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What would I be worth?
I'm a South African (with a UK passport so I can travel) and i'm curious what i'd earn in:
The EU
The US
Wherever else you can add input from?
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I'm 29 years old. I've got 8 years experience in IT and hold the following certifications (currently booked to add RHCE to this list in June):
Certifications:
- RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) - August 2015
- NCLA (Novell Certified Linux Administrator) - October 2012
- Comptia Linux+ - October 2012
- Novell SUSE 11 Tech Specialist - October 2012
- DCTS (Novell Data Centre Technical Specialist) - October 2012
- LPIC1 (Linux Professional Institute) - October 2012
- Apple Certified Support Professional 10.7 - November 2011
- Apple Certified Support Professional 10.6 - April 2011
I've worked on anything from DOS / Windows / Linux / BSD / ESXI / HyperV / Some Firewall and Networking / AD / Exchange / Ansible / Docker and would probably be suited to a DevOps type environment.
I've worked IT in the logistics industry (bespoke logistic software), been outsourced to SME clients (various industries), worked IT in retail (liquor chain and tier 1 supermarket retailer) and the gambling industry (dev ops / IT team lead for a development house making online gambling games).
What would I be worth should I choose to go overseas?
Comments
$7
Hahahhaa i knew that was coming
This really isn't the best place to ask this question, I'd head over to the SysAdmin sub-reddits and check there.
It was a more of a spur of the moment question. I'm currently employed - albeit curious as to what foreign markets offer.
UK £25-35K I would say depending on location
UK full time £25-40k if you found the right job and were prepared to travel.
As a contractor in the UK on short term contracts especially if you are willing to undertake extra security clearance for defense contracts you could earn between £150 - £500 p/day depending on how much you 'really' know beyond having your qualifications.
Interesting. I'd have thought such clearance and jobs would be nonfor limited…?
As long as you have a UK passport you can get SC level which allows you up to secret access, if you are willing to give up your other national status and become a UK only citizen then you can go further.
That has some limitations based on where your other citizenship is based, e.g. dual French/British or British/German would be fine, dual British/Pakistan would not be ok.
With those certs and experience you can easily make close to 6 figures in some parts of the US. I have less certificates, but ~3 years more experience and I wouldn't settle for less than $70k if I was looking for a new job. If I wanted to be a Linux Admin I could easily make significantly more ($100k would be a lowball offer) but it would require relocating which my family won't do (again).
Of course your mileage may vary, I'm just speaking based on what I personally know (my company and the job offers I've received in 2 states).
Senior Sys Admins go for $90K-$110K in the West Coast US markets. Keep in mind a house goes for $400,000, you'll pay 10% of that in state income taxes (besides 30%+ for federal), and if you're in California you can add another 20% or so a year in crazy other taxes. That's senior sys admins (judging by years of experience) in large companies.
Windows admins are cheaper, then Linux admins, then proprietary Unix. That's just a function of supply (tons more Windows or Linux admins than, say, AIX or HPUX admins in the market).
Certificates are...meh. I don't hire for sysadmins, but I do hire for other infra positions and I rarely look like them unless it's RHCE, CCIE, or OCM, because the rest are just "I googled the dumps and memorized the answers". I mean, yes, lots of people do take them legitimately, but I have no way of knowing. No offense, and I do encourage people to get them because some orgs really like them and prepping for them is a good experience, but as a hiring manager I can't trust them.
What we look for is experience at the enterprise level. Time managing Windows or Linux for some doctor's office doesn't count. Lots of "what do the mount flags mean" or "explain the RAID levels" technical questions are perhaps the first part of the interview, but what we're really interested in are things like "how do you push a change to 100 servers", "you need to migrate this service with very low downtime", "tomorrow the CISO wants complete auditing of all actions on this server, how do you do it?" etc. The kind of problems you only run into at scale, and in big environments with lots of stakeholders.
(Those are probably not great examples as I don't work in systems, but you get my point. Technical questions are just the door opener - it's your experience that makes the sale.)
There's value as a utility player, but you'll probably make more as a specialist in a smaller range of technologies. The top guys I work with spend all their time working on one or two of those technologies, because there's enough to keep up with. DevOps is a little different because you're knitting together lots of stuff, but there the specialty is the knitting not the specific techs, and those guys are specializing in workflow, build systems, etc.
To work in the US you'd need an H1B, which is an additional headache. In the US, only jobs where companies can't hire/find local qualified talent are allowed to hire foreign. So it's very difficult to get H1B for anything less than senior talent because it's hard to justify to the gov't that you can't find an American to do the work.
Perhaps the US Navy? :-)
Not in any market where "6 figures" means anything impressive.
Um, that's a salary that puts you in the top 20% of earners in the US and probably the top 1% of the world, so...while I wouldn't go around bragging (ooooh, you make $100K) but it's not unimpressive, either.
Thanks guys.
I'm surprised at the lower end of the UK salaries specified here. I'm close to the low end numbers and i'm currently in a 3rd world economy, so those numbers are definitely surprising to me!
.>close to the low end numbers
I was going to say £40-50K, add 25% for London. Remember exchange rates can put a different complexion on these numbers when you're looking from the outside in. GBP/USD was £1/$2.10 a number of years back, more like £1/$1.40 now, or a 33%/50% swing however you look at it.
Ultimately, if you were in the UK, the £'s in your back pocket is all that matters.
I meant you're not going to make a six figure salary with those qualifications in any market where it's not proportional to the cost of living . . . but really you'd have to be absolutely exceptional to make a six figure salary with those qualifications anywhere, regardless.
with those certifications don't come to EU, go usa.
i haven't heard anyone senior with over 60k€ and i work in Finland with almost 33% tax so check usa first.
or stay where you are if you make +- same when you know.
@raindog308 Just curious: isn't the income tax in California closer to 45-50%?
If you add fed + state, yes.
Federal tax is 28-33% (or more, but then you're way out of LowEnd ranges)
In Oregon, state tax is another 10%. But we don't have a sales tax. On the other hand, Washington has something like an 8% sales tax. But no income tax.
California has both - 10% income tax and something like a 9% sales tax, plus you pay 3% of the value of your car every year for registration (it's $35 in Oregon) plus you play huge property taxes. And a zillion other little taxes all over the place. Plus of course it's extremely expensive to live there unless you're in the parts of California where no one lives, and then you can't find a job.
There are plenty of other reasons California sucks...I lived there 3 years and leaving was a very happy day. Next to New Jersey and New York, California is the worst state to live in.
Don't come to the US, I spent last year practicing immigration law and it fucking destroyed me. I know the law perfectly well and even find the byzantine and technical nature of it enjoyable but the fact is the system is so completely fucked that even though with a UK passport you're not subject to any country-based quotas, you are still stuck with the fact that you're coming on what's likely a H1-B and that's more clogged than junkie's toilet during withdrawals. Totally frustrating and screws everyone over. You'd have way better luck if you happen ot have a Singaporean, Chilean, or Canadian passport if you don't have relatives here or marry someone here for reals.
But if you got a Canadian passport, then the NAFTA-enabled TN visas are wide open. Or you know, if you got a Singaporean or Australian passport you get your own non-quotaed spot, but SA, not good unless you're also a victim of persecution - the only SA citizen I managed to do a whole immigration process with was an Overstay - Asylum - AOS - Naturalization.
There sort of are ways around this but it's too complicated to explain here, and they're not even really loopholes, but I'd have to redefine about 50 words for you and how time is counted. In short, if you get here before doing anything (and I find NY perfectly agreeable and much better than Seattle and fucking miles over LA, but then again, I also practice in WA and NV, neither state with income taxes, and have an NV LLC which is also cheap and easy and entirely legit because I'm literally from there and a part time resident. If you play the system right, well, a lot of startups are doing a fair amount of poaching in NY and salary here is quite good even if the same goes for rent.
Don't ask for representation or anything, I need a year off to pursue my hobbies before I lose a sense of who I am and judging by this post I'm not doing well on that a front either, but yeah, America's particularly difficult to legally get into right now if the route you're taking doesn't relate to family or investments or marriage, because unfortunately the H1-B queue is literally filled with people who cost less than you, have similar qualifications (or are accountant, for some reason), and the quota gets filled in 48 hours and then a lottery system happens.
It that 100k yearly income before or after taxes?
I'm just basing it on my experiences, I can't speak for other states since I've never looked for jobs or received job offers outside of Colorado and Florida.
Watch out for IT recruiters - they are like bloodhounds and not to be trusted.
I sent my CV to a few tech jobs a few years ago when I was laid off from a long-term job. I was recruited for a job based on my Linux skills and experience, interviewed, got the job, and then found out during my first week that the job was 70% Windows - I have zero experience in Windows. No-one from the recruiter to the interviewing manager mentioned this during the hiring process or I'd have pulled out! This was for a sysadmin job for a large UK company.
Even now, several years on, I still get wildly off-target emails from tech recruiters. I'm happily working outside of IT now, Linux and coding are fun hobbies for me but didn't work out as a full-time job. But every week or so, I still get an email asking if I'm interested in a PHP developer job for £17k in Goole or Grimsby or some such shit hole. I don't do PHP, I'm not interested in £17k and I'm certainly not interested in relocating 100+ miles from my beautiful little cottage to go to the middle of buttfuck nowhere Yorkshire for £17k. How these people actually manage to hire for these jobs is beyond me.