IT Market in a downward spiral?

What is going on with the market in this day and age where a desktop support person earns just as much as a employee at Burger King or McDonald's?

: Home Depot employees make more than this with less skill!

Desktop Support Analyst
Description:
Our client in the Burlington area is looking for a Jr. to mid-level desktop support specialist. Must be proficient in Mac OS, and virus removal. This client is looking for someone who is confident in their work, and good customer service skills.
Requirements:
Advanced Mac OS, Advanced Virus protection.
Salary:

$10.29 to $11.91 per hour

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Comments

J_86

There are employers in every area of the US that will always try and low ball and get people for dirt cheap. Could also be a recruiting firm that thinks they are going to get away with paying this wage so they can make a lot of money off the person working of the "client".

nachodba

If it were for an entry-level to junior position that wouldn't be terrible. I did the same thing when I first got started (2004) and I only made 8.00 an hour. Those were the days.

Remedymp

nachodba wrote: »

If it were for an entry-level to junior position that wouldn't be terrible. I did the same thing when I first got started (2004) and I only made 8.00 an hour. Those were the days.

You have food and beverage worker protesting for higher wages. Surely IT people should be on the front line with them, no?

joelsfood

Like anything else, the recent recession sent a lot of people back to school, and has flooded the market with people with entry level skills.

THe IT market overall is fine, the entry level market, like all professions, has been flooded by everyone going back to training when they lost jobs, etc, yes. That being said, sr level contracting in 2014 doubled for me last year vs the year before. THe IT market as a whole seems to be improving to me

MeanDrunkR2D2

Chances are this recruiting agency has this position to fill and are trying to find someone fairly new to IT that would be willing to take this pay to get the experience needed, and with it being so laughably low, they probably are also offering benefits with the position as well. Other recruiting agency's may be posting the same position, but without benefits for 15-16 an hour (that would include no holiday/vacation/sick time as well).

Entry level IT is rather competitive with new grads/career changers looking for that chance to break into IT, or those who are so desperate to find a job that they may be willing to take that kind of pay. Personally, when I've had recruiters calling me about positions that were a bit too low level for my skills and experience and they'd boast about how great the $14 an hour would be, I told them that unless it was at least 30 an hour with benefits I wasn't interested. Of course, many times they wouldn't tell me the pay right away and wanted to know what I wanted. But when you have several foreign speaking recruiters emailing and calling on the same position it really makes it easy to know what job they are talking about.

Remedymp

It's just isn't that the pay is low. It's the fact that you have jobs with no skills required (cashiers at CVS and Walgreens) being paid more than the Entry level IT person as seen in this position who is demanding "Advanced MAC OS skills, Anti-virus protection". Employees working Home Depot moving Sheet rock around are making $18/hr.

When they set the pay that low, you end up with high turnover rates and quite possibly disgruntled employees. I just don't get "why" the pay has to be so low for such highly skilled position. It's very odd from an economics perspective.

rsutton

I don't think that is the norm, at least, it's not in my area. We hire entry level technicians fresh out of college in the 40-45k ballpark and most candidates I talk to say that rate is pretty standard. I dp live in a higher wage area (SF Bay Area) however.

Kai123

Remedymp wrote: »

It's just isn't that the pay is low. It's the fact that you have jobs with no skills required (cashiers at CVS and Walgreens) being paid more than the Entry level IT person as seen in this position who is demanding "Advanced MAC OS skills, Anti-virus protection". Employees working Home Depot moving Sheet rock around are making $18/hr.

When they set the pay that low, you end up with high turnover rates and quite possibly disgruntled employees. I just don't get "why" the pay has to be so low for such highly skilled position. It's very odd from an economics perspective.

There is no harm for the employer/recruitment agency to see if anyone will pick this up. Chances are they will get someone desperate enough. After a years experience, depending on your education/cert background you can find another, vastly better paid job easy.

Its the same in Ireland. There are even people doing unpaid sys admin jobs via a govt scheme. As long as the wage does not slip from the top, then IT will always be worth investing the time and effort for a fulfilling career. As another poster said, they might not get any interest and start raising the wage until someone bites.

tpatt100

Remedymp wrote: »

You have food and beverage worker protesting for higher wages. Surely IT people should be on the front line with them, no?

That isn't the norm for IT people though, a few job listings compared to the entire fast food industry isn't the same thing.

Verities

joelsfood wrote: »

Like anything else, the recent recession sent a lot of people back to school, and has flooded the market with people with entry level skills.

THe IT market overall is fine, the entry level market, like all professions, has been flooded by everyone going back to training when they lost jobs, etc, yes. That being said, sr level contracting in 2014 doubled for me last year vs the year before. THe IT market as a whole seems to be improving to me

I've seen this is San Diego as there are rarely more than a few entry level positions. I've noticed many of the current openings are in mid-level and senior-level. The demand for experienced IT professionals is only going up and the supply has yet to catch up.

hurricane1091

Based on my current pay and position, I agree with the OP. Except my job wanted degrees/CCNA/MCSE and 1-3 years experience. It is what it is I guess. I made $11.49/hr at your favorite home improvement store picking up boxes and now I have a couple degrees + a year experience + CCNA and 4 other certs and this job I am at started at $12/hr and fortunately I got 2 more dollars an hour out of them. I look at jobs similar to mine and below mine that pay more and it's just frustrating.

PS I interviewed at a NOC here that required CCNA and paid $12.50 an hour. This job market is beat and no one wants to pay. You have to be more skilled and qualified than ever just to make less than the burger flippers want. I'm still going to work hard and better myself to get to where I want to be but this field is such a challenge it feels like.

Verities

Remedymp wrote: »

What is going on with the market in this day and age where a desktop support person earns just as much as a employee at Burger King or McDonald's? : Home Depot employees make more than this with less skill!

Most of the time these rates are negotiable. However, you must also realize working on the help desk requires less manual labor and the potential for career advancement (rate increases) is far greater, depending on how hard you're willing to work.

networker050184

It's just supply and demand. More people wanting those entry level jobs, with entry level skill sets, than there are positions available.

Just keep in mind that McDonalds or wherever worker can't skip around a few positions and be making $100k a few years down the road either.

crobeinthehouse

Everyone has to start somewhere. I got my IT backbone making an hourly rate of somewhere in that range. Now I work for General Dynamics IT because of the knowledge I gained at my last job. If it's a way to make ends meet and you are learning a lot at the same time, then why not? The way I look at it, is I was getting paid for a hands on IT education.

Remedymp

Verities wrote: »

Most of the time these rates are negotiable. However, you must also realize working on the help desk requires less manual labor and the potential for career advancement (rate increases) is far greater, depending on how hard you're willing to work.

This isn't a Helpdesk position. It's Desktop support.

Remedymp

Kai123 wrote: »

There is no harm for the employer/recruitment agency to see if anyone will pick this up. Chances are they will get someone desperate enough. After a years experience, depending on your education/cert background you can find another, vastly better paid job easy.

Its the same in Ireland. There are even people doing unpaid sys admin jobs via a govt scheme. As long as the wage does not slip from the top, then IT will always be worth investing the time and effort for a fulfilling career. As another poster said, they might not get any interest and start raising the wage until someone bites.

Until the employee becomes disgruntled and you end up with an internal breach...

J_86

Remedymp wrote: »

Until the employee becomes disgruntled and you end up with an internal breach...

And the employee who causes the internal breach ends up in prison and never working in IT again.

tpatt100

Disgruntled fast food workers still can do things to food also.....

DevilWAH

To be honest a lot of people working in fast food do have college qualifications, but due to demands in the work force cant get a job i their field. And to be honest the skills for entry level IT are not that much higher than working in a fast food kitchen. in many companies its monkey work carried out from a "script". Answer a phone, make a ticket up, follow some scripted trouble shooting steps and carry out basic tasks like "run a virus scan" or unlock an account.

In PC world where I once spent 2 months the support staff had to run a virus scan and PC speed up software. No skill involved at all. I am not saying that is the right way for a company to offer support but would should some one doing that kind of work get any more than some one working in fast food?

And if you want to complain about poor wages try working in science, PHd qualified often end up in jobs earning less than the IT support desk staff. And even experienced scientists generally get paid a lot less than the top IT staff in the same company.

The history of high wages in IT was always due to an explosion in the number of IT systems, and a lack of experienced staff. this is no longer the case, IT courses are common and number of IT qualified people coming out of schools and collages is an an all time high. Have to face facts that entry level IT is not going to be as well rewarded as it once was.

As Networker said, IT is about moving around and moving up. like many other professions they will pay you peanuts not until you prove you deserve more. and they will do it because they can afford to in the current market.

xenodamus

I don't think one (or even several) crap job listings are representative of the industry as a whole. Our helpdesk pays $30-50k and our desktop team is a notch higher at $40-60k.

There will always be crap jobs out there.

Remedymp

And to be honest the skills for entry level IT are not that much higher than working in a fast food kitchen. in many companies its monkey work carried out from a "script". Answer a phone, make a ticket up, follow some scripted trouble shooting steps and carry out basic tasks like "run a virus scan" or unlock an account.

I don't know where you've worked. But, in our company, no one will get in just based off of that. If we want a low waged person, we go get an intern for 90 days who gets credited by his institution for his/her work here and gets to put a tier 1 company on the resume with good reference.

No one with no experience will have an opportunity to be in our environment. We let one guy in our data center before and he tried to take a server out of the rack by himself. Dropped the server on the floor, he was let go within five minutes.

I'm just arguing the point that if a company wants Advanced MAC skills, and Malware expertise, they should take into consideration that you would be hard pressed to find that skill set with for $10 a hr when some UPS/FedEX package handler is being offered more for the immediate cause.

We have less turn over because we compensate well. Even our janitors make more than the position posted. The fact there are people on this site OK working for such little wage, is telling of many things...

tpatt100

I was making less than that in retail and relied on overtime a lot to survive, I would have jumped at an entry level position like that back in the day because I lacked experience anyways. I just got lucky enough that my first IT job didn't pay that low and had great benefits.

LeBroke

To me, that honestly feels like a glorified Geek Squad job. Does it pay too low for IT and what I know about CoL in the area? Probably yes. Is it unjustified? Not really.

1. Person gets to put desktop support on their resume.
2. IT is seen as a lot more prestigious "oh yeah, I'm a knowledge expert/"carpenter" at Home Depot", not to mention burger places
3. If they worked at Staples, they'd be payed about that much for the same work. Maybe $1-2 higher at best.
4. Expert knowledge of Mac and "Expert knowledge of Mac" are entirely different things. I highly doubt they want him to recompile Debian software to run on OS X, or manage an Apache server. More likely, open up System Settings, or copy and paste a command into Terminal.

Basically, it feels like a glorified retail job. Perhaps it even is a retail job, just not for a major chain like Best Buy.

PS: I'd have killed for FT hours when working retail. Spent close to 6 months living on $1100 a month, NOT fun I tell you.

tkerber

I think the IT market is pretty hot right now in a lot of areas. You'll always find scum bag companies that want to low ball and pay crap wages but that doesn't mean people are going to accept them. I've doubled my wage since I started in IT 3 years ago and I am only 21. I've also worked for some of these said companies and at the end of the day they're the ones who get shorted

I also live in a relatively low cost of living area (Midwest) and I started as a Desktop Support Contractor with absolutely 0 experience and 0 education other than a HS diploma and my starting wage was a little over $15 an hour in 2011. I understand that not everyone had the options I did and location is a huge factor. However, sometimes you just need experience and sometimes you're selling yourself short of what you're worth. I have a good idea of what I'm worth and what I need to live and I won't settle for anything less, unless I absolutely have to. Therefore I'm happy with my compensation.

Remedymp

hurricane1091 wrote: »

Based on my current pay and position, I agree with the OP. Except my job wanted degrees/CCNA/MCSE and 1-3 years experience. It is what it is I guess. I made $11.49/hr at your favorite home improvement store picking up boxes and now I have a couple degrees + a year experience + CCNA and 4 other certs and this job I am at started at $12/hr and fortunately I got 2 more dollars an hour out of them. I look at jobs similar to mine and below mine that pay more and it's just frustrating.

PS I interviewed at a NOC here that required CCNA and paid $12.50 an hour. This job market is beat and no one wants to pay. You have to be more skilled and qualified than ever just to make less than the burger flippers want. I'm still going to work hard and better myself to get to where I want to be but this field is such a challenge it feels like.

This comment further proves my point.

techfiend

How do you know this isn't a probationary period wage or even the correct wage they offer?

I applied for a job that listed $12-14 per hour 20 hours per week. In the interview I was told $15, a month later, after the probationary period they moved me to full time with benefits and a nice bump in pay without me asking. It's probably a special case but it's just to show it does happen.

tkerber: Your story is inspirational and very believable knowing the area you live in. Could probably end TE entry level unemployment within a month if people were willing to move to this area of the country. There's dozens of various entry level openings a month around there.

YFZblu

Somewhere, a company is perhaps under paying. In other news, there is air.

LeBroke

techfiend wrote: »

I applied for a job that listed $12-14 per hour 20 hours per week. In the interview I was told $15, a month later, after the probationary period they moved me to full time with benefits and a nice bump in pay without me asking. It's probably a special case but it's just to show it does happen.

Oh hey, congrats! I remember your previous topic on how to find more work. Looks like looking for more work paid off

techfiend

Thanks, I went from waiting for the manager to give me things to do to jumping into doing things based on suggestions in that thread. I've been cleaning up AD and working on WSUS mainly. The latter is a PITA and wish there was a good free third party replacement, wsus offline doesn't seem like it fits in a corporate environment.

Verities

Remedymp wrote: »

This isn't a Helpdesk position. It's Desktop support.

Based on what you posted, its helpdesk level work. It doesn't matter what the title is, its entry level.