Looking For Alternate IT roles
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In most places, engineer and admin functions (not always titles, as titles are generally false) are roughly equal. In places like hedge funds and investment banks where downtime means millions or billions in losses, admins make much higher money because it is admins alone, never engineers, who are in the hot seat and responsible for saving the company.
When at the biggest firms in the world, we had an effective L1 - L5 scale. Engineers only really existed from L2-L4. Administration is the larger "hat" to wear and had a ration of like 80 admins to 6 engineers. The admins started lower with L1s (juniors), but went higher with the most senior L4s and the only L5.
How the scale was done....
L1 - Junior
L2 - "Plain" Admin / Engineer
L3 - Senior
L4 - Subject Matter Specialist / Lead
L5 - Chief -
@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Engineer roles will pay upwards of $350K. Admin roles will pay higher in the most demanding companies. Unless you feel constrained by $350K, I'd not worry about one being more or less senior.
Keep in mind these are the hidden jobs you and I will never find or hear about other than from Scott.
I only come across the opposite when talking to recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers. My personal experience has been IT related Administrator roles offer less than engineering roles, architect roles being the top of the three.
I wanted to add that it's not that I don't believe Scott, it's just in my experience and everywhere I've seen, it was the opposite.
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@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Do you Want to do one more than the other? I personally more enjoy engineering and architecting. But every job I've had involves some administration. Though, I am pursuing architect.
Yes, I think I would prefer an engineering role more. From what I've seen of admins they have little time to keep learning and I don't want a position right now where I have to be on call constantly.
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@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Engineer roles will pay upwards of $350K. Admin roles will pay higher in the most demanding companies. Unless you feel constrained by $350K, I'd not worry about one being more or less senior.
Keep in mind these are the hidden jobs you and I will never find or hear about other than from Scott.
I only come across the opposite when talking to recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers. My personal experience has been IT related Administrator roles offer less than engineering roles, architect roles being the top of the three.
Yeah I just want something fulfilling right now. By that I mean regular raises and a position that is challenging. A company with positions I could move into eventually would be just fine too.
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@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
I only come across the opposite when talking to recruiters, headhunters, and hiring managers. My personal experience has been IT related Administrator roles offer less than engineering roles, architect roles being the top of the three.
I guarantee this is false. You are getting that from TITLES, but not the roles. Unless you've taken the job and actually determined what it is, you have no basis for thinking the recruiters, which we know give almost entirely false info, to be giving you accurate info, especially when it is obviously non-sensical.
And I've known thousands of people in these roles, and recruiters who work in the high end, and it's universally done this way. So the "only Scott" thing is pretty far off.
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@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Do you Want to do one more than the other? I personally more enjoy engineering and architecting. But every job I've had involves some administration. Though, I am pursuing architect.
Yes, I think I would prefer an engineering role more. From what I've seen of admins they have little time to keep learning and I don't want a position right now where I have to be on call constantly.
Keep in mind that there are no entry level engineers, and no engineers outside of the Fortune 500. SMB only blends roles, and only has admin as the primary function. Engineers are very rare in the real world as so few of them are needed.
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@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
Keep in mind these are the hidden jobs you and I will never find or hear about other than from Scott.
Because I'm the only person willing to call out the dishonesty in postings and titles
But yes, ALL IT jobs are hidden to some degree, not just these. Job postings are mostly fake, those that are real are mostly ambiguous. Remember I'm talking about the job, everyone else talks about the titles and listings. These are unrelated. -
@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Do you Want to do one more than the other? I personally more enjoy engineering and architecting. But every job I've had involves some administration. Though, I am pursuing architect.
Yes, I think I would prefer an engineering role more. From what I've seen of admins they have little time to keep learning and I don't want a position right now where I have to be on call constantly.
Keep in mind that there are no entry level engineers, and no engineers outside of the Fortune 500. SMB only blends roles, and only has admin as the primary function. Engineers are very rare in the real world as so few of them are needed.
Ok I see. Well I mean more the function than anything. Who knows what I'll be called. I'm considering this as a future role to aspire to if that makes sense. I know there will have to be intermediate roles and I'm fine with that.
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So I just need a plan then . I was thinking to just keep learning and get certifications about Microsoft stuff(mcsa), storage, VoIP, Linux of course, virtualization, and probably databases too. Does that sound like a good plan?
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need to keep learning skills in different areas until I find a position in one of those areas at a larger company. I should specifically look for an engineering role because it is not as senior as admin then?
Do you Want to do one more than the other? I personally more enjoy engineering and architecting. But every job I've had involves some administration. Though, I am pursuing architect.
Yes, I think I would prefer an engineering role more. From what I've seen of admins they have little time to keep learning and I don't want a position right now where I have to be on call constantly.
Keep in mind that there are no entry level engineers, and no engineers outside of the Fortune 500. SMB only blends roles, and only has admin as the primary function. Engineers are very rare in the real world as so few of them are needed.
Qualcomm for example, real life experience with people there.
Also now, if you do job searches for them, just about every IT role they have is Engineer. The only IT non-engineer roles they have that are "administrator", is DB admins.
In fact, when I search administrator, I either get IT related Engineers, or DB admins.
Similar results with other F500 companies.
At Amazon jobs, I even seen a "System Admin Engineer" role.... mostly DB admins though. But IMO that's a whole different ballpark.And Walmart... and X... mostly engineers.
I find it extremely hard to find non-engineer roles.
Do you have an example of an actual "Admin" role that's $350k? What's the title, and what is their actual duties?
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What exactly would a f500 company pay someone $400k to administer, who isn't a management title? Because, whatever system they are administering and being paid that much to do it I need to learn it ASAP!
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@jmoore said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
So I just need a plan then . I was thinking to just keep learning and get certifications about Microsoft stuff(mcsa), storage, VoIP, Linux of course, virtualization, and probably databases too. Does that sound like a good plan?
No it doesn't. It sounds like a shotgun approach. You need to pick a general area of expertise and specialize in it. Being an IT generalist is fine, but if you want more $$ you need to specialize.
Cloud is really the go to field right now. I know of several fortune 100 companies that are trying to go fully cloud in the next 4-6 years. Cloud is also great because you actually have to learn all the stuff you listed (except VOIP).
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DevOps = Cross between IT admin and Engineer. It is almost solely scripting and command line based, which makes it awesome IMO.
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@IRJ said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
Being an IT generalist is fine, but if you want more $$ you need to specialize.
And ideally, if being a generalist, it should be with intent, not by accident.
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@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
What exactly would a f500 company pay someone $400k to administer, who isn't a management title? Because, whatever system they are administering and being paid that much to do it I need to learn it ASAP!
Linux primarily is what pays in that range. I was literally consulting for a hedge fund two weeks ago talking about them setting their admin scale to $450K for the more senior roles. A manager admining something is crazy, totally different skills. Places that give manager titles to tech roles are the ones that will never pay well.
Windows will almost never top $300K, regardless of the role.
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@IRJ said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
DevOps = Cross between IT admin and Engineer. It is almost solely scripting and command line based, which makes it awesome IMO.
Yeah, DevOps makes it almost impossible to keep your hats separate because you kind of role the two together.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
A manager admining something is crazy
Yeah I just threw that in there to make sure we were actually talking a regular admin role, and not some kind of management role making half a million a year.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@IRJ said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
DevOps = Cross between IT admin and Engineer. It is almost solely scripting and command line based, which makes it awesome IMO.
Yeah, DevOps makes it almost impossible to keep your hats separate because you kind of role the two together.
Also DevOps roles never deal with users. Some people may or may not like that
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
@Obsolesce said in Looking For Alternate IT roles:
What exactly would a f500 company pay someone $400k to administer, who isn't a management title? Because, whatever system they are administering and being paid that much to do it I need to learn it ASAP!
Linux primarily is what pays in that range. I was literally consulting for a hedge fund two weeks ago talking about them setting their admin scale to $450K for the more senior roles. A manager admining something is crazy, totally different skills. Places that give manager titles to tech roles are the ones that will never pay well.
Windows will almost never top $300K, regardless of the role.
So what is it that a Linux systems admin does in a F500 to get $450k that the same role gets for 1/4 that in a non F500?
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DevOps is a culture, not really a role. If you're in a DevOps environment and you're sporting the DevOps Engineer title you're more than likely wearing a lot of hats and interfacing with multiple product teams.
DevOps Engineer
Site Reliability Engineer
Cloud Engineer
System EngineerA lot of the above titles have a lot of similar duties.
If you are looking at moving into a more modern role working for a shop that has a DevOps culture I'd focus on the following:
- Cloud Native solutions for AWS / Azure / GCP
- Linux (RHCE curriculum)
- Containerization (12 factor, Docker, K8s, maybe ECS if you're doing a lot of work with AWS )
- Understand the difference between containerization and serverless, what tools/platforms are associated with each.
- Site Reliability Engineering
- Infrastructure as Code (CloudFormation, Terraform)
- Configuration Management Systems (Ansible, Chef, maybe Puppet) -- A lot of my more recent work has been gravitating away from configuration management, but I would still recommend understanding the basics of each and how they are used.
- Understand Microservices
- Learn Python
- SDLC, Software Testing, and CI/CD tools
