Promoted to VoIP engineer, but raise was tiny

ehnde

Hi guys. I just got promoted to VoIP engineer and went from 47k/year --> 49k/year. They are going to be spending appx $10k training me within the next 12 months. My pay range caps out at 80k/year (not adjusting for COLA increases).

My certs under my name are pretty up to date, the most relevant being CCNA and CCNA:Sec along with 5 years of IT experience (some of that being in a NOC).

Does this seem fair? I have a family to take care of, so stability is very important. This job will entail a main site with appx 4000 IP phones and at least 30 remote sites. I'll be tasked with replacing a legacy PBX (it's no longer supported) over the next 2 years and an additional 250k in funds will be dumped into our infrastructure for IP telephony. I feel this is a huge undertaking, and it is my responsibility to spearhead this effort.

This is a huge opportunity, but the pay seems low. What would you do? I am committed to staying at least one more year, but I'm not really sure beyond that.

I am on a term break from WGU and will be finished with my B.S. in June 2013. Right now I'm pursuing the CCNA:Voice and will probably attempt the exam in January.

ajs1976

Seems low for a project of that scope. Get the experience and go.

Excellent1

Agreed, get the experience and move on. Unfortunately, when moving up within a company, you will often be given very minor pay increases as you are promoted. This has been the case at several places I've seen. I'd be willing to bet that you'll be amazed at some of the offers you'll receive, given your experience. Don't be afraid of being labeled a job hopper--sometimes it takes a move or two to get your salary in line with your experience. Good luck.

atorven

Did you directly ask if a bigger increase was possible? To me that seems piss poor compared to the project that you will be undertaking.

ehnde

No, I did not. They were looking to fill the role with someone internal (it's a new position) and I had some serious competition. I thought very hard about asking for more...the decision was not an easy one. My reasoning is that in 1 - 2 years if they are not willing to pay something closer to what the rest of the market is paying I could get higher pay either somewhere in town or in a major city 45 minutes from where I live now.

It has been bugging me, but looking back on things my pay has increased a total of $7/hour in the past 1.5 years.

Honestly now I don't know that I should have posted this thread. Guess I needed to vent a little?

More and more I see in the line of work we do if you are seriously working hard at improving (if you post here you probably fall in this category), you can make 20k+ every 1 - 2 years by job hopping. It's a little bit disheartening when you LIKE where you are at.

phoeneous

Do you have voice experience?

matt333

I would stay there for a maybe 6-12 month just to get a few good projects under the belt then leave for more money, no since in staying at a place your not valued.

Zartanasaurus

If you stay:
A year from now, you'll have a year of major VoIP engineer experience and can command a much better salary.

If you leave:
What kind of job could you get right now with your experience?

networkjutsu

Excellent1 wrote: »

Unfortunately, when moving up within a company, you will often be given very minor pay increases as you are promoted. This has been the case at several places I've seen. I'd be willing to bet that you'll be amazed at some of the offers you'll receive, given your experience.

This is very true. I had very little increase from one department to another. I did, however, get a significantly large pay raise (~20%) after one year in one of the departments I was in. Though, I asked for a good raise due to my contributions to the group. I didn't expect to see that much raise though. In general, that Fortune 50 company is not really well known of paying good money to begin with and that's why people are now starting to realize it and are now looking to jump ship. Things might have changed now with the new hires but they are/were paying their network engineers for a bargain. I had no choice but to suck it up for few years because I lacked experience.

atorven

I would stay and get the experience.

jmritenour

Here's another vote for stay and get the experience. As many others have stated, it's very common that most companies don't give much of an increase in promotions, with the train of thought being that you make "X" now, so you should be happy with "X + 10%".

The value it will add to your resume will pay off at some point for sure.

BigMevy

Take the experience and the training. A year from now you'll be much better off, and if they aren't willing to appropriately adjust your salary, you'll have a solid resume to start job hunting.

halaakajan

Stay, get the experience and work on getting Cisco Voice certifications.

N2IT

4% pay bump for changing positions is pretty cheap imo.

Honestly it depends on where you are at in your career. I see this statement "you are gaining experience", and this may be true, but I still think you are getting ripped off a bit. I like the idea of 10k training sounds like a win - win between you and your employer.

Overall the deal sounds average at best.

Good luck on your endeavours.

NotHackingYou

Sometimes your pay is $$, sometimes your pay is experience. In this case, your pay is going to be in experience. I recommend staying and doing the best job you can do and learning everything you can. When you have the projects under your belt that add huge value your resume you will be able to move on with a much more competitive salary than if you move on now.

kohr-ah

I also vote stay.

While you did get promoted some companies also base it off of how much you got over the past year to two years to what to give.

I would get the experience and see what doors open up and if possible get your CCVP, Or CCNP-Voice or whatever they renamed it to now, which might be part of the training. That will open doors even further and get you the money you have been looking for.

Then in about a year or close to should you not be where you wanna be see what else is out there.

redfrick

Wow, this is a huge task for someone without a lot of VOIP experience (I'm assuming here). Quite the opportunity though and will look great on your resume. Learning how to replace legacy PBX systems can be quite lucrative in the future if you decide to go voice.

It's also a lot harder to find qualified VOIP guys than it is networking guys in my experience. I interview both from time to time and it's such a pain in the butt to find voice guys. Get the experience and training and move on.

stlsmoore

Get the voice experience but I'm surprised they're having this be tackled by one person. I usually only hear about these type of projects done by the guys with serious CCIE: Voice level of experience. Migrating from the old PBX's might be a pain but you'll gather a ton of experience, but there's also a TON of stuff to learn. Everything from getting the correct firmware loaded on phones, dial-plans (very important to get this right), sizing gateways, and everything in between man you're going to be busy. But if you make out on the other end without to many scratches and can get some certs I bet you could hit 6 figs pretty easy.

I did my first analog PBX migration to our Cisco VoIP phone system for about 30 phones this past weekend and it kinda sucked lol. I even had a consultant that had tons of experience with the analog stuff so that helped a lot, we still couldn't get the analog over head paging system working yet. Spent a lot of time reading over 20 year old analog PBX manuals and looking at punch down blocks this past Saturday

shodown

4000 IP phones usually goes to someone with some serious experience. I'm working on a slightly larger project than that right now and its being lead by a CCIE who's the Architect and 3 CCNP V who are doing the design and implementation. We also still have the customers staff who will be doing implementation as well. I'm not sure if you have a partner to work with but thats a lot of work for 1 person and it can turn into a huge disaster if not done correctly.

sieff

It's doubtful you'll be doing that work on your own. I've done a few 5000+ phone deployments and I normally lead the design and deployment with the help of about 2-3 other deployment engineers. This type of job generally commands a guy with Cisco UC experience and I'd say a salary of at least $100K+. I'd definitely get the experience as you could possibly certify on CCNA-V/CCNP-V and then command a higher salary. If the expectation is for you to go to training and then do most of the work you're getting taken advantage of. My .02

sieff

just saw the 30 remote sites also ... not sure why your company didn't just use a Cisco Gold Partner to do the work. that's the best way to do it efficiently. doing it internally would require UC experience and Project Management.

higherho

Get the exp and then leave, I typically waited a year after I got promoted into a higher position and then asked for a pay raise. Once I was declined I then I stayed a little longer until I found something else.

kurosaki00

I agree with the stay and gain experience
do the job for a good year, prove them you were/are the man(woman?) for it

then drop the salary bomb
They cant say no, you just proved them for a year you did your job well.

SteveO86

Stay and get the experience. Take pride in your work, learn all you can, and do it correctly.

When I was promoted to my first networking position it was only a 4k increase to 42k/yr I stuck it out for 2-3 years then moved on to a considerable pay increase (followed by another a year later)

Death Dream

I'm with everyone else on this as well. At the very least, until you get the experience needed to move on. The company is obviously only looking in the best interest of themselves here, so you can do that as well.

jibbajabba

It depends also under what conditions you receive that $10k training. If they don't make you sign a contract where you have to pay x-amount back when leaving under x-amount of years - then you could potentially add that to your net salary (on paper anyway) .. if they do ask for you to stay for a certain amount of time (or if not, asking you to pay partially for it) - then I agree - take it, put it on your resume and mvoe on.