Salary Expectations with Experience

This will be difficult to answer I'm sure, but here it goes anyway. I've been looking towards the future and of course the salary that will come with the experience. Though my job title is NOC/Helpdesk Tech, but I am a system administrator. Working for an MSP, you're expected to fix just about everything and there are projects that I get to work on that involve server upgrades, etc. I am coming up on two years of fulltime employment with my current company and 8 months with the previous one. Not trying to pat myself on the back, but I am good at my job. So discounting certs, with 5 years of system administration level experience would it be unrealistic to think I could hit 70k a year? I'm 30 minutes from Philadelphia, 45 minutes from Delaware (bank Mecca of the world), and 2 hours from NYC.

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Mrock4

the_Grinch wrote: »

This will be difficult to answer I'm sure, but here it goes anyway. I've been looking towards the future and of course the salary that will come with the experience. Though my job title is NOC/Helpdesk Tech, but I am a system administrator. Working for an MSP, you're expected to fix just about everything and there are projects that I get to work on that involve server upgrades, etc. I am coming up on two years of fulltime employment with my current company and 8 months with the previous one. Not trying to pat myself on the back, but I am good at my job. So discounting certs, with 5 years of system administration level experience would it be unrealistic to think I could hit 70k a year? I'm 30 minutes from Philadelphia, 45 minutes from Delaware (bank Mecca of the world), and 2 hours from NYC.

I think you should be able to hit 75k/yr, truthfully- the only variable is I'm not familiar with the area, so I really don't know that for sure.

I would say getting that higher salary is going to be a matter of articulating your past experience very well.

pham0329

I guess it depends on the area, but I hardly see sys admins making in the 70k range without being well versed in lots of different technologies (exchange, cisco, sql, etc). I used to work for an MSP and while you are given exposure to a lot of different technologies, must clients MSP services are relatively small, and therefore, their systems/network is pretty simple. You may have 5 years of experience working for an MSP, but that doesn't necessarily translate to 5 years of experience as a system admin.

Mrock4

For reference, an offer I turned down a couple of months ago was a gig at an MSP in Texas for $80k/yr + 5k in incentives. But I knew someone there, so I'm sure that helped. But other than that, I think you're much more experienced than I am in the sys admin area grinch. I would definitely keep an eye out..

ibcritn

I think for your area it would be very reasonable to expect that salary. I mean cost of living is pretty high in that area I believe, so 75-80k is reasonable.

I was at an MSP and it sounds very similar. From my experience MSP's tend to pay less.....they always want to stretch those penny's to have max profit.

the_Grinch

Great information everyone. My experience thus far has been varying from 1 server customers to our newest customer that has 75 servers and 17 switches. Perhaps not as big as some enterprises, but I can say that I am well rounded. I'll continue with certifications and start browsing around to see what's out there. My hope is my company starts a server team since we seem to be moving into a much more team based setup. Thanks again!

ibcritn

In an MSP which requires you to wear MANY hats, as you grow the one thing that will set you apart from the rest is you specializing in one area. Once you begin to grow and X becomes large enough that we need a guy that can handle everything else PLUS all the huge problems with X....you'll be the "go to" guy that they will pay 75-80k cuz they need X taken care of.

the_Grinch

That's what I figured, so that is why I am getting server certified and then continuing with my security studies. Thanks!