In-House IT Guy Vs Travelling IT Guy
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If you guys had the choice, would you go for a cushy in-house IT gig where you are responsible for one companie's IT affairs or would you rather work for an IT outsourcing firm that has you on the road and working remotely for different clients? Let's say compensation would be equal.
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I've done both and currently am doing the latter. If I had to go back to the 1st option it would be painful. Life is good right now...
I am in the same situation as you right now except for the being happy part. I made my company over $180,000 in the last fiscal year but I'm paid 65k with benefits. Knowing they are billing me out @ 120/hour, it's hard to be content until I get a 6 figure income. Am I expecting too much?
That's quite a low return for your employer actually. I'd say you might get your 6 figure income when your billing comes closer to 400k per year.
When I was earning £15 an hour, I was billed out at £120 an hour.
That seems absurdly low return on YOUR work. I did a contract a couple years ago where I was paid 50% of the bill out rate.
undomiel hit the nail on the head with the con of being a consultant: you never get to properly fix things the way they deserve. Most fixes/project implementations are simply "good enough", where you may spend weeks or months simply planning the project if you were in-house, to make sure it's done right. There's no such thing as continuous improvement for your client sites as a consultant, as you rarely see their every-day problems(since it costs them money to call you).
There are several upsides, though... if you're working for yourself, you get all the benefits(and cons) of being self-employed, mainly, being able to tell your boss to eff off as well as an extremely flexible schedule. If you're working for someone else, then about the only perk you get is an accelerated learning opportunity, since you're around a lot of different stuff all the time.
Personally, I enjoyed being in-house. Standard hours, good benefits, little travel, and being able to think about the possibility of attaining a "perfect network".
As an aside: undomiel, what part of Phoenix you in? I lived in N Phoenix around 101 and 7th St for seven years, having gone to high school there and working a couple places in N Phoenix/Scottsdale.
-Peanut
-Mayor Cory Booker
I personnally think it all comes down to the company your working for and their benifits.
Things to look at when considering IT outsourcing firms:
Hotel / food budget - Is the employer giving you enough to sleep in a nice hotel and do you get to eat at a nice restaurant every week/day or are you eating fast food every meal and sleeping in nasty hotels?
Paycheck Security - Does the company maintain a stable workload / is the company large enough for you to always have 40 hours a week? are you going to be on salary?
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I can't emphasize the above statement enough. I worked for small consulting firm that had had a hard time with steady work. Some weeks I had 20hrs billable others I had 65. They paid me $30hr salary and billed me out at $250. I left because I was tired of cleaning the owners garage in the slow months.
I now have a cushy govt job and don't plan on changing anytime soon.
Good luck.
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Mid-week, I am going to starting a new job with an IT consulting firm. All of my previous positions have been in-house. I am moving out of my "cushy" in house gig mainly because there is no advancement opportunities, no pay structure, and while my boss is definitely an easy laid back boss, he never wants to do anything as far as implementing new technologies. My manager hates our users so much, he has actually told me not to respond to requests right away and to delay pc deployments on purpose. Obviously, it makes sense for me to want to get out.
My new position will be with an IT consulting firm that has clients all over the area where I live. I look forward to getting a lot of exposure to different networks, implementing new technologies such as, VMWare, Citrix, and getting more knowledge with Server 2008. Overall, I think I will like being "on the road" as I love new challenges and I feel at my last job I got a bit bored as nothing ever changed. Another good aspect of my new job is that I like all the guys I have met, and I feel like I can lean from some of the senior personnel. With my current job, I usually end up showing my boss where things are, for example, he didn't even know how to force replication between DC'S. Oh, and with my new position, they allow up to 80 hours for further education opportunities ie- certs!!! They pay for all the training, materials and vouchers, so stocked!
Use this as an example, your company probably uses one spam filter and they have used it for years. You probably know it very well. I have used Cisco, WG *which is surprisingly good*, Postini, MX Logic, Barracuda, Edge Transport servers, AND have migrated between them.
I have done 6 exchange 2003 to exchange 2010 migrations and 6 exchange 2003 to 2007 conversions.
I have put in Cisco and Meraki wireless networks in hotels and in enterprise environments.
I did a large migration from a VPN hub and spoke network to a metro ethernet provider for a nine location medical practice.
etc, etc, (a bunch of VMWare work too) and that (besides the 2003 to 2007 conversions) was only in the last year.
If you are getting that amount of stimulation in internal IT than don't switch!
Yea I currently work for the GOV and I am internal but we have many assets which range from Vmware, server 2003, Oracle databases, and much more. Quite a few things that we have 5 system administrators on the team each of us having specific tasks and we all learn the technologies.
Though what I learned to get the big bucks people look for specialist more so than a jack of all trades individual.
In my very humble opinion its simply not good enough anymore to be a specialist. I could not work with other exchange admins who can't configure a firewall, they are simply noneffective in that roll. This is a topic for another thread though!
I've done both as well.. and as much as I liked being on the road, after five years or so I really felt like getting out and settling down a bit.
The good part of being on the road is all the people you get to meet and the various business and infrastructures you get to work with. The main downside for me.. I never felt like anything I did really mattered. I'd basically get in, do the job, and then get out.
I've been in-house for about four years now, and I can see that what I do impacts people for days, weeks, months or years, obviously depending on the task or project. I really feel being part of the 'bigger picture' and that is what's keeping me motivated.
Just my thoughts..
110% agreed on this!
This is almost me to a T. I was working the road life, well, not REALLY, i had about a 4 hour one way drive radius, and visited multiple local sites daily with the occasional outskirts of the state drive when a contract called for it but i was always home at night unless i was out of state training somewhere. But I did enjoy the onsite life on some level for the time I was there. The people, the never knowing whats coming that day, the experience on many differnet platforms and software... but like wheez it was unfulfilling. No one cared for the techs where i was, it was get in, get the job done, get out, get to the next one, number numbers numbers, go go go, sell sell sell. Yes the management tried to get US, the TECHS to upsell services while onsite, and would get frustrated with us when we couldn't. So I ultimately left of course.
NOW i'm in the cushy in house gig for coming up on 3 years and like it very much, and even though this gig paid more then my last, given the choice at even pay scale i think id still opt for in house. The whole bigger picture thing is a good way of putting it.
Or my twitter: www.twitter.com/securityslam
I think traveling, or at the very least visiting different sites is a huge benefit because you get exposure to many different infrastructures. An advantage many people don't have. You can see what works, what doesn't, how to and how not to do things.
More importantly, i think the trends in IT are moving away from traditional in house tech staffs. More and more i think there will be less and less traditional in house IT people and more jobs will be consulting/traveling type positions. So i think gaining that experience now can only help down the road.
Socially though it can be very disruptive and hard on families. So get a year or two of field experience and then go for site based roles with a bit of offsite work for variety sprinkled in and you are set.