Current Job - Is it worth it?

Equus

Hello fellow Tech Exam Forum Members!

Been lurking around for awhile now and finally have something of interest to post.

I recently (about 7 months ago) took up an IT position that was along the lines of helpdesk, you know, level 1 resetting passwords, etc. This was at a fairly medium sized business with about 140 employees and multiple offices.

I used to work in another field entirely (unrelated to IT), but made a little bit more. Moving to this new place, my pay went down to $12 an hour. At the time of the transition I was still in college, so no degree yet. As the days went on though, my duties started to spill over into other "areas" so to speak such as as networking and systems administrator, exchange, etc. Furthermore, I've also negotiated contracts and been practically on call since day 1, taking phone calls on the weekends, etc.


Well a couple weeks ago I graduated with dual majors (Associates) in Networking and Systems Security and requested a raise/promotion, well even with everything I've done and my two degrees and my general performance, they felt that it didn't deserve a promotion into an actual "Systems Administrator", but raised my pay by about $3 an hour.

Now mind you I have no certifications yet, haven't gone down that path is I am still undecided where to go. As it stands, I work about 50+ hours a week and the fact that I am in a sense the only onsite IT guy for the entire company, makes it extremely stressful.

Is it worth riding this out until the end of the year just to be able to put all my job duties down on the resume? Or am I probably better off just getting another job that pays me what I am worth? I already know that if I attain some higher level Cisco or Microsoft certs that they definitely won't be able to come anywhere near what the people in surrounding area make.

Also, out of curiosity, would someone with only a year or so of IT experience and two degrees be worth more than $15 an hour?

I really appreciate any feedback on this, positive or negative. My first official job in IT and I feel like it might be my last.

For location relativity, I am in the Eastern NC area, about an hour from Raleigh.

Thanks!

healthyboy

No you deserve more,

job hop and go somewhere no point in staying in a company that wont give you what you want,

you being the only i.t guy is not easy,

what do you do on a daily basis,

who looks after the servers and network swithces?

swild

I am in a similar situation. I got my job a little over a year ago and am just now finishing up WGU with my BS. I asked if I would be eligible for a raise and they said they would consider it after I have been with the company for 2 years. Luckily, I negotiated a pretty decent salary when I came on so I am not in a hurry to give notice yet, but I am looking for a better position since the salary was good for me at the time, but I am much better qualified now. I have more experience than you and a few certs, but if you feel you are worth more than your current position is able to pay, it's time to look elsewhere, just don't walk out until you have something else in line.

Equus

We have a support group so to speak, but everything comes to me first and there have been many times this group has been unavailable to fix problems, so they then fall on me.

In a given day I'll be performing more systems administration duties than help desk, such as repairing downed servers, diagnosing and fixing network trouble, monitoring server performance and increasing resources, etc.

I've got no trouble with the occasional above and beyond, but I've worked my tail off these past months and realized it got me practically nowhere.

VAHokie56

If I was you...I would start to cert up with a pro level M$ cert or something else that relates to the experience I have ( or whatever your more passionate about ) keep the job you have while your studying for said cert. Start fishing...put the resume on the boards and see what bites.

tprice5

1.5 year in IT and im at 30/hr.

My job is IT/Development though and I have my BS and a couple certs.

You may possess system admin skills, but you need the certs to reflect those skills. A hiring manger would be taking a risk on you by allowing you a position with zero certs.

My advice, cert up with the MCITP:EA and make some good money. The government will pay you $180,000/yr to go overseas with that cert.

lantech

7 months of experience you might be able to find a better paying job, how much is any ones guess. Why not put what you are currently doing on your resume now?

Certs aren't required to find a job. If you send your resume in you just might get an interview and show someone what you are worth. All they can do is say no. Just make sure you have another job before you quit this one.

matt333

tprice5 wrote: »

My advice, cert up with the MCITP:EA and make some good money. The government will pay you $180,000/yr to go overseas with that cert.

that kind of money would be very hard for me to turn down.. I hope I never get that call because I would probably take it

Danielh22185

Having the Certs is always a plus but being able to show what you can do based on your experience level would get you where you want to be. In my honest opinion your position is a severely under paid position for what you are doing. Sounds to me you are a blend of sys admin, desktop, hardware, and other help desk roles. My first IT / Help Desk role I came on at $16/hr and I had far less privileges than you have doing what you are doing, I basically reset passwords all day with a change up of setting up Outlook profiles, etc. I guess it also depends on the company too. I was working for a large corporation 150,000+ people.

If I were you I would update your resume detailing all the functions you perform as it seems like a pretty advanced help desk role. Start applying around for positions. However, one thing I do like to see as a manager and a person that does interviews on a very consistent basis, I like to see that someone has been somewhere for at least a year. Anything shorter than a year is really is hard to determine what all you really learned from that role and how it may have progressed you in your career.

In the months leading up to your 1 year going after a cert might not be a bad idea.

the_Grinch

I'll be the bad guy here and say you are being compensated at about the right rate given what you have. $12 to $15 is a nice size jump and it is rare to find a company willing to put forth such a big raise. For perspective, I have certs, a BS, and coming up on 3 years of full time experience (had about 3 years of part time experience) with pay at $21 an hour (plus profit share). I do much of the same work you do, with roughly the same amount of users, but no other helpdesk other then my boss. You're focus at this point should be experience and certification. Fresh out of school, with certs, and the part time experience I started at $35000 a year (around about what your making, I think you're pegged at about $33000 if they aren't giving you the overtime you are working).

My first job was awful, twice a month I would ride 3 hours away because they didn't replace the part time IT guy when he left. I worked on servers, networking equipment, phones, and basically anything that plugged into electric. That being said, it taught me a lot about what it meant to be an IT person and how to look for the right company to work for. It's a rat race and for the lower positions there are tons of people fresh out of school willing to take the job. So soak up that experience, get working on the certifications, and finish your bachelors. Given all that you'll be in fine shape to make some dough. Good luck!

VAHokie56

If you want to make the big bucks you need to spealize...I did help/desk side support for 2 years then went down the Cisco road and I am close to 6 figures now and will certainly make that much hopefully by the end of 2012. I have an assicoates degree in a non IT related field and the certs listed to the left.

m3zilla

I agree with the_Grinch. $15 for 7 months of experience is a decent pay. What do you consider a system admin? Your definition may be different than those in the field. When you say you're troubleshooting server/network issues, what are you doing? Just because you are able to get a host to talk to a server, doesn't necessarily mean you should be a network admin.

I don't know where you live, but it would seem a bit unrealistic to pay you over 40k given you only have 7 months of experience, most of which appears to be along the line of "that broke? Let me google how to fix it". You kind of remind me of a guy I used to work with. He was a "Desktop Admin" who was doing sys admin work because they fired the last guy and haven't hired someone else yet. While he was able to "fix" issue, it was all bandaid fixes. He did enough to get it to work, without knowing what the root cause was.

YuckTheFankees

My opinion: Update your resume and started sending it out. After my 1st 6 months of I.T. (NOC/linux support making $13), I was able to land another NOC job with a large ISP for almost double the money.

techdudehere

If there are only 140 users, you probably will not make much money there. I am guessing the benefits are not very good either. On the other hand, you have an opportunity to learn a lot. Rather than leave this place, why don't you try to make things better? First of all, downed servers should be rare. If that's not the case, you need to fix your environment. Get better UPSs, correct temperatures, P2V crap and out of warranty servers, have 4 hour onsite parts. Try to get the company to replace desktops in big groups or at least use a consistent model so that imaging is not a pain. Take their admin rights away so they can't screw their machines up as bad. Write a policy that prevents constant chaos, for example if you request software installed expect up to 72 hours for a response, after 3 attempts to contact the ticket is closed, etc. Tell them you want weekend calls to be emergency only. If they are unwilling to work with you to fix this broken system, then soak up the experience and start making contacts and finding out about other companies in the area, find out how they operate, find out the inside story. If you don't want to be a one man team, ask them to hire a mentor. Basically, an MSP could send out an experienced tech from time to time to help you with projects and planning.

Iristheangel

@OP - Most of the time, you're not going to be making much money for your first year of experience doing IT. Since you only have 7 months of experience, it might be to your disadvantage to have to explain why you only stayed for 7 months on your resume. Unfortunately, most employers don't place a high value on a 2 year degree but you have a employer willing to give you a decent % raise for one. My recommendation is to wait it on for at least 5 more months, pick up a few more certifications while you wait, and THEN come back to the bargaining table. Keep your expectations realistic.

Equus

Thanks everyone for the wisdom! I've decided that I am just going to try to tough through it and hope the light comes at the end of the tunnel. To answer some questions though:

I have been working to "un-bandaid" things. My predecessor used band aids left and right and now they are coming apart. A good example is using .bat files in the startup folder on all the machines (including servers) that had manual route add statements. When I began to repair network segments and things weren't coming up and began to troubleshoot, it blew my mind when I found these. Routing was not being performed at the routers, but at the servers and the workstations.

Active Directory is a complete Charlie Foxtrot, that is something I am actively working on fixing. One person might have 10 different AD accounts, all similar named. My definition of an "Admin" is of any person that takes control of the situation to remedy it and that understands the concepts behind it. I might not have advanced skills that all of you do when it comes to say Exchange or IIS, but I most certainly know when something is done wrong and what should be done to rectify it (as my example above, manual route add statements).

I am not expecting to be a CIO on this, but also, not expecting to be called a "Level 1" when I am doing way above that (generally your help desk boys don't negotiate vendor contracts and the like, as well as make proposals for projects). It could be more that along the lines of some people just not understanding IT perhaps? Regardless, I am definitely learning.

I've also realized that a jack of all trades pulls you into too many directions to really focus on one technology, which could be both good or bad depending on where you wish to go. I've read some people on here say that if you are comfortable in your job, its time to move on and that what I am working with now is a godsend to interact with all the different technologies, unfortunately stress is not a kind beast and has definitely taken a toll on my ability to spend hours at home studying like I used to do.

In the end though, I plan on staying and hopefully this December I'll at least have gone for my CCNA and a MCST certification. I'm really enjoying VMWare though, so its been hard to decide where to go. If my original post came off as me being the type that can only see the $, then that was not what I was going for. I would rather work at a 60k a year job and be happy, than a 120k a year job and be miserable if you know what I mean.

Thanks again everyone for your much needed input ^_^

TallDarknFugly

It's your call. You can either sit there and allow them to tell you what you're worth OR test the waters and find out.

I was in a similar situation about 4yrs ago. I was working hard but was compensated at a rate of about half of some of the guys on the team (granted they'd been working at the same desk for a little more than half my entire life at the time) but I enjoyed the work and so gave it my all, while working hard to earn my degree at night. Well, i eventually earned my degree and approached the lead for a raise. The lead was a pretty awesome guy and worked with me to make a strong case for a raise, but unfortunately, management wasn't interested in paying more.

So I made my move. A month after this disappointment, I was earning almost twice my salary. 2 yrs later, almost 3 times as much as the initial. My degree is also in Security, but I have some certs to go with it. I'd say work on your certs, but start searching for another gig now. It doesnt take much to search while maintaining your present gig. Best of luck.

I was beated down when i realized I wasn't getting that raise after earning my degree. All along I had thought it was the reason why I was underpaid, so it was only logical that when I earned it, I will get paid better. The reality is your current employers has little incentive to pay you significantly more than you earn already, because they already know that you will work for less. 2% - 10% may be as good as it gets for an in-house raise. You will have to look elsewhere to get that fresh respect. You can earn all the degrees you want, but you will always be the same guy they paid $X last week to your employers. Move on.