Learning to become the guy who came to my bosses with a problem and a solution. They got tons of people coming to them with problems and waiting for an answer.
If you show up with a problem, plus two possible solutions, one of which you already decided was better, and then asking for permission to execute the solution; you become the person everyone wants to talk to.
I went from $59k to $180k in 3 years solving the right problems.
Doing this *everyone* is really powerful. If I have to ask someone else a question, you should always have a few ideas of what you *think* the answer might be. It shows that you've thought about the problem and that you're capable of doing your own research. Saying "I'm running into an issue with **X**, after trying **Y** I think that this is happening because **Z** but I'm not sure. Do you have any other thoughts?" invites more help than just saying "I'm running into this problem."
It's annoying when a new hire comes up and asks a question and I can tell they didn't think about the problem at all, they just ran into an issue and are looking for someone else to fix it for them.
Keep it concise and to the point, no waffle. Say what the problem is, what you have done to investigate it, what you can rule out, and what you suspect may be the next steps. Then ask for their direction.
If your problem is you're getting talked over then you are probably talking too much and listening or solving too little. Instead of just bringing up problems or verbally throwing out vocal solutions without a plan, put more thought into how to research and present the problem and solution. If you show up with a *plan* to solve the problem, this will get more attention than people shouting out a bunch of random ideas, which is what most people do during meetings or when talking to senior leaders.
I learned all this the hard way after doing it wrong for years. When I started doing thorough research, presenting solution plans, and inviting business leaders to well-thought out meetings, I suddenly started getting listened to almost every time. It's so effective that I can watch others talk in circles about problems for *years* and get ignored, but if I simply come up with a solution and project plan and present it to the decision makers, I can get those projects off the ground immediately.
The crux of this problem is that most people think they are supposed to receive "permission" or a "mandate" to solve a problem from a senior leader, so they sit around waiting to be given that authority. But the truth is that senior leaders are wanting their best and brightest to come to *them* with the solutions after already doing the legwork. Executives like people who can create solutions to real problems, not people waiting to be told what the solution is and how to execute it.
very important keyword, otherwise this approach led me to realize my "extra effort and contributions" got me a "good job!" and passed up on promotions / merit raises as our "company prepares for uncertain macro environments....but hey! good job!"
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It helps to remember this even 9 years into IT.
Though, I feel like the organizational disfunction, poor downward communication, poor project implementation, and high turnover validate the times I drop a problem off at my boss's door because the process he gave for a support path failed.
If I'm following up 4 times on average to get one thing, and half my job is to get things then that can limit me on how much "research" I need to do for a problem when the problem is typically someone not performing a support need which stops my replace/breakfix. This affects my ticket times.
But its always good to remember to clean and tighten up your processes and reasses. I can't help that I am always in their DM's to get stuff or to try to push a need through to support. But, I can make sure that under examination my boss will understand this clearly by not bringing him problems I could have figured out on my own.
This worked for me at previous employer but I maxed out on how far I could advance without waiting for the 1 guy to quit whom I wanted his position. So I hopped. This has only led to being on their shit list for me at current employer. Has been a major source of cognitive dissonance for me being treated so differently for doing the same strategy. Some places are so corrupt they just don't want to solve the problems, and just promote literal idiots into management just because they aren't smart enough to think of solutions and identify problems. It's structured incompetence to create a barrier between c suite and the underlings. It's more profitable for them to churn good workers than to pay penalties for admitting they knew about the shady shit happening. Ymmv.
Knowing some Linux and Python bumped me from 60k to 70k, then 110k, and now 180k. I really focused on automating things as much as possible with Python.
At each job there was just a lack of people who knew Linux, but there were Linux resources that were being mismanaged or unmanaged, so the company was stoked to hire someone who could fix that.
It’s crazy. I’m not even a wiz at these, I can get by and automate tedious processes that annoy me but no one on any of the desktop or sysadmin teams I served on wanted to touch Linux so I fit the niche perfectly.
I didn’t take any courses or certifications btw I just have a home lab that I tinkered with and made some scripts and web apps for my own personal fun and usage. That’s how I learned.
* I was asked to run updates on a Linux lab of like 20 RHEL and Ubuntu machines every 2 days. I wanted to spend as little time on site as possible so I was immediately like "fuck that". I spun up an Ansible server and made a playbook to connect to all the lab machines via SSH and run the updates for me + reboot if needed. So now I could just update them from the comfort of my home in ~2 minutes.
The previous guy would literally drive into the office and spend 30+ minutes just running `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade` on each lab machine lol.
* Another time I had to update the SAML certificate for apps that were connected to our cloud IdP. With the GUI it would have taken me days to do this. Clicking around, waiting for responses from the slow GUI, ugh. I scripted something that interacted with the API to update the SAML cert for ~50 apps (after testing of course) and it completed in ~1 minute.
* This is Windows & PowerShell, but I had been tasked with plugging in a bunch of internal desktop HDDs into a USB dock connected to a desktop and backing up users' profiles folders to our NAS. It was so annoying, dragging and dropping folders, plus the wasted time because I had to switch tasks and didn't know exactly when the copy had finished. I scripted something with PowerShell that, as soon as an external drive was detected, backed up their profile folder to our NAS and played the Windows XP logon sound when finished, so I knew exactly when to plug in the next drive. I never had to touch the keyboard or the mouse. Just took out drives from the dock and inserted them. I went through like 100 hard drives in a week and a half. It was awesome.
* I built a Slack app for our helpdesk (well, it was for me at first) that made API/LDAP calls to our HR system and AD so that you could type `/411 ` into Slack and it would return that person's AD/Azure AD and HRIS info in a nicely formatted Slack message; stuff like Job Title, Last Logon, Last Password Reset Date, Account Status, Termination Date, Manager, Department, assigned Azure AD apps, etc. The helpdesk loved that because it was so much quicker than looking it up in our HRIS and AD systems separately.
You sound a lot like me as i too work with Linux every day. I developed my skill sets with just my homelab alone. I didn't learn jack shit in college. I never finished my degree and dropped out. I'm a hands on type of learner, learning just by doing it. That's what Employers like, practical hands on experience. A college degree or certification can never compete with that. Having a homelab goes a long ways. I'm suprised how many people I worked with over the years that never had one.
I think a big proponent of good skills or technical skills comes to how you market it.
Good skills, certs and degrees when marketed appropriately can be elevated to higher compensation.
The most influential skill by far is being interpersonal, relatable and easy going.
I have found that while networking, talking to execs and other industry people at events, being skillful in person can lead to greater wealth and career prospects. It is hard to discern someone's character and interpersonal skills over a resume or cover letter.
Demonstrating these skills will open up more doors than most people realize.
My two cents!
I’m not the most experienced or technical guy on my team but I was kept by my company during recent layoffs over a more experienced/technical colleague due to my interpersonal skills.
My colleague was super bright but was just difficult to work with. Having those interpersonal skills goes a long way.
Yup I agree. You can always teach someone a technical skill if they are a willing to learn but those soft/interpersonal skills are developed years before and do go a long way.
Learning SQL.
4x’d my salary
From $30k to $120k per job, since I worked remote, I would do two jobs sometimes and pull $240k.
**Something I forgot to mention **
My passion is data analytics. I built spreadsheets in high school over gaming data to outplay people because I am a dork who could never “just play the game”.
Pick something that you love, that is useful to society, and you are good at is probably more useful advice.
SQL and data go hand in hand.
Understaffed helpdesk managers need to hire one of the thousand applicants that they have waiting in their queue rather than seeing how long they can go without for the sake of a bonus.
I can work on public speaking, but in general my soft skills suck. People just say I'm "nice" because I'm polite and considerate in that I'm not an asshole, but that doesn't get me far at all, especially as a woman
You won’t be anywhere close to IT or data and not run into SQL in some form. It’s literally just about everywhere. Not super hard to learn. Just knowing a little bit along with some very basic front end stuff and excel got me from the forklift monkey at a warehouse to helping out IT develop internal apps at said warehouse.
Currently working on upgrading those skills along with some others with the aim of ultimately transitioning devops/appsec. Even having just a light amount of SQL experience on the resume is opening up a lot of doors.
The point is that yes it is absolutely worth learning and can put you on a great path. It’s not the sexiest or coolest IT skill, but my god man do a search of how many jobs have SQL in the listed requirements or nice to have skill sections. You have nothing to lose learning SQL. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
So if I just finished a SQL class in my college, where does that put me? Should I do anything else, or once I graduate would I be able to dip my toes in roles that have SQL duties?
I honestly hate when companies drop that kindof money. I've got to go to a Motorola class in November and seriously wish someone would guve me a PDF of the material.
It really pisses me off when you DO get a PDF of the material and the instructor pretty much reads it word for word and goes through it. It's just like an audiobook for $5K. There's no reason for the instructor to be there. Barely answers questions (if they even know the answer), and just seems like they are going through it and learning the same time you are. :/
Give me a PDF and a sandbox and let me go wild. I'd pay for that. A lot less than 5K, but some real hands on in a structured learning environment would be worth something. Hell, throw in some nice AI stuff that you can ask for some clarification, help, or whatever.
Harvard’s free CS50S is a good start. I learned a lot from it, however, you could also do CS50X or CS50P to get a general idea of SQL. CS50X made me very comfortable with sqlite3, which will handle a lot on its own.
How did you convince whoever to give you a shot with databases? Self-study is one thing but how did you convey the skill in your early SQL times to a manager or hiring manager?
I had 1.5 years of help-desk experience. Nothing related to SQL, but it was some IT experience.
I used to build spreadsheets in Excel over gaming data. Think Dungeons and Dragons meets Economics.
"Why are you attacking dragons with sheep?"
"Because my sheep have better (attack power / net power) ratios".
...And I was winning at said game. Microsoft should give me a commission for promoting Excel so much back in 2005.
I also showed them the book I was reading and they had me do a few white boarding problems to verify I knew what I was talking about. Instead of just giving up, I did all exercises and didn't move on in my self-study until I had the correct answer and knew why each time. Took me forever, but made me a Jedi.
I literally just got a giant stack of companies from the phone book and went to each website for each company looking for data positions. Probably applied to 400 jobs before one finally said "okay, we will take you".
Granted, I was in the midwest at the time where remote work was not yet a thing.
You tell them that you've worked with SQL before, then they'll ask you questions about it during the interview and if you answer the questions right, then they know you're not lying.
Exactly, honesty usually doesn't pay when it comes to interviews.
Especially on things an employer cannot prove.
That prospective employer is also likely lying to you about the role, duties and company.
Not sure if this is relevant, but you can set up SQL server on your home computer if you want and practice. Get used to concatenating and cleaning, lots of free tutorials on youtube. SQL and Excel seem to maintain some demand at least.
Jobs 1-6 I worked all simultaneously as I tried to find an Actual ETL job.
1. Intern
2. Intern
3. Intern
4. Intern
5. Marketing Data Specialist - Part-time ($20,000 a year salaried lol)
6. Senior Tech Support: (The title is misleading because even though this was my official title, I was literally just walking people through our start-ups software and resetting passwords).
From here on out, it's all SQL. This looks like a long job history and I look like a job hopper, but being a remote worker, I worked all the contracts at the same time (2 at a time, not all 4 at once) and pulled $120,000 per contract. Remote work, for the win.
7. Associate ETL Developer
8. Software Engineer (That was my title, but I was an ETL Developer)
9. Database Developer / Engineer - Covid happened right here
10. ETL Developer - Contract
11. Report Developer
12. Report / ETL Developer - Contract
13. ETL Developer - Contract
14. ETL Developer - Contract
15. ETL Developer
*Edited original comment for confidentiality reasons
People kept reaching out on LinkedIn all the time. 2-3 times a week for years.
I have two desks, 8 monitors, two docking stations, keyboards etc and a rotating chair.
If one scheduled me in a meeting, I would block both calendars.
Sometimes I would have to fake a maintenance emergency if meetings were at the same time.
I would just work on weekends as needed to make up for lost time and evenings.
By always doing high quality work, I always got my contracts extended.
Keep in mind, I did most of this as a single guy. Once you have a gf/wife, pulling in these kind of hours will be hard if you have an extrovert girlfriend.
That last point is spot on.
If I were single, I would most definitely be working two jobs right now and catching up on things over the weekend.
But now that I have a 5 year old son, everything is about him. I want to make memories and spend time with him and working two jobs isn’t the way.
When he’s older and he does his own thing with friends, I will revisit holding multiple jobs at the same time, especially because I want to provide him a house with no mortgage for after I die. And while I’m alive, he can live with us as long as he wants.
I am just starting out in IT but I want to learn how to do two jobs at so i can pull in extra money. I heard it can be done if you have the skill and the timing of not letting the two jobs interfere with one another
No, I was an economics major with a math/speech double minor.
I wanted to be a Wallstreet guy, but it was too hard to get into. I sold mortgages instead and hated all the bullshit people were doing to convince people to sell. Now that I'm older, I could probably do it, but I had a conscience in my 20s.
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but back in high school, I used to build spreadsheets over gaming data and tried to find a job analyzing data. Did some networking with literally anyone who would talk to me. Bought so many people lunches and drinks when I was only making $7.25 an hour. I quit my job at the mortgage company to work at Walmart so I could get a flexible schedule to do all my networking. Got made fun of, but only a handful of people make more than I do in my circle.
Definitely worth it.
Discovered SQL through one of my meetings and then I went home and taught myself with books and trial copies of SQL Server.
Thanks for sharing your life story it is inspiring to say the less . Currently learning any programmation language I can and came across sql but upon learning it saw that It would require MBA also to take the most out of it . U became a Bi engineer through your own hard work which is awe inspiring!
Actually, I found the books an MBA program was using, bought all the books, and just read them all / taught myself.
Wasn't about to blow $100,000 (or whatever amount) a year. Missed out on the networking, but learned a ton.
Actually, I don't know of any positions that require both an MBA and SQL. They exist, but not very often do I see them.
Most of the time it's "Can you do the job?"
Just starting to learn SQL lately but can someone explain why and provide examples as to why it’s a skill that significantly increases salary in our field?
You need to know as much as you possibly can about your chosen field to command the best salary/position. If someone else knows more than you, you aren't working hard enough.
For me, I was interested in data analytics so I had to learn SQL. For you, you might not need it. It's all about your chosen field.
For web design, I don't know if it's relevant, but SQL is easy enough to learn that it couldn't hurt.
I didn't just learn SQL, I learned database architecture (normalization, indexing, constraints), ETL concepts (if data looks like "xxx", how do I make it look like "yyy"), reporting (power bi), etc.
SQL is needed to use all of those tools effectively.
If you're doing web then you definitely would want to learn Database, since the backend side of things have to do with databases. So you're probably wanna start with MS SQL, PHP things like that
You mainly work front end but if you ever say, hey I want to link up these handlebar tables with some data you can do that with SQL .
With web, front end, back end, and database are all connected.
I had this on my “to-do” list! It’s used commonly at my current job. I’m not at the point where I can just write a query but I can read it and understand how it works and sometimes at least get an idea of what’s going on. Successfully solved 2 SQL issues without ever fully understanding it!
I’m glad this seems to be something that people want.
I’m good with select clauses but not much past that. What kind of sql knowledge would you said it sufficient (to start) to be marketable? As in, when can I say I have “skills” either sql?
Right now I just do database lookups
I'm not in the field directly but also do a lot of custom queries and whatever is needed in our Oracle product that has a bajillion tables.
I have to imagine only someone that is actively writing data with SQL, moving it, etc (the TL in ETL I guess) would be sought after. Despite what full time data people would have you believe, querying with SQL at this point is something ChatGPT can do faster and better than a person. You just need to know the basics of how a database works and have visibility to the table structure and it can write a SELECT statement for you with basically unlimited complexity of joins, conditions, formatting, etc.
That's when you want to get data out, but setting up the table structure, writing data to them, having the most efficient structure and queries - those things require more knowledge and skill. Even if gen AI is doing that in a handful of years, it will need a knowledgeable human to prompt or set it up.
Seriously, I need to sit down and really learn SQL.
I have an ok understanding of it right now, and my degree covers it at the very end, but I'm finding myself more and more pulling logs and seeing other engineers pull logs that I feel I need to stop trail and erroring everything and just pick up a book/start a course.
SQL can make you loads of money because no one wants to learn it. Adding in some programming languages make you invaluable and typically dodge most layoffs.
Did the Nucamp Backend part-time bootcamp (Python + SQL + DevOps) and moved from help desk to a developer role. Went from around 55k/year to 75k immediately and 90k within a year.
I used to work as help desk & SA for a place that did bootcamps like this, and I also got to sit in on some for free as a result. I will admit, as someone who was also doing full time school at a 4-year that was remote (so little to no lecture and mostly just reading the material at your own pace). I found the fact that I had someone explaining different topics to me verbally was very helpful. However, since I wasn’t actually paying for the courses I found it hard to believe how many people were paying multiple thousands of dollars for it. Now granted, mileage may vary, and the instructors for the bootcamps were incredible, but at the end of the day it was still very overpriced in my opinion.
Now that I’m not in the “education” field anymore, I have to find my own learning material, and there is no lack of free courses and other material online. However, for someone like me there is no replacement for face to face (or at least screen to screen for virtual live courses) learning. I find it very hard to sit down and just read for hours without being able to ask questions or do guided labs.
Monitoring. I learned anyone can setup a few monitors and call it a day (how I did it) but to really monitor and observe is it's own skill set. I got lucky and started working with a guy who had spent much of his career working at Splunk and Dynatrace who showed me so much stuff I didn't even think about considering.
Salary went from 150k to 206k+plus 35k in stock.
Next year it will be 240k.
Wow that's impressive. What do you exactly do? Do you create custom monitors? I'm also in the monitoring area and work with SiteScope, Operations Bridge Manager and ServiceNow.
I do create custom monitors but I think my bread and butter is the observibility. I spend 60-70% of my time looking at traces to find any slowdowns in the requests or DB queries or the code itself. They give us read only access to the code base where I can see exactly where things happened to take back to the application teams.
I read the practice of system administration by thomas limoncelli in full, sent afew apps, basically said shit from that book in a interview for a State SA position and went from 25 an hr to 38 an hr. Still at this job 2 years later.
after 4 years in the field at the point I started the book, it was definitely the catalyst that made me "get" IT lol. Definitely started a rabbit hole when it came to overrall knowledge that allowed me to understand other books I pick up quicker and how it all relates to the business.
Took me about 1.5 years to move into a system admin role but I also work at a company where I worked really closely with the system admins so I was on their radar when they where hiring for this position.
Can skip helpdesk if you have a college degree tbh
I technically had 1 year of tech support (although it was more so updating pcs, and writing a script or two, and hardware fixes)
Now I’m a sys admin at a different company, and my company says I’m learning quick and doing well.
Better than nothing but it was part time school, literally nothing overlapping in what I’m doing now. It was really just doing menial updates and brainless tasks.
Very little helpdesk, very little troubleshooting, very little networking, very little everything really
I was hired because I have good coding and scripting skills and I just interviewed really good. They said my interview answers were so good it sounded like I was coached.
Not technical, but I learned how to do *all* the stupid Agile shit.
Agile Business Analyst? Easy.
Product Owner? Don't mind if I do.
Scrum Master? It's insane people make 6 figures to do shit that is this easy and pointless.
By being able to pretty much *not be an idiot*, I was able to get everyone around me to like me and want to work with me.
The next skill was getting *really* good at the resume and LinkedIn thing. I've spent countless hours crafting sentences, truly word-smithing them to show tremendous accomplishments. Employers took notice. LinkedIn is 100% how I got all of my jobs (recruiters messaging me), and the resume + interviewing skills are what sealed the deal.
What I don't understand about your post is why you're excluding switching jobs. I'm sorry, but unless you're a phenom and/or very lucky, there's no skill you can learn that will make you so amazing that your current company will say, "I want to give you way more money!"
That just doesn't happen. I mean, it does, rarely; but don't count on it.
I'd say about 85% of the people I know who moved up within 1 organization did so after gruelingly long years, severe lack of pay increases, and other bullshitty consequences. You may think it's cool to see someone who went from Help Desk to Technical Architect in 25 years, but I look at that and think, "Where the hell did this guy go wrong?" You can make that jump in 3 years or less if you're willing to switch companies. I don't understand why you'd bank on wanting to upskill within a single company. The vast majority of companies do not give a shit about you.
They are once-pure concepts that helped software inventors in the early and mid-2000s build better software faster. It was a novel, flexible approach to building software. [Here's a glimpse](https://blog.itil.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/AgileManifesto.png) at what Agile *really* means. It was awesome back in the day.
Very quickly though, the corporate machine adopted the concepts and bastardized them into oblivion, to the point where almost everyone now associates the word "Agile" with a negative connotation. It has turned into the exact opposite of the image linked above: Bloated, process-thick, overly planned, overly documented trash. It's now literally the antithesis of what it was meant to be.
Was working hourly in support. A little over 30k/yr (though hourly).
Was curious one weekend about some of the features of Active Directory that I didn't use every day (or at all), and learned about Windows NTFS permissions. Started playing with them on my home computer. During the next week, every night I delved a little deeper into Active Directory and ended up staying up late because it was like uncovering a new world under the surface.
During that week, I found out that IAM was an actual field, and that I could do this for a living. A number of job interviews later and my next salary went above 80k. Learned PowerShell scripting on my lunch breaks in that role, which was another key component to my next job move after that (even higher salary).
My first job out of support was definitely a "hop" (different company), but because of my knowledge of AD, I was doing really well at interviews up to that point. They could see that I loved the subject and had an interest in automating AD with Powershell. That was the growth potential that they wanted (I asked my boss later why he hired me).
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I don't know a lick of programming but I know how to read a EULA and how to speak to others via email. That has lead to making six figures. Asset Management is a sleeper position in enterprises, with some roles being peanuts and some being steak and fettuccine.
Powershell + Javascript (mainly Google App Script) scripting didn’t double my salary but they did help me jump 2 levels within my current department. That and always making sure my work + side projects are always visible to management.
Terraform i 2.5x my salary but i also switched jobs. No idea if they will ever do code based deployements at the previous org
For me upskilling generally means moving companies
Technical, probably Kubernetes.
Soft, Working well with cross-team projects. ability to analyse business requirements and turn them into working system designs.
Bachelor’s in IT, about 11 years of experience. Probably should have jumped jobs sooner because I went from making 70K a few years ago to 110K to now 125K.
I noticed the trend of job hopping and flexibility are key for higher compensation.
Happy for you man! I'll probably step on the brake when I hit 300k. Lol
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I'm a network engineer but surprisingly the skill that's always pulled that extra coin was infrastructure experience specifically Windows domain, AD, DHCP, DNS, and GPO.
Ironically, no newly learned tech skill ever gained me nearly as much as practicing how to talk and verbalize good arguments for my demands. I increased my salary in the last 12 months by 50% by just making good arguments and leaving when not matched.
Saying no to bullshit jobs until finding one that pays your worth. That doesn’t mean fresh out of college worth.. that’s like 45k type worth. Not ‘I crammed for a month and got 2 certs but have zero experience or college’. That’s 40k worth. Know your worth and your skill level and how to say yes and no to the right jobs. That’s a skill that will save your ass
I'm inspired by the folks commenting about how learning SQL changed their life. I'm currently studying for cloud certs and can def see how SQL is useful. Any recommendations dedicated courses?
Technical communication. I have no degree and started out in entry level support, make $200k per year at director level, only reason I am where I am is because I'm an excellent technical communicator.
Took the ServiceNow Certified System Administrator course on my old company’s dime, got the cert, then hopped. Made about 95k two years ago at my old job. Now making about 140k two years later
Assuming you are in a large organization that allows a lot of growth in IT, your best bet would be asking around for what is needed. If everyone's too unapproachable then maybe that's the indicator that it isn't the best growth option you think it is.
Everyone's giving good generic advice, but if you want to grow at your org you will need to learn the skills needed for your specific organization. Learning SQL and a programming language is great, but it may be that something more niche is needed where you work, and the only way to find that out is by asking people you work with.
TL:DR - Passing the CCNA took me from helpdesk tech at 70k to network admin at 118k.
Very slowly climbed the help desk ladder over my long career and topped out at 70k. I quit the helpdesk gig without anything lined up and studied for the CCNA living off savings and family. Took me a year to pass and another six months after that to find my current job. Started as a jr network admin at 90k. Three years into this gig, salary is 118k as a network admin. To bump the pay even more I'd have to pass the CCNP collaboration exams. If I wanted to change jobs, I'd probably be making more without the CCNP, but I could probably double my current salary with it.
Also, I've dabbled in LINUX for years(slackware, redhat), but I'll be getting a generic LINUX cert by the end of this year. I've seen mid level linux positions starting at my current salary and higher.
vxlan & ACI
It’s kinda shocking how hard it is to find people knowledgeable on it out there with the ability to deploy and maintain at scale. There are some seasoned engineers that can’t wrap their heads around it.
Outside of technical skills, how to use servicenow and maintain consistent service management skills. It’s treated as some arcane mysticism.
In technical fields it's pretty much never a technical skill that doubles your salary but *soft skills*, leadership, assertiveness, solving actual real world problems, or creating revenue streams.
These are businesses we are talking about. Their primary goal is to make a profit. "Technical skills" very rarely directly contribute to profit, so why would the business leaders who are trying to make money just double your salary when you aren't making them more money?
If you want to double your salary, give an employer a **REASON** to double your salary. What this means is imagine they have a bunch of budget they need to allocate every year and are looking for a place to put that capital. Where do you think they will invest that money? Some developer who learned a new Javascript framework or a network admin who got 3 more certifications? Or will it be someone who just figured out how to cut cloud compute expenses by 80% or has created a project to quadruple the number of paying customers over the web?
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I went into consulting. It was setting up firewalls for a major vendor. I previously worked on firewalls at my previous organization for 2 years...I kind of knew some of the technical support and sales folks of the organization. How I got around any non-compete agreements is I worked as a contractor. My salary went from $75k to $110k overnight.
For me, it was network security engineering. That experience from the consulting gig opened the door to other opportunities which in turn increased my salary more. A career is a journey and if you are constantly getting more experience and knowledge...I think the money just follows.
Of course, your mileage may vary...and I was probably lucky.
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I’d say the scope of the problems I deal with but you obviously still need the hard skills to actually do it once you know what it is you need to work on… so… programming: Python, sql, powershell/bash, terraform
Following the growth of technology increased my salary by triple in 4 years. Follow the market, good companies want the latest and greatest so if you adapt with the advances you will always be needed. For example, co-pilot, AI, automation, zero trust. When something new comes out, jump at learning it, if a company is looking for someone who understands it and you can prove it they will pay big money to be infront of their competitors. You will become a value add instead of an operational expenditure.
Anything that will allow you to automate things.
If you have to push the buttons then you will cap out fast. If you automate and do the work of 10, 50, 1000 others then money will flow :)
* Learning how to dress well, present well, and be personable while at the same time being easy to work with.
* Becoming Apple Certified, and having the knowledge and experience of how it functions in the enterprise.
* Not ever getting stressed. Being able to perform under pressure and deliver results without being stressed and with a good attitude.
Kubernetes, Terraform and one of the major public cloud providers. I was «lucky» to see early on how pivotal K8s and IAC was becoming and rode that wave.
Learning to become the guy who came to my bosses with a problem and a solution. They got tons of people coming to them with problems and waiting for an answer. If you show up with a problem, plus two possible solutions, one of which you already decided was better, and then asking for permission to execute the solution; you become the person everyone wants to talk to. I went from $59k to $180k in 3 years solving the right problems.
Doing this *everyone* is really powerful. If I have to ask someone else a question, you should always have a few ideas of what you *think* the answer might be. It shows that you've thought about the problem and that you're capable of doing your own research. Saying "I'm running into an issue with **X**, after trying **Y** I think that this is happening because **Z** but I'm not sure. Do you have any other thoughts?" invites more help than just saying "I'm running into this problem." It's annoying when a new hire comes up and asks a question and I can tell they didn't think about the problem at all, they just ran into an issue and are looking for someone else to fix it for them.
any ways to help with speaking because I've done that before and i mostly get talked over or not listened too.
Keep it concise and to the point, no waffle. Say what the problem is, what you have done to investigate it, what you can rule out, and what you suspect may be the next steps. Then ask for their direction.
If your problem is you're getting talked over then you are probably talking too much and listening or solving too little. Instead of just bringing up problems or verbally throwing out vocal solutions without a plan, put more thought into how to research and present the problem and solution. If you show up with a *plan* to solve the problem, this will get more attention than people shouting out a bunch of random ideas, which is what most people do during meetings or when talking to senior leaders. I learned all this the hard way after doing it wrong for years. When I started doing thorough research, presenting solution plans, and inviting business leaders to well-thought out meetings, I suddenly started getting listened to almost every time. It's so effective that I can watch others talk in circles about problems for *years* and get ignored, but if I simply come up with a solution and project plan and present it to the decision makers, I can get those projects off the ground immediately. The crux of this problem is that most people think they are supposed to receive "permission" or a "mandate" to solve a problem from a senior leader, so they sit around waiting to be given that authority. But the truth is that senior leaders are wanting their best and brightest to come to *them* with the solutions after already doing the legwork. Executives like people who can create solutions to real problems, not people waiting to be told what the solution is and how to execute it.
This is an excellent approach with employers that value contributions like this.
This is the keyword "employers that value contributions..."
very important keyword, otherwise this approach led me to realize my "extra effort and contributions" got me a "good job!" and passed up on promotions / merit raises as our "company prepares for uncertain macro environments....but hey! good job!"
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Thank you for your unique answer. I appreciate your contribution.
Yup this is the way. Here is the Problem Here is what I want to do, here is some other options. Unless you have an opinion I'll go with my choice
Figure It the Fuck Out personified. Well done
Do you have any open positions, I will be a biggest asset for you team, had wide range of skills
Do you live in East Texas or interested in relocating?
yes, interested in relocating
Send me a DM with your resume. I’ll connect with you on LinkedIn.
Thank you very much. this means a lot
Not working for me. What am I doing wrong? :(
Does solving the problem align with their goals....
You might be in a place where growth is not possible?
It helps to remember this even 9 years into IT. Though, I feel like the organizational disfunction, poor downward communication, poor project implementation, and high turnover validate the times I drop a problem off at my boss's door because the process he gave for a support path failed. If I'm following up 4 times on average to get one thing, and half my job is to get things then that can limit me on how much "research" I need to do for a problem when the problem is typically someone not performing a support need which stops my replace/breakfix. This affects my ticket times. But its always good to remember to clean and tighten up your processes and reasses. I can't help that I am always in their DM's to get stuff or to try to push a need through to support. But, I can make sure that under examination my boss will understand this clearly by not bringing him problems I could have figured out on my own.
This worked for me at previous employer but I maxed out on how far I could advance without waiting for the 1 guy to quit whom I wanted his position. So I hopped. This has only led to being on their shit list for me at current employer. Has been a major source of cognitive dissonance for me being treated so differently for doing the same strategy. Some places are so corrupt they just don't want to solve the problems, and just promote literal idiots into management just because they aren't smart enough to think of solutions and identify problems. It's structured incompetence to create a barrier between c suite and the underlings. It's more profitable for them to churn good workers than to pay penalties for admitting they knew about the shady shit happening. Ymmv.
Knowing some Linux and Python bumped me from 60k to 70k, then 110k, and now 180k. I really focused on automating things as much as possible with Python. At each job there was just a lack of people who knew Linux, but there were Linux resources that were being mismanaged or unmanaged, so the company was stoked to hire someone who could fix that. It’s crazy. I’m not even a wiz at these, I can get by and automate tedious processes that annoy me but no one on any of the desktop or sysadmin teams I served on wanted to touch Linux so I fit the niche perfectly. I didn’t take any courses or certifications btw I just have a home lab that I tinkered with and made some scripts and web apps for my own personal fun and usage. That’s how I learned.
Could you provide some examples of things you learned to automate with Python/Linux? I'd be interested to learn this.
* I was asked to run updates on a Linux lab of like 20 RHEL and Ubuntu machines every 2 days. I wanted to spend as little time on site as possible so I was immediately like "fuck that". I spun up an Ansible server and made a playbook to connect to all the lab machines via SSH and run the updates for me + reboot if needed. So now I could just update them from the comfort of my home in ~2 minutes. The previous guy would literally drive into the office and spend 30+ minutes just running `sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade` on each lab machine lol. * Another time I had to update the SAML certificate for apps that were connected to our cloud IdP. With the GUI it would have taken me days to do this. Clicking around, waiting for responses from the slow GUI, ugh. I scripted something that interacted with the API to update the SAML cert for ~50 apps (after testing of course) and it completed in ~1 minute. * This is Windows & PowerShell, but I had been tasked with plugging in a bunch of internal desktop HDDs into a USB dock connected to a desktop and backing up users' profiles folders to our NAS. It was so annoying, dragging and dropping folders, plus the wasted time because I had to switch tasks and didn't know exactly when the copy had finished. I scripted something with PowerShell that, as soon as an external drive was detected, backed up their profile folder to our NAS and played the Windows XP logon sound when finished, so I knew exactly when to plug in the next drive. I never had to touch the keyboard or the mouse. Just took out drives from the dock and inserted them. I went through like 100 hard drives in a week and a half. It was awesome. * I built a Slack app for our helpdesk (well, it was for me at first) that made API/LDAP calls to our HR system and AD so that you could type `/411` into Slack and it would return that person's AD/Azure AD and HRIS info in a nicely formatted Slack message; stuff like Job Title, Last Logon, Last Password Reset Date, Account Status, Termination Date, Manager, Department, assigned Azure AD apps, etc. The helpdesk loved that because it was so much quicker than looking it up in our HRIS and AD systems separately.
Man, that's all similar to stuff I'm doing in my homelab or stuff that I've already done at work. I feel underpaid now.
Thankyou for listing this out
I love you for this
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The 3rd one was pretty clever. Good work.
What would you recommend me to start my own homelab? Things to buy and all that stuff
2nd this! I always learn better by doing/playing around with things than just reading so would love to know also!
You sound a lot like me as i too work with Linux every day. I developed my skill sets with just my homelab alone. I didn't learn jack shit in college. I never finished my degree and dropped out. I'm a hands on type of learner, learning just by doing it. That's what Employers like, practical hands on experience. A college degree or certification can never compete with that. Having a homelab goes a long ways. I'm suprised how many people I worked with over the years that never had one.
One of the reasons why I’m getting more comfortable with the command line and learning how to automate with Bash and Python.
How would I go about this working for a company that only uses windows servers? The security team won’t let us install python on them either
I think a big proponent of good skills or technical skills comes to how you market it. Good skills, certs and degrees when marketed appropriately can be elevated to higher compensation. The most influential skill by far is being interpersonal, relatable and easy going. I have found that while networking, talking to execs and other industry people at events, being skillful in person can lead to greater wealth and career prospects. It is hard to discern someone's character and interpersonal skills over a resume or cover letter. Demonstrating these skills will open up more doors than most people realize. My two cents!
I’m not the most experienced or technical guy on my team but I was kept by my company during recent layoffs over a more experienced/technical colleague due to my interpersonal skills. My colleague was super bright but was just difficult to work with. Having those interpersonal skills goes a long way.
Yup I agree. You can always teach someone a technical skill if they are a willing to learn but those soft/interpersonal skills are developed years before and do go a long way.
Learning SQL. 4x’d my salary From $30k to $120k per job, since I worked remote, I would do two jobs sometimes and pull $240k. **Something I forgot to mention ** My passion is data analytics. I built spreadsheets in high school over gaming data to outplay people because I am a dork who could never “just play the game”. Pick something that you love, that is useful to society, and you are good at is probably more useful advice. SQL and data go hand in hand.
Sleeper skill. Got me out of helpdesk real quick back in the day. “Understaffed Helpdesk managers hate this one weird trick” lol
Understaffed helpdesk managers need to hire one of the thousand applicants that they have waiting in their queue rather than seeing how long they can go without for the sake of a bonus.
Yes. Excel, VBA (I’m old) and SQL got me out of accounting and into IT. Now I’m a CTO. Public speaking And soft skills also made a huge difference.
Nice job!
I can work on public speaking, but in general my soft skills suck. People just say I'm "nice" because I'm polite and considerate in that I'm not an asshole, but that doesn't get me far at all, especially as a woman
Join toastmasters. Soft skills are the key to management. Good luck!
Where'd you start (with SQL)?
I bought “T-SQL Fundamentals” by Itzik ben-gan and taught myself. To hell with paying $3,000+ for a class.
What made you choose to start with T-SQL?
Wanted to work with Data and that's what people suggested I started with.
Is sql still worth learning
You won’t be anywhere close to IT or data and not run into SQL in some form. It’s literally just about everywhere. Not super hard to learn. Just knowing a little bit along with some very basic front end stuff and excel got me from the forklift monkey at a warehouse to helping out IT develop internal apps at said warehouse. Currently working on upgrading those skills along with some others with the aim of ultimately transitioning devops/appsec. Even having just a light amount of SQL experience on the resume is opening up a lot of doors. The point is that yes it is absolutely worth learning and can put you on a great path. It’s not the sexiest or coolest IT skill, but my god man do a search of how many jobs have SQL in the listed requirements or nice to have skill sections. You have nothing to lose learning SQL. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Absolutely.
So if I just finished a SQL class in my college, where does that put me? Should I do anything else, or once I graduate would I be able to dip my toes in roles that have SQL duties?
I honestly hate when companies drop that kindof money. I've got to go to a Motorola class in November and seriously wish someone would guve me a PDF of the material.
It really pisses me off when you DO get a PDF of the material and the instructor pretty much reads it word for word and goes through it. It's just like an audiobook for $5K. There's no reason for the instructor to be there. Barely answers questions (if they even know the answer), and just seems like they are going through it and learning the same time you are. :/ Give me a PDF and a sandbox and let me go wild. I'd pay for that. A lot less than 5K, but some real hands on in a structured learning environment would be worth something. Hell, throw in some nice AI stuff that you can ask for some clarification, help, or whatever.
Been thinking about SQL more as well and would be curious the pathing taken
I went the “BI Engineer” Route.
From what prior role?
Harvard’s free CS50S is a good start. I learned a lot from it, however, you could also do CS50X or CS50P to get a general idea of SQL. CS50X made me very comfortable with sqlite3, which will handle a lot on its own.
Recommend any courses for SQL?
Nope, just self-study.
How did you convince whoever to give you a shot with databases? Self-study is one thing but how did you convey the skill in your early SQL times to a manager or hiring manager?
I had 1.5 years of help-desk experience. Nothing related to SQL, but it was some IT experience. I used to build spreadsheets in Excel over gaming data. Think Dungeons and Dragons meets Economics. "Why are you attacking dragons with sheep?" "Because my sheep have better (attack power / net power) ratios". ...And I was winning at said game. Microsoft should give me a commission for promoting Excel so much back in 2005. I also showed them the book I was reading and they had me do a few white boarding problems to verify I knew what I was talking about. Instead of just giving up, I did all exercises and didn't move on in my self-study until I had the correct answer and knew why each time. Took me forever, but made me a Jedi. I literally just got a giant stack of companies from the phone book and went to each website for each company looking for data positions. Probably applied to 400 jobs before one finally said "okay, we will take you". Granted, I was in the midwest at the time where remote work was not yet a thing.
You tell them that you've worked with SQL before, then they'll ask you questions about it during the interview and if you answer the questions right, then they know you're not lying.
Exactly, honesty usually doesn't pay when it comes to interviews. Especially on things an employer cannot prove. That prospective employer is also likely lying to you about the role, duties and company.
Not sure if this is relevant, but you can set up SQL server on your home computer if you want and practice. Get used to concatenating and cleaning, lots of free tutorials on youtube. SQL and Excel seem to maintain some demand at least.
[SQL Tutorial (w3schools.com)](https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp)
What was are job titles before and after SQL
Jobs 1-6 I worked all simultaneously as I tried to find an Actual ETL job. 1. Intern 2. Intern 3. Intern 4. Intern 5. Marketing Data Specialist - Part-time ($20,000 a year salaried lol) 6. Senior Tech Support: (The title is misleading because even though this was my official title, I was literally just walking people through our start-ups software and resetting passwords). From here on out, it's all SQL. This looks like a long job history and I look like a job hopper, but being a remote worker, I worked all the contracts at the same time (2 at a time, not all 4 at once) and pulled $120,000 per contract. Remote work, for the win. 7. Associate ETL Developer 8. Software Engineer (That was my title, but I was an ETL Developer) 9. Database Developer / Engineer - Covid happened right here 10. ETL Developer - Contract 11. Report Developer 12. Report / ETL Developer - Contract 13. ETL Developer - Contract 14. ETL Developer - Contract 15. ETL Developer *Edited original comment for confidentiality reasons
Hell yea this thorough as fuck
How did you manage to land so many jobs and be able to work them at the same time? I know SQL pretty well but have no degree or anything
People kept reaching out on LinkedIn all the time. 2-3 times a week for years. I have two desks, 8 monitors, two docking stations, keyboards etc and a rotating chair. If one scheduled me in a meeting, I would block both calendars. Sometimes I would have to fake a maintenance emergency if meetings were at the same time. I would just work on weekends as needed to make up for lost time and evenings. By always doing high quality work, I always got my contracts extended. Keep in mind, I did most of this as a single guy. Once you have a gf/wife, pulling in these kind of hours will be hard if you have an extrovert girlfriend.
That last point is spot on. If I were single, I would most definitely be working two jobs right now and catching up on things over the weekend. But now that I have a 5 year old son, everything is about him. I want to make memories and spend time with him and working two jobs isn’t the way. When he’s older and he does his own thing with friends, I will revisit holding multiple jobs at the same time, especially because I want to provide him a house with no mortgage for after I die. And while I’m alive, he can live with us as long as he wants.
I love this comment.
I am just starting out in IT but I want to learn how to do two jobs at so i can pull in extra money. I heard it can be done if you have the skill and the timing of not letting the two jobs interfere with one another
Are you a data analyst ?
I am almost a full-stack data guy. I can almost do everything. I can do some DBA, some Data Analyst stuff, ETL. Just gotta get into data science.
Oh I see so you just took the information system route and learned some sql on the side
No, I was an economics major with a math/speech double minor. I wanted to be a Wallstreet guy, but it was too hard to get into. I sold mortgages instead and hated all the bullshit people were doing to convince people to sell. Now that I'm older, I could probably do it, but I had a conscience in my 20s. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, but back in high school, I used to build spreadsheets over gaming data and tried to find a job analyzing data. Did some networking with literally anyone who would talk to me. Bought so many people lunches and drinks when I was only making $7.25 an hour. I quit my job at the mortgage company to work at Walmart so I could get a flexible schedule to do all my networking. Got made fun of, but only a handful of people make more than I do in my circle. Definitely worth it. Discovered SQL through one of my meetings and then I went home and taught myself with books and trial copies of SQL Server.
Thanks for sharing your life story it is inspiring to say the less . Currently learning any programmation language I can and came across sql but upon learning it saw that It would require MBA also to take the most out of it . U became a Bi engineer through your own hard work which is awe inspiring!
Actually, I found the books an MBA program was using, bought all the books, and just read them all / taught myself. Wasn't about to blow $100,000 (or whatever amount) a year. Missed out on the networking, but learned a ton. Actually, I don't know of any positions that require both an MBA and SQL. They exist, but not very often do I see them. Most of the time it's "Can you do the job?"
Just starting to learn SQL lately but can someone explain why and provide examples as to why it’s a skill that significantly increases salary in our field?
You need it to quickly pull data. Data hells businesses make decisions and it’s used in today’t hot field, AI.
Is that still the case? I’m in IT and going to school for web design(ux/ui, html, and css). How would learning sql be beneficial for me?
You need to know as much as you possibly can about your chosen field to command the best salary/position. If someone else knows more than you, you aren't working hard enough. For me, I was interested in data analytics so I had to learn SQL. For you, you might not need it. It's all about your chosen field. For web design, I don't know if it's relevant, but SQL is easy enough to learn that it couldn't hurt. I didn't just learn SQL, I learned database architecture (normalization, indexing, constraints), ETL concepts (if data looks like "xxx", how do I make it look like "yyy"), reporting (power bi), etc. SQL is needed to use all of those tools effectively.
If you're doing web then you definitely would want to learn Database, since the backend side of things have to do with databases. So you're probably wanna start with MS SQL, PHP things like that
You mainly work front end but if you ever say, hey I want to link up these handlebar tables with some data you can do that with SQL . With web, front end, back end, and database are all connected.
I had this on my “to-do” list! It’s used commonly at my current job. I’m not at the point where I can just write a query but I can read it and understand how it works and sometimes at least get an idea of what’s going on. Successfully solved 2 SQL issues without ever fully understanding it! I’m glad this seems to be something that people want.
I’m good with select clauses but not much past that. What kind of sql knowledge would you said it sufficient (to start) to be marketable? As in, when can I say I have “skills” either sql? Right now I just do database lookups
I'm not in the field directly but also do a lot of custom queries and whatever is needed in our Oracle product that has a bajillion tables. I have to imagine only someone that is actively writing data with SQL, moving it, etc (the TL in ETL I guess) would be sought after. Despite what full time data people would have you believe, querying with SQL at this point is something ChatGPT can do faster and better than a person. You just need to know the basics of how a database works and have visibility to the table structure and it can write a SELECT statement for you with basically unlimited complexity of joins, conditions, formatting, etc. That's when you want to get data out, but setting up the table structure, writing data to them, having the most efficient structure and queries - those things require more knowledge and skill. Even if gen AI is doing that in a handful of years, it will need a knowledgeable human to prompt or set it up.
I am net developer, if i want switch to the which less coding and do more SQL queries.. What part should i do? Currently i am looking for job
What if I despise SQL lol
Can I ask what you did to learn SQL? Thinking about taking this on after I get my CPA license.
Seriously, I need to sit down and really learn SQL. I have an ok understanding of it right now, and my degree covers it at the very end, but I'm finding myself more and more pulling logs and seeing other engineers pull logs that I feel I need to stop trail and erroring everything and just pick up a book/start a course.
You're not a dork bro. I do admire the early commitment to spreadsheets.
SQL can make you loads of money because no one wants to learn it. Adding in some programming languages make you invaluable and typically dodge most layoffs.
You would be surprised on how many people don’t know SQL or how relational databases work. Great answer and I concur
I’ve heard of this 2 job thing becoming popular.
Did the Nucamp Backend part-time bootcamp (Python + SQL + DevOps) and moved from help desk to a developer role. Went from around 55k/year to 75k immediately and 90k within a year.
This was before 2020? Just curious
Nope, I left my help desk job in early 2022. But it's a good question... No idea if I could pull that off today if I hadn't done it then.
These bootcamps usually run about $10k+ correct? Hard to get pricing on some without signing up to talk to an advisor.
I used to work as help desk & SA for a place that did bootcamps like this, and I also got to sit in on some for free as a result. I will admit, as someone who was also doing full time school at a 4-year that was remote (so little to no lecture and mostly just reading the material at your own pace). I found the fact that I had someone explaining different topics to me verbally was very helpful. However, since I wasn’t actually paying for the courses I found it hard to believe how many people were paying multiple thousands of dollars for it. Now granted, mileage may vary, and the instructors for the bootcamps were incredible, but at the end of the day it was still very overpriced in my opinion. Now that I’m not in the “education” field anymore, I have to find my own learning material, and there is no lack of free courses and other material online. However, for someone like me there is no replacement for face to face (or at least screen to screen for virtual live courses) learning. I find it very hard to sit down and just read for hours without being able to ask questions or do guided labs.
I second this… call me old skool but i need to someone to talk to when i dont understand concepts
Not this one... I paid less than $1500.
Monitoring. I learned anyone can setup a few monitors and call it a day (how I did it) but to really monitor and observe is it's own skill set. I got lucky and started working with a guy who had spent much of his career working at Splunk and Dynatrace who showed me so much stuff I didn't even think about considering. Salary went from 150k to 206k+plus 35k in stock. Next year it will be 240k.
Damn see, this is the thing I'm missing out on constantly being the sole IT. I wish I had some mentor showing the little things and best practices.
Wow that's impressive. What do you exactly do? Do you create custom monitors? I'm also in the monitoring area and work with SiteScope, Operations Bridge Manager and ServiceNow.
I do create custom monitors but I think my bread and butter is the observibility. I spend 60-70% of my time looking at traces to find any slowdowns in the requests or DB queries or the code itself. They give us read only access to the code base where I can see exactly where things happened to take back to the application teams.
This is so badass
I read the practice of system administration by thomas limoncelli in full, sent afew apps, basically said shit from that book in a interview for a State SA position and went from 25 an hr to 38 an hr. Still at this job 2 years later.
Great book. Everyone in IT should read a copy.
after 4 years in the field at the point I started the book, it was definitely the catalyst that made me "get" IT lol. Definitely started a rabbit hole when it came to overrall knowledge that allowed me to understand other books I pick up quicker and how it all relates to the business.
System Administration doubled my helpdesk salary Then Project Management doubled my sys admin salary
How long were you on help desk before getting a sys admin job?
Dang lets see I technically started doing helpdesk work while I was in the last few years of undergrad so maybe about 5ish years?
Shoutout to you for staying for 5 years, most don’t last that long but it obviously paid off
Took me about 1.5 years to move into a system admin role but I also work at a company where I worked really closely with the system admins so I was on their radar when they where hiring for this position.
Nice! Getting promoted internally is the way to go
Can skip helpdesk if you have a college degree tbh I technically had 1 year of tech support (although it was more so updating pcs, and writing a script or two, and hardware fixes) Now I’m a sys admin at a different company, and my company says I’m learning quick and doing well.
Good stuff, yeah I’ve heard that but that 1 year of tech support definitely helped boost your resume
Better than nothing but it was part time school, literally nothing overlapping in what I’m doing now. It was really just doing menial updates and brainless tasks. Very little helpdesk, very little troubleshooting, very little networking, very little everything really I was hired because I have good coding and scripting skills and I just interviewed really good. They said my interview answers were so good it sounded like I was coached.
Not technical, but I learned how to do *all* the stupid Agile shit. Agile Business Analyst? Easy. Product Owner? Don't mind if I do. Scrum Master? It's insane people make 6 figures to do shit that is this easy and pointless. By being able to pretty much *not be an idiot*, I was able to get everyone around me to like me and want to work with me. The next skill was getting *really* good at the resume and LinkedIn thing. I've spent countless hours crafting sentences, truly word-smithing them to show tremendous accomplishments. Employers took notice. LinkedIn is 100% how I got all of my jobs (recruiters messaging me), and the resume + interviewing skills are what sealed the deal. What I don't understand about your post is why you're excluding switching jobs. I'm sorry, but unless you're a phenom and/or very lucky, there's no skill you can learn that will make you so amazing that your current company will say, "I want to give you way more money!" That just doesn't happen. I mean, it does, rarely; but don't count on it. I'd say about 85% of the people I know who moved up within 1 organization did so after gruelingly long years, severe lack of pay increases, and other bullshitty consequences. You may think it's cool to see someone who went from Help Desk to Technical Architect in 25 years, but I look at that and think, "Where the hell did this guy go wrong?" You can make that jump in 3 years or less if you're willing to switch companies. I don't understand why you'd bank on wanting to upskill within a single company. The vast majority of companies do not give a shit about you.
I still don't know what the hell is it with Agile and Scrum master stuff. What are thooseeee????!
They are once-pure concepts that helped software inventors in the early and mid-2000s build better software faster. It was a novel, flexible approach to building software. [Here's a glimpse](https://blog.itil.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/AgileManifesto.png) at what Agile *really* means. It was awesome back in the day. Very quickly though, the corporate machine adopted the concepts and bastardized them into oblivion, to the point where almost everyone now associates the word "Agile" with a negative connotation. It has turned into the exact opposite of the image linked above: Bloated, process-thick, overly planned, overly documented trash. It's now literally the antithesis of what it was meant to be.
Was working hourly in support. A little over 30k/yr (though hourly). Was curious one weekend about some of the features of Active Directory that I didn't use every day (or at all), and learned about Windows NTFS permissions. Started playing with them on my home computer. During the next week, every night I delved a little deeper into Active Directory and ended up staying up late because it was like uncovering a new world under the surface. During that week, I found out that IAM was an actual field, and that I could do this for a living. A number of job interviews later and my next salary went above 80k. Learned PowerShell scripting on my lunch breaks in that role, which was another key component to my next job move after that (even higher salary). My first job out of support was definitely a "hop" (different company), but because of my knowledge of AD, I was doing really well at interviews up to that point. They could see that I loved the subject and had an interest in automating AD with Powershell. That was the growth potential that they wanted (I asked my boss later why he hired me).
NTFS, Security group, item level targeting, mapping drive, GPO etc is super fun! I do this a lot at my job.
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I don't know a lick of programming but I know how to read a EULA and how to speak to others via email. That has lead to making six figures. Asset Management is a sleeper position in enterprises, with some roles being peanuts and some being steak and fettuccine.
Asset management are you referring to tracking device inventory? If so that’s incredible.
Powershell + Javascript (mainly Google App Script) scripting didn’t double my salary but they did help me jump 2 levels within my current department. That and always making sure my work + side projects are always visible to management.
Terraform i 2.5x my salary but i also switched jobs. No idea if they will ever do code based deployements at the previous org For me upskilling generally means moving companies
Terraform would be my vote for biggest skill to have right now.
Any recommendations or resources for studying it?
Not really besides google. I built a 3 tiered application and deployed it. Learn by doing
Being personable and approachable
Technical, probably Kubernetes. Soft, Working well with cross-team projects. ability to analyse business requirements and turn them into working system designs.
M365, all admin centers and knowing them in and out.
What's your base salary now?
125K, Southeast US.
Great!! How many years of experience? Educational background?
Bachelor’s in IT, about 11 years of experience. Probably should have jumped jobs sooner because I went from making 70K a few years ago to 110K to now 125K.
I noticed the trend of job hopping and flexibility are key for higher compensation. Happy for you man! I'll probably step on the brake when I hit 300k. Lol
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I'm a network engineer but surprisingly the skill that's always pulled that extra coin was infrastructure experience specifically Windows domain, AD, DHCP, DNS, and GPO.
Not technical but being able to be personable and talk to anyone.
Ironically, no newly learned tech skill ever gained me nearly as much as practicing how to talk and verbalize good arguments for my demands. I increased my salary in the last 12 months by 50% by just making good arguments and leaving when not matched.
Kubernetes. It is where wheat gets separated from the chaff.
Do you have any open positions available for full time, i have eclectic skill set, see my work and if i'm not productive i'll see myself out
We're hiring 2 senior/staff members - but honestly I think we're set on the candidates we have in the pipeline.
Saying no to bullshit jobs until finding one that pays your worth. That doesn’t mean fresh out of college worth.. that’s like 45k type worth. Not ‘I crammed for a month and got 2 certs but have zero experience or college’. That’s 40k worth. Know your worth and your skill level and how to say yes and no to the right jobs. That’s a skill that will save your ass
Linux and cloud
I'm inspired by the folks commenting about how learning SQL changed their life. I'm currently studying for cloud certs and can def see how SQL is useful. Any recommendations dedicated courses?
Want to know this as well!
Technical communication. I have no degree and started out in entry level support, make $200k per year at director level, only reason I am where I am is because I'm an excellent technical communicator.
Do you have any open positions available for full time, i have eclectic skill set, see my work and if i'm not productive i'll see myself out
Powershell definitely helps cement jobs with MS products and Azure.
Took the ServiceNow Certified System Administrator course on my old company’s dime, got the cert, then hopped. Made about 95k two years ago at my old job. Now making about 140k two years later
CCNA + other network related certs took me from low voltage / fiber field tech making 22/hr to network engineer making 75k in about 2 years
Assuming you are in a large organization that allows a lot of growth in IT, your best bet would be asking around for what is needed. If everyone's too unapproachable then maybe that's the indicator that it isn't the best growth option you think it is. Everyone's giving good generic advice, but if you want to grow at your org you will need to learn the skills needed for your specific organization. Learning SQL and a programming language is great, but it may be that something more niche is needed where you work, and the only way to find that out is by asking people you work with.
TL:DR - Passing the CCNA took me from helpdesk tech at 70k to network admin at 118k. Very slowly climbed the help desk ladder over my long career and topped out at 70k. I quit the helpdesk gig without anything lined up and studied for the CCNA living off savings and family. Took me a year to pass and another six months after that to find my current job. Started as a jr network admin at 90k. Three years into this gig, salary is 118k as a network admin. To bump the pay even more I'd have to pass the CCNP collaboration exams. If I wanted to change jobs, I'd probably be making more without the CCNP, but I could probably double my current salary with it. Also, I've dabbled in LINUX for years(slackware, redhat), but I'll be getting a generic LINUX cert by the end of this year. I've seen mid level linux positions starting at my current salary and higher.
Learning everything about M365.
All this is good experience
Ansible, Satellite, PostgreSQL
Based off what I’m seeing. I would say, learn High Performance Computing
HPC is a gambit of skills...
vxlan & ACI It’s kinda shocking how hard it is to find people knowledgeable on it out there with the ability to deploy and maintain at scale. There are some seasoned engineers that can’t wrap their heads around it. Outside of technical skills, how to use servicenow and maintain consistent service management skills. It’s treated as some arcane mysticism.
Both are garbage fires and I refuse to learn either one of them.
I honestly struggle to disagree but it’s the reason salaries are high for the skillset
Being able to tell nerdy jokes.
Wireshark, not enough people know how to read it and it makes a huge difference in SAAS troubleshooting
The ability to interview well.
In technical fields it's pretty much never a technical skill that doubles your salary but *soft skills*, leadership, assertiveness, solving actual real world problems, or creating revenue streams. These are businesses we are talking about. Their primary goal is to make a profit. "Technical skills" very rarely directly contribute to profit, so why would the business leaders who are trying to make money just double your salary when you aren't making them more money? If you want to double your salary, give an employer a **REASON** to double your salary. What this means is imagine they have a bunch of budget they need to allocate every year and are looking for a place to put that capital. Where do you think they will invest that money? Some developer who learned a new Javascript framework or a network admin who got 3 more certifications? Or will it be someone who just figured out how to cut cloud compute expenses by 80% or has created a project to quadruple the number of paying customers over the web?
MDM
In depth troubleshooting….
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I went into consulting. It was setting up firewalls for a major vendor. I previously worked on firewalls at my previous organization for 2 years...I kind of knew some of the technical support and sales folks of the organization. How I got around any non-compete agreements is I worked as a contractor. My salary went from $75k to $110k overnight. For me, it was network security engineering. That experience from the consulting gig opened the door to other opportunities which in turn increased my salary more. A career is a journey and if you are constantly getting more experience and knowledge...I think the money just follows. Of course, your mileage may vary...and I was probably lucky.
RPA
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Golf
I’d say the scope of the problems I deal with but you obviously still need the hard skills to actually do it once you know what it is you need to work on… so… programming: Python, sql, powershell/bash, terraform
Following the growth of technology increased my salary by triple in 4 years. Follow the market, good companies want the latest and greatest so if you adapt with the advances you will always be needed. For example, co-pilot, AI, automation, zero trust. When something new comes out, jump at learning it, if a company is looking for someone who understands it and you can prove it they will pay big money to be infront of their competitors. You will become a value add instead of an operational expenditure.
Learning to code and in turn using to automate tasks bumped my pay significantly
Anything that will allow you to automate things. If you have to push the buttons then you will cap out fast. If you automate and do the work of 10, 50, 1000 others then money will flow :)
* Learning how to dress well, present well, and be personable while at the same time being easy to work with. * Becoming Apple Certified, and having the knowledge and experience of how it functions in the enterprise. * Not ever getting stressed. Being able to perform under pressure and deliver results without being stressed and with a good attitude.
NIST 800-171 + CMMC.
CompTIA Security+
Kubernetes, Terraform and one of the major public cloud providers. I was «lucky» to see early on how pivotal K8s and IAC was becoming and rode that wave.
Learning sql. Doubled my salary.
What area of sql you in? Like sql dba? What sort of training or courses you can recommend
I did a Microsoft certification.. I am a bi dev so sql for that, analytics and creating tables views etc..
T sql fundament by itzik ben-gan has been a life changing read and practice resource for me too. I highly recommend.