to $109,999, including application development; database administration; IT instruction; security; software programmer; strategic systems design and implementation; storage design and implementation; network design and implementation; network management; IT project planning and implementation; and information assurance. Of those, storage design and implementation led the pack, with 17 percent of respondents reporting that particular salary range. This comes as no surprise, as this same specialization took second place in last year’s Salary Survey.
This year, in addition to having the most respondents making $100,000 to $109,999, strategic systems design and implementation also had about 9 percent of its respondents making $110,000 to $119,999; 7 percent with $120,000 to $129,999; 5.5 percent with $130,000 to $139,999; and a little over 3 percent with $150,000 to $159,999. This specialization was in first place last year in terms of salary by specialization.

GAngel

NetworkingStudent wrote: »

Certification Magazine's 2009 Salary Survey - Certification Magazine
Yes, according to certification magazine..
On the high end, security garnered the greatest number of respondents who make more than $200,000 (2 percent). Security is one area that has bounced back and forth between first place and lower down the top five in recent years, placing fourth last year in terms of average salary by specialization.

The majority of respondents in a wide range of specializations reported an average salary range of $100,000 to $109,999, including application development; database administration; IT instruction; security; software programmer; strategic systems design and implementation; storage design and implementation; network design and implementation; network management; IT project planning and implementation; and information assurance. Of those, storage design and implementation led the pack, with 17 percent of respondents reporting that particular salary range. This comes as no surprise, as this same specialization took second place in last year’s Salary Survey.
This year, in addition to having the most respondents making $100,000 to $109,999, strategic systems design and implementation also had about 9 percent of its respondents making $110,000 to $119,999; 7 percent with $120,000 to $129,999; 5.5 percent with $130,000 to $139,999; and a little over 3 percent with $150,000 to $159,999. This specialization was in first place last year in terms of salary by specialization.

You left out that its a world wide survey and that all the scandanavian countries and switzerland/aus have higher salaries in general than in N/A. 100k in norway is not even close to that in most U.S markets. I'm pretty sure that only 7% of the U.S population makes over 100k it's still not the norm.

Andretii

I don't know why am I reading this post since I make over 6 figures. As in $0,000,000. I know my numbers.

mikej412

I've worked on advanced projects with highly qualified people where the lowest paid people on the teams were the managers.

In my last job as an employee, I was paid more than the CEO of our publically traded company. Of course his stock options were for $5 and $10 (and more plentiful) while mine were for $25. Plus I'm sure he had other perks and compensation that weren't obvious from the SEC reports.

binarysoul

phoeneous wrote: »

I'm happy I even have a job let alone making just under $60k.

Excellent answer

Half a bread is better than a full one if the later one brings too much stress

HeroPsycho

mikedisd2 wrote: »

So cough up, where are the 6-figures jobs to be had? Security, networking?
Any technical areas or just management / c-titles?

I'm a consultant for a Microsoft/Cisco/VMware heavy partner. I make six figures, and it's not a large metropolitan area by any means. I do VMware, Exchange, AD designs, evals, deployments...

ColbyG

$200k in IT (non-management) is rare in my area, and the other areas I've lived/worked in. Hell, that's high even for middle management.

Hyper-Me

mikej412 wrote: »

I've worked on advanced projects with highly qualified people where the lowest paid people on the teams were the managers.
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In most states this is against the law.