Hiring Disparity
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@Minion-Queen said:
Usually a Doctor or a Lawyer are trying to physically move when they apply for another Job. Not many stay in the same geographic area.
But they don't have to move. They might want to, but their careers can be made in nearly any region. It's only to get more customers that they would move to a bigger region. Not to do more senior work.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm not sure what you mean by ladder effect?
To go from entry level IT ($10/hr) to senior non-management IT ($500K / year) there are a huge number of career steps. Huge number. In system administration alone (not an entry point career path) you have juniors, mid levels, seniors, leads, subject matter experts, etc. Few companies short of the Fortune 100 have all of those positions. If you want to get through those ranks you are either limited to a very few multi-national companies (not likely located where you live) or you have to bounce around a lot as you gain experience.
If you want to laterally move, normally needed for reaching high level positions, say between Windows and Linux you need a company large enough to not only use both and employee people for both but also to have the right ladder steps for you in both positions.
The career ladder for IT is immense, larger than any field that I know. If you want to go from a medical intern to a neurosurgeon, you have steps, but relatively few. If you want to go from L0 helpdesk to senior architect you have many - a great many steps.
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To make things harder, we should stop talking about helpdesk or Windows jobs. Those exist, more or less, everywhere (although literally none exist where I grew up so even that is an overstatement.) But lets look at Sybase DBA or SAP positions. There are whole swaths of the country where these jobs do not exist. No matter how good you are, you can't get hired. You could be work a quarter million a year in Chicago and be the absolute best, most experienced person available but if you live in the wrong location there might not be a single company able to hire either of those positions, junior or otherwise, for hundreds of miles or more.
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So the more you specialise, the more you can earn but the fewer jobs that are available and thus you may have to relocate. I'm not sure this is much different from say nursing, where the highest paid nurses are specialists who may only get jobs at certain hospitals that provide what they're offering.
My cousin is a top teacher earning a fortune, but has to move around a lot as there are very few positions at his level.
I'm sure this is true for lots of other professions as well. Top mechanics might earn $500k, but they won't earn that in my town.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm sure this is true for lots of other professions as well. Top mechanics might earn $500k, but they won't earn that in my town.
Outside of working for a racing team, do any mechanics actually make anything like that? Do even ones working for top racing teams?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
So the more you specialise, the more you can earn but the fewer jobs that are available and thus you may have to relocate. I'm not sure this is much different from say nursing, where the highest paid nurses are specialists who may only get jobs at certain hospitals that provide what they're offering.
It exists to some degree in every field. But nursing along with many nursing levels and specializations is available in every populated market in the developed world and in most of the undeveloped world. Even basic IT, a mid level Windows admin for example, will have whole markets with no job opportunities.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Outside of working for a racing team, do any mechanics actually make anything like that? Do even ones working for top racing teams?
Dunno. I don't know anyone earning $500k in IT either though.
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It was mentioned earlier but I feel that job titles are to blame (at least in part)
Look on the job boards, in my area you will see crap like this:
Senior Network Administrator - duties: fixing computers and working on our software issues
Helpdesk Technician - duties: managing a domain across 5 sites with replication, encryption
Windows computer administrator - duties: manage our network switches, setup blah blahHow can we help fix this?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Dunno. I don't know anyone earning $500k in IT either though.
I know many, although mostly who moved to management. But getting into the $500K range is certainly something that mainline IT can do.
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@MattSpeller said:
It was mentioned earlier but I feel that job titles are to blame (at least in part)
Look on the job boards, in my area you will see crap like this:
Senior Network Administrator - duties: fixing computers and working on our software issues
Helpdesk Technician - duties: managing a domain across 5 sites with replication, encryption
Windows computer administrator - duties: manage our network switches, setup blah blahHow can we help fix this?
That's a huge question that I don't know the answer to but I think that it is key to solving this problem. Maybe an IT Industry Association is needed to not be a union per se but to act as a non-profit to oversee this kind of stuff and set standards.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That's a huge question that I don't know the answer to but I think that it is key to solving this problem. Maybe an IT Industry Association is needed to not be a union per se but to act as a non-profit to oversee this kind of stuff and set standards.
That's the first reasonable suggestion I've heard to attempt to fix this. Wonder what it would take to start one?
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How would job titles mean that a Sybase DBA working in a small town earns more money? If there isn't a demand for Sybase DBAs in his town, then he's not going to earn $500k. It's simple supply and demand, labour economics, isn't it?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
How would job titles mean that a Sybase DBA working in a small town earns more money? If there isn't a demand for Sybase DBAs in his town, then he's not going to earn $500k. It's simple supply and demand, labour economics, isn't it?
It's two separate issues. One is a lack of career ladders for most IT careers. The second is that even for existing career ladders, the most common ones, there are no established titles.
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@MattSpeller said:
That's the first reasonable suggestion I've heard to attempt to fix this. Wonder what it would take to start one?
It's been discussed around here. I have a lot of interest in that area. Establishing meaningful titles and job descriptions. Making resumes mean something. Helping HR departments understand what they are asking for and what they need. Providing guidelines for IT education.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm sure this is true for lots of other professions as well. Top mechanics might earn $500k, but they won't earn that in my town.
Outside of working for a racing team, do any mechanics actually make anything like that? Do even ones working for top racing teams?
Agreed, $100K seems ridiculous for even the most senior mechanic, same goes for most IT jobs, they under $100K, probably most are under $80K.
I suppose the lead mechanic on a racing team, who's also a designer/engineer could make $100K+, but not a mechanic (non-engineer).
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@Dashrender said:
Agreed, $100K seems ridiculous for even the most senior mechanic, same goes for most IT jobs, they under $100K, probably most are under $80K.
In a major market I could see $100K. The senior techs who are very busy and helping other techs, it would make sense. Otherwise you'd have major issues hiring people in places like NYC, Silicon Valley, etc. But the average mechanic has to be like $40K - $60K and the top pay is probably topping out a little over $100K. And it is, I assume, pretty predictable. But IT, the starting is lower and the ending is higher and the predictability doesn't exist at all.
I literally get contacted about the same job title and description all the time with a pay range from $60K - $300K without any way for me to be able to tell what the difference in the job is creating the disparity in potential pay.
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500% swing on pay on the same job is pretty crazy.
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tl;dr
I think that the problem is lack of standardisation. With Doctors, Lawyers, Plumbers etc there is a standard that people have come to expect. Doctors & Lawyers etc have specific & mandatory qualifications and standards that they have to meet which are respected across the board (in their country).
IT has no mandatory or specific qualifications. Yes, we are professionals (well, most of us
) but due to the lack of standards we get shafted because most companies don't know how to describe what skill set or worse, they don't know what they are looking for.Also, each set up is painfully unique because they are governed by budgets and not standards.
For a bunch of people who like standardised stuff, we should really be mortified about the lack of standardisation of jobs/hiring.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's two separate issues. One is a lack of career ladders for most IT careers. The second is that even for existing career ladders, the most common ones, there are no established titles.
Ah, gotcha. I'm still not convinced IT is that different from other careers. My sister is a Business Analyst. I have no idea how much she earns and I have no idea how much Business Analysts generally earn, but I suspect that, like IT, it varies wildly, as it is a pretty broad profession.
A friend of mine is a bookmaker. He actually had to leave the UK entirely, as all the major British bookies have moved offshore for tax purposes. He moved to Guernsey. When he lost his job there, the only similar jobs he got offered were in Vegas, Cyprus and Australia. Again, the salaries varied widely, as it is not a "standardised" career, but I imagine he's pushing towards the $500k mark. I'm sure I could think of other examples just within my circle of friends and family.
Anyway, I'm not going to convince you.
I have a few issues with recruitment in the IT industry. This is in the UK, it might be different in the US. Firstly, it is very hard to even be considered for a lot of IT jobs without a degree, even though it's not a job where a degree can help you much.
Secondly, 99% of IT jobs are only advertised through IT recruitment agencies. There are a few great IT recruitment agencies, but I think the majority, particular the large ones, are awful. IT recruitment in the UK seems like a shady, cut-throat industry compared with, say, accountancy, where the biggest accountancy recruitment firms have a pretty good reputation. IT candidates appear to be treated like a simple commodity rather than as human beings, and I don't think this issue exists in other industries.
Finally, I think the IT certification industry could be better. In theory, Microsoft certification sounds great. But in reality, it's fallen in to disrepute over the years. They're supposed to test for practical experience, but in reality you can pass them just by reading a book. I'd like to see established IT certifications and qualifications that are on a par with, say, accountancy.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Ah, gotcha. I'm still not convinced IT is that different from other careers. My sister is a Business Analyst. I have no idea how much she earns and I have no idea how much Business Analysts generally earn, but I suspect that, like IT, it varies wildly, as it is a pretty broad profession.
I've been a BA. BA is normally considered part of IT or at least part of software development. It's a slight modification of the old system analyst (software designer) job.
