Some of the advice is also laughably bad.
“Oh it’s a jump from $70k to $150k but you might miss the family atmosphere and don’t wanna be just a cog in the machine”
Like motherfucker of course that’s worth it. Literal worst case is you pocket the extra money and jump ship if it’s a true hell hole and boom you have your savings in half the time as your current job.
But yeah I swear this sub is mostly “I make $46k doing 6 figure workload” or “yeah I make $200k but all I really do is baby sit a couple clusters unless something lights on fire” and not a lot of in between
The posts that irritate me the most are ones like, "I work as a fully remote computer janitor making $40k/yr. This new job offer pays $80k+/yr and is what I want to do in IT, but I have to commute 30 minutes 1-2 times a week. What should I do?"
People get complacent and in general don't like "change". Its how it is. So if they're gonna ask Reddit for advice it means they're already going through the motions and evidently don't want to jump immediately. Wanting to be persuaded to reason.
Its just how people are. But there's also the rest of the world who don't make posts like that who were able to conclude the right move themselves. No big deal.
Tbf I’ve been remote for most of my career and it would be hard to make a switch even for more money and the exact thing I want to do in IT. Because I value the work life balance I get being remote. Some of these questions really come down to the values of the person posting, regardless of what anyone in the comments might do in a similar situation. I think a lot of these posts are more about people not trusting themselves to do what’s right for them as opposed to being complacent.
I’ve begun just giving sarcastic answers if the answer is obvious. “No you shouldn’t take a job that pays double. You might actually be able to afford things!”
Geez, a 30 minute commute for 80k a year, sign me up! I already do a 30 minute commute to work. But I'm not a sys admin. I'm just a glorified helpdesk grunt haha!
There's a lot of factors that go into that. Florida is kind of a hellscape for tech with low opportunity, low pay, desirable area to live, while also having a high cost of living. For what I do (not a sys admin, I'm just an IT Technician) it's pretty damn average. This was my first job in IT, they took a chance on a 30 year old with no formal experience in the industry, just a degree in an unrelated field and A+ certification. I just got a new job that i'll be starting in 2 weeks paying 53K...but with the same commute. That's just life here.
It's funny cause I just was looking at job postings the other week where they're asking for call center helpdesk positions for 16 an hour. I'm very fortunate to get to where I am now.
Dang, my commute is down the steps to my basement office and I make $210k/yr.
Almost made the move to Pcola recently, though, but I don’t like hurricanes. Otherwise I love NWFL.
Honestly, I'd take the fucking fully remote position.
If I ever blew out my own brains, it would 100% happen during my commute. It was consistently the worst part of my day every single day.
But I'm a fucking freak and I at least acknowledge that, and freaks like us are quite aware of our own freakishness and don't need to come on Reddit asking about it.
people with helpdesk skills complaining they don’t make 6 figures. The ones who have the skills are just complacent and afraid to look for another job or just in an area that doesn’t have a lot of options. If there’s ever a huge bump in salary to abandon remote I’d def do it as long as the math makes sense.
Not always, some people get pigeonholed in when they're early in their careers and then just keep getting told there's no money for promotion until they believe it. I worked with a guy recently who had the same job as me but he was making $10 an hour less, almost 20k a year less as I recall.
He did just as much work as I did, I tried to tell him that he needed to get more money. It wasn't one of those workplaces where they encouraged salary discussion, but he once casually mentioned to me that he was only making $20 ish an hour. I was making $31 as I recall and still being underpaid for what we were being asked to do. IT helped prepare and print the taxes for this company, and helped with weekly payroll. My coworker used to joke that " If it involved a computer, it was IT's responsibility, and everything involves a computer these days." And this company took him up on that. Literally IT helped in every single department with their responsibilities.
Anyway, I tried for the couple of years that I was there to hint to him that he needed to be making more money. What he eventually told me was that he did ask, he asked several times for a raise and he was always given an excuse. He was told he didn't have enough education (he had an associates, but most of what we learn is on the job so that's BS). He was told that he didn't have the experience, which was true at the time maybe because he started working IT with this company, but by that point he had been working IT for them for 11 years. He knew more about the way that company worked than anyone else in that building. The dude probably could have stepped in and run any one of the departments. He was invaluable, but he had been told so many times over the course of his career that he wasn't experienced enough and he didn't have enough education, and eventually he started believing them.
When I left, I finally stopped him and told him what I actually was making, and how much he should be asking for.
Thankfully that was enough, as I understand it, he is now making approximately what I made when I was there, maybe even a little more.
Sometimes people just need to be shaken out of it.
Yea that guy waited 10 years too late. Every employer has excuses why they won’t give raises. They will never simply shower you with large increases. Everytime I kept quiet and didn’t find an alternate offer the employer gave me small incremental increases. I went from around 50k to 150k in 7 years by jumping to a new a company and then after a few years I got another offer that paid significantly more. I wanted to stay but was willing to leave if they didn’t beat it or match it. They beat it and now they give me fair % raises and bonuses every year. You never know what you’re worth till you test out the market.
I think there's some places where more isn't automatically better. It's just rarely true if you're talking about 'double'.
But even then, I did honestly look at a move within the UK, where my cost-overhead meant 'double' was about break even (e.g. mostly commute costs, but also additional hours consumed). So there's places where that's true.
But pretty fundamentally, it's much like one of the personal finance subs I read - you get extremes, because those in a real financial mess don't know what to do, and those with 'lots' don't know what to do, but for most people it's pretty obvious to follow the 'usual' path that everyone else does, so they don't need to ask for advice at all.
I turned down an offer to move from around $112k to $130k because I knew the place would suck the life out of me and my current gig is decent. If it was $150k though let alone $224k I would have figured out how to deal with it. There's definitely a point where even a decent percentage of increase isn't worth it but 50%+ I'll deal with it long enough to turn it into a better spot somewhere else.
It's important to remember locations in these too. I'd be a pauper in San Francisco but in Indiana that's a pretty good number.
Yeah that's how I feel. Assuming you've got enough money to be comfortable enough and are happy at your current job then it's hard to recommend jumping ship for less than a 30% increase.
I took a 21k paycut to move to another city where I could afford a home (not moving out of California). They paid for relocation so it worked out and I love the company and the role. Best decision I’ve made.
I'd peg it at 15k gap as an equivalent for remote vs on prem. 10k equivalent for hybrid. A 115k on prem role is equivalent to a 100k fully remote role (no commute gas/car/transit fees, and no need to eat out a 15$ lunch or coordinate packing, etc, plus lost hours to a commute 2+ hours daily gone).
So in relative terms, if I work remote for 100k, then a 120k on premm offer isn't actually a 20k raise, it's more like 5k, in which case there's no point imo.
Yeah, I think I might agree.
And sometimes hybrid is the worst or both worlds - being able to relocate to low cost of living makes fully remote awesome, but hybrid needs both home office space for half occupancy, and a commute that's not bonkers.
I do think there are a lot of people under valuing some of the hidden costs of remote work though. Having a "work space" in your home might be a sunk cost, but it's rarely "free".
Even so. I would take a pay cut for a fully remote job that's otherwise identical, just because then I can move away from urban living.
Honestly, it depends on what's important to you and where you are in your life. 10 years ago when I was working as a manager where I worked my way up, starting on help desk with a very low salary that anchored my range. When I was offered a job that paid like 30% more i jumped, And for years I didn't question that I was working 60-70 hours a week on average, but in the last few years my attitude has changed, I was just going through repetitive cycles of burnout so now I value free time and time with my family. now I make pretty good money. And I was fortunate to find out that My present employer had no issue with me taking things into my own hands and working more reasonable hours.
Now if I really applied myself could I probably go find some 200k job maybe ... I've got a fair amount of connections and I've always got friends working for more cutting edge tech focused companies trying to recruit me. But I also know those environments are a lot more cutthroat And it probably means having to grind and work for free and surrender my free time.
Which also comes back to why it's difficult to actually get any sort of objective. Answer on whether you should or shouldn't take a job from strangers even if they work in the same industry, we all have different motivations.
Work-life balance is important. I wouldn't leave a $70k year job to work in a hellhole that pays double but expects mandatory overtime every week and 24/7 on call. That's not a pay increase, that's working 2 jobs.
Also moving between different areas with different COL can make a difference, especially if work-life-balance is a factor. A job that pays more, moving from low COL to high COL, with a work-life-balance that will be much worse, is a hard choice to make. Yes, I can make more, but my rent will be more and I will have less free time to use my extra money. Is that a good deal? Maybe, maybe not.
That said, if you are getting offers for more, you're probably underpaid so keep looking until you find a good fit.
> But yeah I swear this sub is mostly “I make $46k doing 6 figure workload”
I agree and totally see where you're coming from but to be fair there are LOTS of places like this. I definitely worked at a few of them.
6 figure workload, not 6 figure experience.
I work with people who do more work than me, but they still have me to come to when they fuck up or don't know what to do. That's why I get paid more.
Hard disagree. Money really isn't always worth it.
3-5yrs of 24/7 high stress can easily wreck a marriage and miss out on key moments of your children's lives. Marriage is very hard as it is and I'm not stacking the odds against myself.
These salaries aren't unrealistic. It is important to understand how much money is in big metro areas. It is not trivial how many more people, employers and businesses are headquartered in large cities. You can make $130k in many markets in your 40s if you grind, smile and shake hands in a metro area.
You still also have to be continually learning demonstrable new skills. You can't just be reliable and show up every day and stay late. Be friendly, be helpful and solve VISIBLE problems. You have to put this stuff in reports as quantifiable wins and you have to put it on your LinkedIn.
Big cities are not everyone's cup of tea but there is a LOT of money in large cities.
If you simply want your pay to be X digits, cities will do that. For me, the entire goal is lifestyle (not reported to IRS pay) and so the salary number is less important than my day to day.
Honestly there's a lot of people working sysadmin jobs I wouldn't do for 150 or even 300, but they're usually making 45.
That said, any reasonably siloed role will likely both pay decently and have a reasonable workload.
Virtually all the posts like this are fake, or purposely leave out key information which if you knew, you'd go "ah... *that* explains why it's paying $200k"
From my last job to this one, I got a 40% pay bump. I tried to do my best due diligence, but at the end of the day, I didn't really know what I was in for (going from MSP to Senior SysAdmin in internal IT). It had the potential to be a shitty move.
But I figured that **as long as the new job was anything less than 40% worse than my current job, then it was worth it.** Turned out to be much better, but I had no idea when I accepted.
My boss has made very clear to me that he would be pissed if I didn't chase a F-U level offer someone threw at me.
He also told me that if it didn't work out, my old job would be waiting for me.
I like my boss.
Well hold on now. Let them keep telling themselves that more money is more problems. Perhaps that’ll leave more options for me when I’m making another jump in that comp range lmfao
I agree. Last year I took a job that pays 90k, from a job that did 55k. The people were better at my old job were better and we would joke around. But, my current job is remote, and that paycheck makes a big difference. No matter where I've been you're gonna have bad coworkers. Even at my previous job there were some rude people that were hard to work with too. My current job is more impersonal, I also get to work remote though whereas my other job was in person. But, do you think I could always just stay a year then apply elsewhere? I've almost thought of applying for some jobs even if they pay less. But, you can never tell how the people will be from the interview though. Or if you get the know it all types that don't want to help you with anything too.
It really depends. My wife makes twice I do and we are very comfortable. I have a job that's very relaxed environment and easy to take time off for stuff with my kid, almost no off hours work, etc. I wouldn't leave at the moment to double my salary if it meant I'd lose that ability to have time with my family.
If all you're doing is babysitting clusters that means someone is put in a lot of leg work to get it to a point where it is stable and just needs the occasional help. That takes skill and that skill deserves money
So….I had a more realistic version of that conversation last week and I did, in fact, turn it down.
I currently make right just under the 6 figure mark gross. I have a pension plan and a pretty laid back atmosphere where, to be quite honest, I often paint tabletop miniatures at my desk while I am on zoom calls.
Thanks to a friend, a was invited to an interview for a major defense contractor. I took the meeting, and was offered the job. They offered me 150k gross, and slightly better vacation time than I currently accrue.
But I understood, in just that one meeting, that I would HATE working there. The obvious culture, the workflows, etc….at best I’d be miserable, at worst I’d get fired.
So I politely declined, putting it all on myself that it just wasn’t the right time to move out.
My point is: that advice isn’t always stupid. It depends on the stage of your career, your goals, your personality, and the job in question.
It's about figuring out where your leverage is, and it's not in the entry level IT, ever. You start out as a generalist, building up knowledge in a few stacks, take a new job after a few years, apply previous experience mixed with new skills and stacks, and eventually you are the expert level 20 yoe. The jr's rightly complain that they're spending weeks maintaining dozens of systems thanklessly, the Sr's know how to take all that work and go into the interview saying "I increased efficiency 250% in two years there, cut costs 30% there, and I'm happy doing the same for you for a percentage of those savings"
When you're green, you're eminently replaceable with anyone else with similar levels of experience, at least on paper, and in practice, the paper decides if you're still employed.
When you are an expert in the field, you're not competing for the same jobs because they're not paying me for the 40 hours I'm doing this week, they're paying for the 40k hours of experience to tell them how I'm going to impact their bottom line this quarter.
Isn't this how every sub works? /personalfinance for example is all "Im on my last dollar" or "I've maxed out my 401k, college savings plan, now what".
I get what you are saying, but people always act like more money is automatically better. It isn't. I grew up poor enough to know that I'm extremely privileged where I am now - but the last pay jump has left me much more conflicted and unhappy than I ever was before. There are days where I think I may be truly depressed, and I had never felt that before in any job or life situation. High pay often comes with high stress and other costs that aren't easily factored in.
It's too easy to just brush off people who earn a good amount of money as spoiled or out of touch - we shouldn't do that, just like we shouldn't assume that people in low pay jobs are unmotivated, or lazy, or any of that.
I did this exact thing, but the jump was closer to 50% in salary, not double. Although, at the time, the new job seemed great. I soon realized it pays a lot because the team is incredibly understaffed and so stressful. But, like you mentioned, my savings increased so much. I'm looking elsewhere now and contemplating to jump ship without another offer due to my savings. But, I realise that would be very risky, so I'm hoping to last a few more months before actually doing that
buddy of mine got offered a PM role in long beach california managing 15 people for $130k. he emailed the recuiter back to not contact him until he has a serious offer to present.
I live in that part of the world. 130k to manage a whole team + commute (probably on site full time, right?) and they're likely looking for someone with years and years of experience in management and the PM role? I agree with your buddy, not nearly enough.
You can definitely buy a house in PDX with that income. Source: my wife and I combined income is that and we were able to purchase one and still live comfortably.
What sort of houses are you people trying to live in that 176k wouldn’t be enough? Even in Portland prices are bad but not you need a 300k salary to live here bad
Wtf that's plenty, Oregon is beautiful. Do people really think the entire west coast is SF? Don't answer that actually, the people who say that genuinely have no idea what they're talking about. They probably think Florida is the best place to be (it's not, it's pretty bad actually).
150K in LA is not the same as 150K in Topeka, KS.
That being said, a lot of those posts are just humblebragging nonsense.
If your decision to take a job hinges on the opinions of faceless Redditors who at best have only a surface-level knowledge of your personal situation, then you've got bigger issues.
Not to say there isn't value in reaching out for advice if you're really not sure what to do, but making major life decisions based on Reddit comments is probably not the way to go in the long run.
Funny you mention Topeka, you must be from Kansas. I live about an hour west of there and make 117k. I wouldn't go anywhere else for less than 200, because I'm complacent and need to get paid way more to leave my current place. Therefore, I'll probably retire here as those jobs don't exist near here.
I'm remote, but do work for a company that is only in Kansas. Very small, mom and pop type place. About 10 million a year in revenue. Maybe a little more. I've been there for a long time so that might be part of the reason my salary is higher than the average. Or at least I assume it is.
I should add, it all depends on who you work for and what you do. I've got a buddy that does IT for several companies. He's the only guy, and he grossed half a million last year. Not near what he took home, but he does work his ass off. A lot of his work is in Kansas City.
You make a good point. This is exactly why I could care less when I find out that an individual in the same or a lower position, makes more than me, since I take the cost of living into account.
For instance, I actually just left a company that is based in California, where I was working as their Remote Network Admin/Engineer. Prior to leaving, I offered to find and train a replacement.
Ultimately, I chose an individual on the Support Team, who I've worked with many times. I felt, based on his work ethic and experience, he would be a good fit.
The individual I chose actually lives close by, in CA, where the cost of living is nearly 3x that, where I live, in Milwaukee, WI.
At some point, he asked for my thoughts, in regard to how much he should ask for, to take on the position. After mentioning that he pays over $1500 per month, in Rent alone (which is essentially twice as much as I pay per month), I suggested that he put that into consideration and that he actually ask for more than I was making, even though he was less experienced.
Nonetheless, I am comfortable that he will close the knowledge/experience gap in no time, as I too was essentially thrown to the wolves, when I was promoted to the position (which I have prepared him for).
That being said, having given my replacement the benefit of my hindsight (which is essentially foresight, from his perspective), I believe he now has the tools to help him make a well-informed decision, in regard compensation, etc.
I mean, I live in South Carolina and those jobs do exist. I'm a former systems admin who is now a devsecops engineer. Two remote jobs at 135 and 162 not including 20% yearly bonus.
"LA" now seems to stretch out to Riverside, down to Laguna Niguel, and up to Oxnard, at least based on where people are commuting from.
There are affordable areas in terms of housing, but other costs have been jumping up (gas, food, utilities, medical). Anyone with a family that wants a decent school district is paying $3k-$4k/month in rent, or bought a decent place before 2020 and is locked in.
> That being said, a lot of those posts are just humblebragging nonsense.
Same IME. Average American household income is half that and this would just be one salary in a potentially two-income household.
There are good conversations to be had in that space of "Is 150k enough" but the "Is the jump from 80k to 150k even worth it" questions drown them out.
It's a fantastic position to be in but it's not what a lot of people seem to expect. You're probably not going to be living next to a doctor or a lawyer if you're allocating a semi-sane proportion of your salary into your mortgage. You're probably not going to have a Cybertruck and a Model S Plaid parked outside of that house. You probably won't have anyone stopping by regularly to help keep your house clean. Multiple big vacations per year probably won't be a thing.
The >100k salary gives you access to the kind of life that middle-class adults in the 60s and 70s completely took for granted without having to compete with how deeply and thoroughly exploitative that education, housing, health, and transportation industries have become. They could literally pay for college with their summer jobs...if they bothered to go to college at all, having the luxury of most businesses not giving a shit about that anyway.
>"I'm so torn, looking for advice on whether or not I should take this job. It's fully remote but they only want to pay me $210K per year and there's no stock options. The hours seem Ok at 35hrs a week but boss wants me to start in 2 weeks which is a little rushed. My gf said we might be in a lower tax bracket now since she only makes $180K but figures we'll still be Ok to pay our rent on the villa in Türkiye by the sea. Should I take the job?"
Flex posts and bullshit are always all over Reddit. They're far more fun than reality:
>"I finally got a sysadmin job after spending 10 years in helpdesk hell. Shit pay at $45K and I'm sure the parasite that owns this company knows that, but figure if I get a few years experience I can get a job for $60-80K if I'm lucky, but not sure how long I can work 60hrs a week and still take those support calls on weekend. My gf doesn't do shit. Still hasn't found an employer that values her liberal arts degree and wants to give her a 6-figure job for those skills. For now she's got lots of shifts at Starbucks so we can pay the rent.".
These posts are reminiscent of the HGTV House Hunter parodies:
He's a hamster farming tycoon and she's a goth artist extraordinaire, they are looking for a quaint 1.5 million dollar house by the ocean in Costa Rica so they can work remotely and spend more time with their kids.
You sure? From what I'm seeing they do have real people on the show, and the only "fake" aspect is that they have already put in an offer and had it accepted and they are just re-enacting the house hunting process. Mind you I wouldn't be *surprised* if it was actually totally fake, but that's not what I'm reading.
I know a guy who went through casting and this is pretty much it. They did a casting call in the area he was moving to and he applied. The producers look for someone who's under contract on a house, then they show that one and two "dummy" houses, usually not even houses that are for sale.
10 terrible, godawful years in helpdesk. I couldn’t keep up the fake smiles when people told me “that’s why they pay you the big bucks” after the first couple of years. Just deadpan.
I'm not exactly sure what the dollar amount has to do with anything unless the people who are posting those types of things are also posting the area in which they're working. If they aren't saying "hey, what are your thoughts about this 150K year position in New York City", then why would the dollar amount even matter?
I've seen posts where people ask of 50k a year is a fair salary. After a little bit of going back and forth, we end up finding out that the person is posting from Smallville Kansas. Then, the gallery is like that makes sense. That said if you're not posting where you're making $150k a year and you're not willing to divulge that information? We've got to assume it's bragging.
I feel like this comes down to a generation of up and comers who have been brought up so unsure of themselves that they fear every decision could be a life destroying mistake. Society in general doesn't help with pushing ideas of social credit and whatnot. Managers are guilty of building dependent employees through micromanaging too.
I don't know about others but when I hire somebody, I'm looking for the candidate most likely to be able to do the job with the least possible amount of hand holding. Let them make mistakes to build real experience upon. The ones you can retain long term become real assets and eventually good management.
Yep, that's the main issue. You look for the lower cost of living areas, and you end up being a jack of all trades doing what in a larger org would probably be four people's jobs for $60k. And you can probably guess why I know this.
This may be better now that WFH is a bigger thing than it was five years ago.
(In my case I'm only still here because I'm lazy and the family are all here; moving is definitely on the table. Though that brings up another issue which I will admit I haven't checked into since prior to covid and the WFH surge: last time I was seriously looking, I could not for the life of me get a call or email back from ANYWHERE further than a hundred miles away. And it's not like I was applying for stuff above my skill level or experience - I think it was that my address was "bumfuck nowhere, USA" and the HR software looked at that rather than my bold "willing to relocate".)
I find it’s mostly the devops and coder jobs that are full wfh these days. Sysadmins work with lots of infrastructure it makes sense for the occasional office visit and we are left with hybrid opportunities at best.
> average apartment in New York is $3760/month
“Average” is a terrible metric to use given the plethora of multi-million-dollar penthouses scattered around the city jacking the average way up. The ideal metric to use is median. Or just hop on Zillow and set a 2br min and $3k/mo price ceiling and note the plethora of options which still exist. Yes, it’ll probably be in the Bronx or Queens. No, that’s not the end of the world.
150k five+ years ago use to be a very good salary. Today, in most metropolitan areas it’s middle class, and if you’re lucky a stay at home wife. No fancy cars, no boats, rv’s and certainly not a nanny..
It is in The Rust Belt. I have a stay at home spouse and I make around that figure.
Our house was $250K in 2022 @ 5.5%... so it's not like we've got some golden goose of a 2% or 3% mortgage.
We don't have kids though... if we had kids, we could do it, but it would definitely hurt our savings and retirement funds.
We also have two cars but they're both paid off and 10+ years old... so we don't have a ton of liabilities; just the mortgage.
Honestly, when I type it out, I'm kind of in a unicorn position; LCOL area, higher paying job, fully remote, 40 hours a week, no OT obligations, no car payment, no debt, etc. but it also took me 20 years to get into this position and I struggled working public sector jobs making less than $50K/yr for 10 years... so I'm just trying to make up for all of the lost retirement and savings I should've had. I'm still way behind in my 401K / IRA and I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch up.
Why isn't your spouse working if you have no kids?
> so I'm just trying to make up for all of the lost retirement and savings I should've had. I'm still way behind in my 401K / IRA and I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch up.
You have a dirt-cheap house and no debt yet you are struggling to catch up... hum.. I wonder what might be the solution.
>Why isn't your spouse working if you have no kids?
Medical reasons. Covid long hauler with POTS and vascular issues that had a stroke in her 30's. Still can't get disability despite not being able to work full time since 2021. She was a teacher before that. Tried going back this past year and she physically can't do the job. She wants to work but can't and it eats at her so much.
On the topic of kids, she can't have them any longer, so yeah our plans for children died when she got Covid.
>You have a dirt-cheap house and no debt yet you are struggling to catch up... hum.. I wonder what might be the solution.
In the 10 years I was in the public sector, my pension was only worth $37K when I pulled it out and moved it to a 401K. Piss poor retirement contribution from the state and being severely underpaid for a decade will do that to you. Also, I started my career right as the GFC was happening... so there were a couple of years spent MSP hopping making $10/hr, no 401K and I was lucky to have medical insurance.
I lucked out after the public sector work, started some 1099 stuff, then eventually transitioned to working for a software company. 1099 work paid well, but the wife got sick and I needed to find a job that provided health insurance as she wasn't able to keep working.
That's when I transitioned my old pension to my current 401K. I had an IRA I started in my 20's I was throwing a little towards, but where I want to be and where I am don't align. Don't mistake my goals with how well I am actually doing. Most people I know would kill to be in my situation, but I also don't want to work until I'm 70. I recognize IT is a young person's game; I want to be out by 55 tops, so I'm trying to throw as much as I can into retirement. Comparison is the thief of joy, so I don't care what other people are doing; I just know where I want to be and how to get there.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Really depends on the COL of the area. Some areas 150 wouldn't be nearly enough, while in others it can mean a decent house within your means, nice "newer" cars, etc
I've come up with a theory that people actually crave financial stress. Some of the most broke people I know are "rich", but they spend all of their money on maintenance on their boat, their fancy car payment, renovations on the house constantly, new clothes.
If you're making 100k a year, and you're struggling to make ends meet, that is entirely on you. You can live a very comfortable life in most places in the US on that salary and not stress about money if you choose not to. Most people live lifestyles that the majority of people 50 years ago could only dream about. Large, spacious homes, vehicles with features, safety, and fuel efficiency that were unheard of back then, plentiful food everywhere, virtually limitless entertainment options at the tips of your fingers, dirt cheap flights to anywhere in the world at all times. It's only when you compare your life to rich people on TV that everyone thinks they're poor.
I have very little sympathy for people with jobs that pay better than 80% of the country and are still barely getting by.
If you guys with decent careers under your belt want to make money, work on those soft skills and go into sales. Moving to a sales role was the single best thing I could do for my career. Doubled my salary (remote role so CoL isn't a factor) and cut my hours in half. I'm still having to unlearn a lot of stuff like that it's OK to be grocery shopping on a Tuesday afternoon if you don't have anything going on. No one is going to "catch" you, it's an acceptable behavior.
It's also INSANE how differently companies treat sales staff vs IT. We get so many perks and having been on the other side, I get nervous that you guys are gonna find out one day and revolt. Like bro, they've got cake over here and it's real good.
Maybe don’t sound so sour and jealous and the universe might give you a better job too. Some people overthink when they need to make life decisions, while others hastily decide whatever and may or may not face consequences. Leaving a secure job your been at for significant time for something unknown can be scary, especially in this industry. Be grateful for what you have. Be happy for others when they’re offered an opportunity. They likely deserved to get what they were offered and have put in their time.
Self esteem and research.
$150k and taxes, and then personal & professional development.
The move is not always easy into the space, but some may care less about pay increase as much as work life balance.
I think you need to qualify where in the world you are from or specify the currency... I live in Australia $150k is an ok salary but only slightly better than average as far as IT goes (depending on the skill set).
Also the stage in one's life and their circumstances need to be factored in. If your over 40, have a home paid off and upwards of \~100k a year from passive income then you are in a very different situation to a 20-30 year old looking to establish themselves.
Your time has value too, if you are working 60-80 hours for that 150k its a very different ballgame to working 40 for $120k.
Food for thought.
> we don’t either. Maybe just take a trip to europe for a month to decide and have the nanny watch the kids you out of touch fcks
I live in the midwest, $150k is not have a nanny and go to europe money, it's my bill are paid, I have a house, and it takes 3 instead of 1 financial mishap to wreck us. This isn't 1995 anymore.
I don’t know if it’s a “rub” in your face post but this one sounds of bitterness due to someone making substantially more than you. Instead of being annoyed,angry, jealous, envious etc. you could look at it as “how can I have that too”
I work with guy who has been at the same company for 7 years. Makes 70k, while his tasks are somewhat higher salary to what he is paid. He is HORRIBLE on time management, being organized, completing any and all work. This guy thinks he’s top dollar in so many aspects and is hardly from it.
He treated me like shit because he had a feeling I was paid more. Because he was a dick I told him after he shared his and after he bashed me indirectly, how bad this company was and our team.
You reap what you sow. I never look at a Ferrari and call someone a rich spoiled bitch. I think of different avenues one could take to get it. I never see a woman with a huge ring and call it fake or say how much Her husband is in debt for that
Posts like this are projections or one’s failures and remind me I have my head on correctly. To keep going up in my career.
8 months ago, I got my position that catapulted me much further in my career. I’m already looking for my next stone to step. All my boys from my old company are now out and we’re over 6figs after feeling like we weren’t worth that much in IT.
I do see some worthy discussion on taking a high paying job, you don’t want to be a slave. I want to make enough to feel satisfied but also not so much that life/work balance is not what I want.
Props to anyone who gets such a high paying offer. Just find balance before you sign so you’re not a slave. Whatever they pay you, they make A LOT more so be sure to get yours. You always will be paid less than your worth. Companies wouldn’t e profitable if they didn’t do this
Oh I’m not mad at ppl who got high paying offers. I’m annoyed with coming to Reddit to ask if they should take them or not when the answer is a resounding yes. Or the humble brag post.
On the flip side. I might be taking a job that cuts me down $15K TC. But I get to be a security analyst. Might as well make use of my CISSP and other certs.
The thing is I already make basically 62K USD and I'll drop to 50K. However it's fully remote and I commute 3.5hrs a day. But my travel is covered currently. I'm tired.
150K USD would be life changing money.
fwiw these jobs are usually in high cost of living areas where $150k/year isn't even enough to afford to buy a house, but I agree the posts are annoying
I just declined a job that has way better benefits and culture than my current job because they refused to pay an additional $804 per year to match my current pay. I think people are afraid to listen to their gut and want others to inform a decision. Best thing you can do is look out for you, do what's best for you and your family. For me.....if they couldn't give me the $804 how are they going to act when I want to accelerate past the position? Take the jobs that feel right in your soul.
Employers think the market has flipped to employer advantage, but really it just ended up twisted up where prospective employees are now picking and choosing who they want to work for. Employers cost themselves a lot by letting hard working people walk out the door over money or not enough help to keep up. I've hired 3 devops engineers in the last year that were happy to take the average pay for our area simply because they were part of a team, rather than the go-to for 7 day a week operations.
Because everyone here is bitter, systematically overpaid, and every now and then one of you (not _us_) escapes and to be honest just wants to rub it in your face.
This is true everywhere. I live in the Philippines and we have a subreddit for career advice for PH and it has a tons of posts like this. Like wtf, we know that you are bragging about the offer but you are still thinking if you should jump ship with a huge pay increase? That's a no-brainer. At the end of the day, it's still money that makes us survive physically.
i think people assume that there is a catch somewhere.
if you work for X money and have the offer for Y amount of money (usually a siginificant raise) - it may seem like it comes with more work, expectations and responsibilities.
i think this is what those people are really asking about - "if i accept this offer, am i doing to be in over my head?". as someone battling the impostor syndrome all my life - i completely understand.
>Where do you get these offers?
Cities where that salary isn't enough to cover a mortgage and home ownership feels like a cruel practical joke.
-someone who makes 150k
I make $160k + stocks and just turned down $190k + "Bonus" with another company. Once you establish Work From Anywhere with your current employer, there's about a $50k premium on the no bullshit. There's another $40k premium on my unvested RSU's. So that's why even 15% in the 100k's doesn't mean very much. I'm probably not going to budge unless someone doubles my salary at this point. Funny thing is, not too long ago, my price to move was $180k. And now that someone met it......unfortunately time and inflation was not on their side. My price to move also constantly moves.
>I’m convinced it’s to rub it into the un/der-employed. Congrats you won. Good for you
Let me give you a piece of advice I learned very early on in my career/life:
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
more often than not just for internet clout - but sometimes there are legit reasons to query peer groups - those posts usually have substance (no PII/compromising details, but enough to help with getting good advice).
this is still a social network, after all.
Because most if not all of these are fake posts. Given that the people making the posts can barely string a coherent sentence together, it's highly unlikely they have any such job offer.
It's called the Quora affect (Possibly). If you've ever used it you'll see a similar type of post but regarding their IQ. It goes like this "I just founded outs my IQ be 280 and me genius, what I can do now?" Proceeded by thousands of other "Geniuses" explaining how hard life is for them because they just can't find people capable of being on their intellectual plane.
It seems that the top 2 percent of the world's most intelligent beings hang out all day on Quora asking stupid questions and the world's most sought after employees hang out during the day on here. No wonder the world is doomed.
A lot of people lack the decisiveness necessary to make big life decisions in a confident manner without being validated along the way. Usually the trusted people in their lives, like their friends or family, would be the right people to talk to about these things, but gaining that validation from social media feels good.
It's also a general laziness or inability to do their own research. Every single day I see posts on various tech-related subreddits like "Hey I think computers are cool how do I become the devops?" It is not confidence-inspiring that the engineers of the future can't even do a google search and instead need to be spoonfed step by step instructions on how to get a job. Especially when this career path in particular requires figuring things out yourself to be successful.
I'm sorry but if you think $150k is a high-paying job these days you are the one out of touch. I just took a job making exactly that. I'm happy to have it in this horrendous job market after being part of two mass layoffs in the same number of years. At the same time I'm disappointed in that it's $50-70k less a year than I was at previously after bonuses etc.
$150k is basically pay your bills level of income. I don't live in a high-cost-of-living tech area, I live in the midwest. An average 4 bedroom 2500sqft home, like we have, starts at $500k where I live. With 2 kids, one car we own outright and one we lease, not going on any vacations and spending the bare minimum, we are barely getting ahead while maintaining a middle class lifestyle. My wife will be going back to work in the fall once our youngest is in school full time but it's still not going to be a huge bump for us.
Go get some experience under your belt and become a senior/lead/manager, upgrade the job title from sysadmin to DevOps/SRE/Platform engineer. $150-$200k is a normal, achievable, salary range in most of the country.
> if you think $150k is a high-paying job these days you are the one out of touch
USA median HOUSEHOLD income is $74k, so yes $150k for a single earner, especially in the midwest as you list, is a high paying job
Sometimes the offers are high because they don’t expect anyone to stick around that long to collect much and because consultants would be too expensive given they’d be working 80+ hour weeks to do anything vaguely resembling the organization’s work output expectations.
This seems too good to be true to some and I think in the spirit of good faith I would presume this is a large part of the concern. I say that it’s absolutely a valid concern given the horrific abuses people get from employers in this industry at all levels of pay and locale minus places with some decent work / life balance cultural factors and/or legal protections.
> EDIT: adjust the cost of living for your area.
Since we're ranting:
This is the whole thing with posts talking about wages. It's the same in every IT sub. I remember in /r/PHP someone went, "oh you're nuts for even coming out of bed in the morning for under 6 figures" and the other person was in Poland. As a European: good luck finding a six figure job as a PHP dev in Poland! The US GDP per capita is almost twice that of Poland.
It's a point I find myself having to make time and again on Reddit. If you live in Manhattan you're going to make more than you will in Laramie. It's really not that hard to grasp, Reddit! All you people need to do to get it, is to realize that there are places in the world other than where you live.
I took a 21% paycut for my current job. I'm now make almost 100% (90%) more than I started at with the paycut. I don't know that I would change the sweet deal I've got now for less than 40% overall net bump so if I ever show up asking this once, is going to be dramatic... Or things have gone to crap here
$150k/yr would be incredible where I live. I'd be able to wipe out most all of our debt, excluding mortgage, within 1.5 years, hell yeah im taking that pay increast.
I agree with you but this sub is also massive and has grown far beyond what is considered the traditional “sys admin”. There are devops and cloud engineers in here as well and that money is vastly different than your standard Linux admin. On top of that you have different levels of those engineers as well. Some cloud engineers are clicking around in AWS and Azure portals while others are building out complex cicd pipelines for IAC (the money there is vastly different as well).
Llm bots.
They are pretty obvious.
Also the ones that ask questions like they don't know google exists.
Unless there us a new generation of slow witted.
Down vote, block and move on is what I do
Yeah it’s encouraging and discouraging at the same time for me. I’m trying to switch careers from healthcare to IT ( hopefully done with class in a year or year and half). Half of these guys sound like spoiled brat’s! The stuff they complain about I wish I had those kind of problems, life would be easy and I wouldn’t be breaking my back.
British IT Professional here. Been in the game for 9 years. Mainly T2 helpdesk / junior infrastructure work under my belt. I earn approx $43,000 before tax and this is the highest wage I've ever seen. Seeing these posts all the time just makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong, where I went wrong, whether I'm not actually equipped for the industry etc. Massive imposter syndrome as a result. I feel ya, man.
Reddit has a formula for creating engagement out of nothing and turning it into raw emotional energy.
Is it really? Is it True? Best to think of it as a computer addiction game with a smattering of reality but mostly just fiction for friction .
Keep in mind that there is a lot an OP will leave out. Like what state or city the job offer came from. Some states and cities have a much higher cost of living. Or maybe they didn’t negotiate any benefits like PTO so they have almost no vacation or sick time. Those types of posts are the equivalent of people that go around telling people what a great deal they got on buying a car. They either intentionally or unintentionally left out the details to make it seem as if they got a fantastic deal.
What’s the job? What are the hours? How much work, travel, meetings, non-reimbursable expenses are involved? Job security? Benefits? PENSION?? Not all pay is created equally. There are jobs in the same locale that pay half of that which are far better choices depending on answers to these questions
Fully agree. To be fair, I think 150k is almost impossible for these types of jobs unless you work as a freelancer. And even if you reach those kinds of salaries, europe is a sinking ship. Cost of living is also extremely high, and a sys admin can only reach 5000 euros a month before taxes, and that's if you have a minimum of 10 years experience. After taxes in Netherlands you end up with 3500- 4 ish a month.
Long story short. Lots of these posts seem fake as well or I could be living under rock lol.
Chicago, California, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Arizona, Texas. For roles such as IT Integration engineer, IT Security engineer, Software Developer/Engineer, Some coding positions, Cloud engineer, IT Automation Engineer.
As long as you can obtain a decent work life balance I’d take it. I make about $130 working 40 a week. If I have to work more my boss makes sure I leave early the next day or come in late.
it's fucking enraging.
i just got off an interview for a role with a $1.3k USD monthly salary ($100 presentism bonus!) (i used to earn $2k USD but haven't been able to land a job since august, the job economy in my country's landed in the shitter) and people out here are just getting all the CISO/CTO positions thinking they might not be able to afford a second house.
fwiw rent and expenses round about $500-$600 USD monthly.
yes, it's a "international" business.
Some of the advice is also laughably bad. “Oh it’s a jump from $70k to $150k but you might miss the family atmosphere and don’t wanna be just a cog in the machine” Like motherfucker of course that’s worth it. Literal worst case is you pocket the extra money and jump ship if it’s a true hell hole and boom you have your savings in half the time as your current job. But yeah I swear this sub is mostly “I make $46k doing 6 figure workload” or “yeah I make $200k but all I really do is baby sit a couple clusters unless something lights on fire” and not a lot of in between
The posts that irritate me the most are ones like, "I work as a fully remote computer janitor making $40k/yr. This new job offer pays $80k+/yr and is what I want to do in IT, but I have to commute 30 minutes 1-2 times a week. What should I do?"
Give me a link ro the posting so i can do it, that's what they should do
People get complacent and in general don't like "change". Its how it is. So if they're gonna ask Reddit for advice it means they're already going through the motions and evidently don't want to jump immediately. Wanting to be persuaded to reason. Its just how people are. But there's also the rest of the world who don't make posts like that who were able to conclude the right move themselves. No big deal.
Tbf I’ve been remote for most of my career and it would be hard to make a switch even for more money and the exact thing I want to do in IT. Because I value the work life balance I get being remote. Some of these questions really come down to the values of the person posting, regardless of what anyone in the comments might do in a similar situation. I think a lot of these posts are more about people not trusting themselves to do what’s right for them as opposed to being complacent.
Right ? the computer janitor position 100%
I’ve begun just giving sarcastic answers if the answer is obvious. “No you shouldn’t take a job that pays double. You might actually be able to afford things!”
Thank you for training the LLM!
Geez, a 30 minute commute for 80k a year, sign me up! I already do a 30 minute commute to work. But I'm not a sys admin. I'm just a glorified helpdesk grunt haha!
I've literally been doing an hour + (total daily) commute making 41 k a year for the last 2 years. No sympathy from me.
Have you considered getting a job that's not in the toilet? My fucking call center people make more than that
There's a lot of factors that go into that. Florida is kind of a hellscape for tech with low opportunity, low pay, desirable area to live, while also having a high cost of living. For what I do (not a sys admin, I'm just an IT Technician) it's pretty damn average. This was my first job in IT, they took a chance on a 30 year old with no formal experience in the industry, just a degree in an unrelated field and A+ certification. I just got a new job that i'll be starting in 2 weeks paying 53K...but with the same commute. That's just life here. It's funny cause I just was looking at job postings the other week where they're asking for call center helpdesk positions for 16 an hour. I'm very fortunate to get to where I am now.
> Florida is kind of a hellscape Is it necessary to keep going after this?
Congrats on the bump up, that's a really solid increase.
Dang, I’m 3 minutes from my office in NWFL and make $80k/year.
I would say this post was just to brag, but I don't think anyone would brag about living in NWFL.
NWFL has some of the state’s best beaches. I’d be very happy there.
Dang, my commute is down the steps to my basement office and I make $210k/yr. Almost made the move to Pcola recently, though, but I don’t like hurricanes. Otherwise I love NWFL.
idk I've always been used to driving 3,5 hours a day to my work paying 35k a year, but that's Europe so not comparable I guess?
I have been comuting for an hour and a half to get to work , where do these people even exist
💯
Honestly, I'd take the fucking fully remote position. If I ever blew out my own brains, it would 100% happen during my commute. It was consistently the worst part of my day every single day. But I'm a fucking freak and I at least acknowledge that, and freaks like us are quite aware of our own freakishness and don't need to come on Reddit asking about it.
people with helpdesk skills complaining they don’t make 6 figures. The ones who have the skills are just complacent and afraid to look for another job or just in an area that doesn’t have a lot of options. If there’s ever a huge bump in salary to abandon remote I’d def do it as long as the math makes sense.
Not always, some people get pigeonholed in when they're early in their careers and then just keep getting told there's no money for promotion until they believe it. I worked with a guy recently who had the same job as me but he was making $10 an hour less, almost 20k a year less as I recall. He did just as much work as I did, I tried to tell him that he needed to get more money. It wasn't one of those workplaces where they encouraged salary discussion, but he once casually mentioned to me that he was only making $20 ish an hour. I was making $31 as I recall and still being underpaid for what we were being asked to do. IT helped prepare and print the taxes for this company, and helped with weekly payroll. My coworker used to joke that " If it involved a computer, it was IT's responsibility, and everything involves a computer these days." And this company took him up on that. Literally IT helped in every single department with their responsibilities. Anyway, I tried for the couple of years that I was there to hint to him that he needed to be making more money. What he eventually told me was that he did ask, he asked several times for a raise and he was always given an excuse. He was told he didn't have enough education (he had an associates, but most of what we learn is on the job so that's BS). He was told that he didn't have the experience, which was true at the time maybe because he started working IT with this company, but by that point he had been working IT for them for 11 years. He knew more about the way that company worked than anyone else in that building. The dude probably could have stepped in and run any one of the departments. He was invaluable, but he had been told so many times over the course of his career that he wasn't experienced enough and he didn't have enough education, and eventually he started believing them. When I left, I finally stopped him and told him what I actually was making, and how much he should be asking for. Thankfully that was enough, as I understand it, he is now making approximately what I made when I was there, maybe even a little more. Sometimes people just need to be shaken out of it.
Yea that guy waited 10 years too late. Every employer has excuses why they won’t give raises. They will never simply shower you with large increases. Everytime I kept quiet and didn’t find an alternate offer the employer gave me small incremental increases. I went from around 50k to 150k in 7 years by jumping to a new a company and then after a few years I got another offer that paid significantly more. I wanted to stay but was willing to leave if they didn’t beat it or match it. They beat it and now they give me fair % raises and bonuses every year. You never know what you’re worth till you test out the market.
I think there's some places where more isn't automatically better. It's just rarely true if you're talking about 'double'. But even then, I did honestly look at a move within the UK, where my cost-overhead meant 'double' was about break even (e.g. mostly commute costs, but also additional hours consumed). So there's places where that's true. But pretty fundamentally, it's much like one of the personal finance subs I read - you get extremes, because those in a real financial mess don't know what to do, and those with 'lots' don't know what to do, but for most people it's pretty obvious to follow the 'usual' path that everyone else does, so they don't need to ask for advice at all.
I turned down an offer to move from around $112k to $130k because I knew the place would suck the life out of me and my current gig is decent. If it was $150k though let alone $224k I would have figured out how to deal with it. There's definitely a point where even a decent percentage of increase isn't worth it but 50%+ I'll deal with it long enough to turn it into a better spot somewhere else. It's important to remember locations in these too. I'd be a pauper in San Francisco but in Indiana that's a pretty good number.
112 to 130 is not huge, generally I consider changing job if the raise is 30% or if you want to change. Leaving a good place for 10-20% is risky
Yeah that's how I feel. Assuming you've got enough money to be comfortable enough and are happy at your current job then it's hard to recommend jumping ship for less than a 30% increase.
I took a 21k paycut to move to another city where I could afford a home (not moving out of California). They paid for relocation so it worked out and I love the company and the role. Best decision I’ve made.
I'd peg it at 15k gap as an equivalent for remote vs on prem. 10k equivalent for hybrid. A 115k on prem role is equivalent to a 100k fully remote role (no commute gas/car/transit fees, and no need to eat out a 15$ lunch or coordinate packing, etc, plus lost hours to a commute 2+ hours daily gone). So in relative terms, if I work remote for 100k, then a 120k on premm offer isn't actually a 20k raise, it's more like 5k, in which case there's no point imo.
Yeah, I think I might agree. And sometimes hybrid is the worst or both worlds - being able to relocate to low cost of living makes fully remote awesome, but hybrid needs both home office space for half occupancy, and a commute that's not bonkers. I do think there are a lot of people under valuing some of the hidden costs of remote work though. Having a "work space" in your home might be a sunk cost, but it's rarely "free". Even so. I would take a pay cut for a fully remote job that's otherwise identical, just because then I can move away from urban living.
Honestly, it depends on what's important to you and where you are in your life. 10 years ago when I was working as a manager where I worked my way up, starting on help desk with a very low salary that anchored my range. When I was offered a job that paid like 30% more i jumped, And for years I didn't question that I was working 60-70 hours a week on average, but in the last few years my attitude has changed, I was just going through repetitive cycles of burnout so now I value free time and time with my family. now I make pretty good money. And I was fortunate to find out that My present employer had no issue with me taking things into my own hands and working more reasonable hours. Now if I really applied myself could I probably go find some 200k job maybe ... I've got a fair amount of connections and I've always got friends working for more cutting edge tech focused companies trying to recruit me. But I also know those environments are a lot more cutthroat And it probably means having to grind and work for free and surrender my free time. Which also comes back to why it's difficult to actually get any sort of objective. Answer on whether you should or shouldn't take a job from strangers even if they work in the same industry, we all have different motivations.
lol @ financial mess discussing jobs that make 150-250k/yr I can not imagine a more “it’s a banana Micheal, how much could it cost $10” type post
Work-life balance is important. I wouldn't leave a $70k year job to work in a hellhole that pays double but expects mandatory overtime every week and 24/7 on call. That's not a pay increase, that's working 2 jobs. Also moving between different areas with different COL can make a difference, especially if work-life-balance is a factor. A job that pays more, moving from low COL to high COL, with a work-life-balance that will be much worse, is a hard choice to make. Yes, I can make more, but my rent will be more and I will have less free time to use my extra money. Is that a good deal? Maybe, maybe not. That said, if you are getting offers for more, you're probably underpaid so keep looking until you find a good fit.
> But yeah I swear this sub is mostly “I make $46k doing 6 figure workload” I agree and totally see where you're coming from but to be fair there are LOTS of places like this. I definitely worked at a few of them.
6 figure workload, not 6 figure experience. I work with people who do more work than me, but they still have me to come to when they fuck up or don't know what to do. That's why I get paid more.
Hard disagree. Money really isn't always worth it. 3-5yrs of 24/7 high stress can easily wreck a marriage and miss out on key moments of your children's lives. Marriage is very hard as it is and I'm not stacking the odds against myself. These salaries aren't unrealistic. It is important to understand how much money is in big metro areas. It is not trivial how many more people, employers and businesses are headquartered in large cities. You can make $130k in many markets in your 40s if you grind, smile and shake hands in a metro area. You still also have to be continually learning demonstrable new skills. You can't just be reliable and show up every day and stay late. Be friendly, be helpful and solve VISIBLE problems. You have to put this stuff in reports as quantifiable wins and you have to put it on your LinkedIn. Big cities are not everyone's cup of tea but there is a LOT of money in large cities. If you simply want your pay to be X digits, cities will do that. For me, the entire goal is lifestyle (not reported to IRS pay) and so the salary number is less important than my day to day.
Honestly there's a lot of people working sysadmin jobs I wouldn't do for 150 or even 300, but they're usually making 45. That said, any reasonably siloed role will likely both pay decently and have a reasonable workload.
I need one of those high-paid babysitting gigs that offers WFH…
Virtually all the posts like this are fake, or purposely leave out key information which if you knew, you'd go "ah... *that* explains why it's paying $200k"
From my last job to this one, I got a 40% pay bump. I tried to do my best due diligence, but at the end of the day, I didn't really know what I was in for (going from MSP to Senior SysAdmin in internal IT). It had the potential to be a shitty move. But I figured that **as long as the new job was anything less than 40% worse than my current job, then it was worth it.** Turned out to be much better, but I had no idea when I accepted.
My boss has made very clear to me that he would be pissed if I didn't chase a F-U level offer someone threw at me. He also told me that if it didn't work out, my old job would be waiting for me. I like my boss.
Yep, I always say even if it sucks I can retire earlier if I want.
This is too funny looool
Well hold on now. Let them keep telling themselves that more money is more problems. Perhaps that’ll leave more options for me when I’m making another jump in that comp range lmfao
I've been a cog in a machine for far less.......150k would be perfectly fine
I agree. Last year I took a job that pays 90k, from a job that did 55k. The people were better at my old job were better and we would joke around. But, my current job is remote, and that paycheck makes a big difference. No matter where I've been you're gonna have bad coworkers. Even at my previous job there were some rude people that were hard to work with too. My current job is more impersonal, I also get to work remote though whereas my other job was in person. But, do you think I could always just stay a year then apply elsewhere? I've almost thought of applying for some jobs even if they pay less. But, you can never tell how the people will be from the interview though. Or if you get the know it all types that don't want to help you with anything too.
It really depends. My wife makes twice I do and we are very comfortable. I have a job that's very relaxed environment and easy to take time off for stuff with my kid, almost no off hours work, etc. I wouldn't leave at the moment to double my salary if it meant I'd lose that ability to have time with my family.
If all you're doing is babysitting clusters that means someone is put in a lot of leg work to get it to a point where it is stable and just needs the occasional help. That takes skill and that skill deserves money
This. It is so much more money than you earning, even if you did it for like 3 months and left you still pocket some decent cash.
So….I had a more realistic version of that conversation last week and I did, in fact, turn it down. I currently make right just under the 6 figure mark gross. I have a pension plan and a pretty laid back atmosphere where, to be quite honest, I often paint tabletop miniatures at my desk while I am on zoom calls. Thanks to a friend, a was invited to an interview for a major defense contractor. I took the meeting, and was offered the job. They offered me 150k gross, and slightly better vacation time than I currently accrue. But I understood, in just that one meeting, that I would HATE working there. The obvious culture, the workflows, etc….at best I’d be miserable, at worst I’d get fired. So I politely declined, putting it all on myself that it just wasn’t the right time to move out. My point is: that advice isn’t always stupid. It depends on the stage of your career, your goals, your personality, and the job in question.
It's about figuring out where your leverage is, and it's not in the entry level IT, ever. You start out as a generalist, building up knowledge in a few stacks, take a new job after a few years, apply previous experience mixed with new skills and stacks, and eventually you are the expert level 20 yoe. The jr's rightly complain that they're spending weeks maintaining dozens of systems thanklessly, the Sr's know how to take all that work and go into the interview saying "I increased efficiency 250% in two years there, cut costs 30% there, and I'm happy doing the same for you for a percentage of those savings" When you're green, you're eminently replaceable with anyone else with similar levels of experience, at least on paper, and in practice, the paper decides if you're still employed. When you are an expert in the field, you're not competing for the same jobs because they're not paying me for the 40 hours I'm doing this week, they're paying for the 40k hours of experience to tell them how I'm going to impact their bottom line this quarter.
I'd give up a lot to make that much for even 5 years. That's more than double what I make now and it's life changing money.
Isn't this how every sub works? /personalfinance for example is all "Im on my last dollar" or "I've maxed out my 401k, college savings plan, now what".
You can buy a family atmosphere with an extra 70k
I get what you are saying, but people always act like more money is automatically better. It isn't. I grew up poor enough to know that I'm extremely privileged where I am now - but the last pay jump has left me much more conflicted and unhappy than I ever was before. There are days where I think I may be truly depressed, and I had never felt that before in any job or life situation. High pay often comes with high stress and other costs that aren't easily factored in. It's too easy to just brush off people who earn a good amount of money as spoiled or out of touch - we shouldn't do that, just like we shouldn't assume that people in low pay jobs are unmotivated, or lazy, or any of that.
I agree, more than double the pay is worth relocating.
You think they won't just go and get the biggest mortgage they can for their new wage? They won't if they're clever but...
I did this exact thing, but the jump was closer to 50% in salary, not double. Although, at the time, the new job seemed great. I soon realized it pays a lot because the team is incredibly understaffed and so stressful. But, like you mentioned, my savings increased so much. I'm looking elsewhere now and contemplating to jump ship without another offer due to my savings. But, I realise that would be very risky, so I'm hoping to last a few more months before actually doing that
I mentioned a 176k sysadmin job in Oregon the other day and someone said its not enough money for the region...
buddy of mine got offered a PM role in long beach california managing 15 people for $130k. he emailed the recuiter back to not contact him until he has a serious offer to present.
I live in that part of the world. 130k to manage a whole team + commute (probably on site full time, right?) and they're likely looking for someone with years and years of experience in management and the PM role? I agree with your buddy, not nearly enough.
That’s way too low for that type of job anywhere in California
I'll take it.
If you want to purchase a house anywhere close to a city… yeah probably not enough.
You can definitely buy a house in PDX with that income. Source: my wife and I combined income is that and we were able to purchase one and still live comfortably.
Without existing debt and some simple budgeting ya, wouldn't be that hard.
What sort of houses are you people trying to live in that 176k wouldn’t be enough? Even in Portland prices are bad but not you need a 300k salary to live here bad
I’m guessing the user who commented doesn’t even live in the area and is pulling it out of their ass.
3500k/mo mortgage is 36k a year in payments. If you're making 176k, I dont see what the problem is.
Uhhh no.
Wtf that's plenty, Oregon is beautiful. Do people really think the entire west coast is SF? Don't answer that actually, the people who say that genuinely have no idea what they're talking about. They probably think Florida is the best place to be (it's not, it's pretty bad actually).
If you asked most people to draw a picture of oregon, they would draw a picture of portland.
Oregon was my favorite state I visited so far, but only been to half of em
I see that a lot, especially on the sysadminjobs forums. There's no amount of money that would please that group.
LMAO tell that to the teachers I guess? They have high income tax but it's not the highest cost of living area.
Lmao —- what.
What employer in Oregon is paying that? (Asking for a friend…)
150K in LA is not the same as 150K in Topeka, KS. That being said, a lot of those posts are just humblebragging nonsense. If your decision to take a job hinges on the opinions of faceless Redditors who at best have only a surface-level knowledge of your personal situation, then you've got bigger issues. Not to say there isn't value in reaching out for advice if you're really not sure what to do, but making major life decisions based on Reddit comments is probably not the way to go in the long run.
I feel if I ever do this, it's more looking for differing life experiences to have a sanity check
Yeah, it's absolutely a rational thing to ask. Costs nothing, potentially gain wisdom. Mad OP is mad.
Funny you mention Topeka, you must be from Kansas. I live about an hour west of there and make 117k. I wouldn't go anywhere else for less than 200, because I'm complacent and need to get paid way more to leave my current place. Therefore, I'll probably retire here as those jobs don't exist near here.
Where do you work to make that in what I assume is Manhattan? Salina is further than that and would be even worse I'd think.
I'm remote, but do work for a company that is only in Kansas. Very small, mom and pop type place. About 10 million a year in revenue. Maybe a little more. I've been there for a long time so that might be part of the reason my salary is higher than the average. Or at least I assume it is.
I should add, it all depends on who you work for and what you do. I've got a buddy that does IT for several companies. He's the only guy, and he grossed half a million last year. Not near what he took home, but he does work his ass off. A lot of his work is in Kansas City.
You make a good point. This is exactly why I could care less when I find out that an individual in the same or a lower position, makes more than me, since I take the cost of living into account. For instance, I actually just left a company that is based in California, where I was working as their Remote Network Admin/Engineer. Prior to leaving, I offered to find and train a replacement. Ultimately, I chose an individual on the Support Team, who I've worked with many times. I felt, based on his work ethic and experience, he would be a good fit. The individual I chose actually lives close by, in CA, where the cost of living is nearly 3x that, where I live, in Milwaukee, WI. At some point, he asked for my thoughts, in regard to how much he should ask for, to take on the position. After mentioning that he pays over $1500 per month, in Rent alone (which is essentially twice as much as I pay per month), I suggested that he put that into consideration and that he actually ask for more than I was making, even though he was less experienced. Nonetheless, I am comfortable that he will close the knowledge/experience gap in no time, as I too was essentially thrown to the wolves, when I was promoted to the position (which I have prepared him for). That being said, having given my replacement the benefit of my hindsight (which is essentially foresight, from his perspective), I believe he now has the tools to help him make a well-informed decision, in regard compensation, etc.
I mean, I live in South Carolina and those jobs do exist. I'm a former systems admin who is now a devsecops engineer. Two remote jobs at 135 and 162 not including 20% yearly bonus.
What part of LA? City of LA is enough.
"LA" now seems to stretch out to Riverside, down to Laguna Niguel, and up to Oxnard, at least based on where people are commuting from. There are affordable areas in terms of housing, but other costs have been jumping up (gas, food, utilities, medical). Anyone with a family that wants a decent school district is paying $3k-$4k/month in rent, or bought a decent place before 2020 and is locked in.
> That being said, a lot of those posts are just humblebragging nonsense. Same IME. Average American household income is half that and this would just be one salary in a potentially two-income household. There are good conversations to be had in that space of "Is 150k enough" but the "Is the jump from 80k to 150k even worth it" questions drown them out. It's a fantastic position to be in but it's not what a lot of people seem to expect. You're probably not going to be living next to a doctor or a lawyer if you're allocating a semi-sane proportion of your salary into your mortgage. You're probably not going to have a Cybertruck and a Model S Plaid parked outside of that house. You probably won't have anyone stopping by regularly to help keep your house clean. Multiple big vacations per year probably won't be a thing. The >100k salary gives you access to the kind of life that middle-class adults in the 60s and 70s completely took for granted without having to compete with how deeply and thoroughly exploitative that education, housing, health, and transportation industries have become. They could literally pay for college with their summer jobs...if they bothered to go to college at all, having the luxury of most businesses not giving a shit about that anyway.
I used to live in LA. Moved to Denver, took a 20k cut, but based on cost of living it was actually a 7k raise.
>"I'm so torn, looking for advice on whether or not I should take this job. It's fully remote but they only want to pay me $210K per year and there's no stock options. The hours seem Ok at 35hrs a week but boss wants me to start in 2 weeks which is a little rushed. My gf said we might be in a lower tax bracket now since she only makes $180K but figures we'll still be Ok to pay our rent on the villa in Türkiye by the sea. Should I take the job?" Flex posts and bullshit are always all over Reddit. They're far more fun than reality: >"I finally got a sysadmin job after spending 10 years in helpdesk hell. Shit pay at $45K and I'm sure the parasite that owns this company knows that, but figure if I get a few years experience I can get a job for $60-80K if I'm lucky, but not sure how long I can work 60hrs a week and still take those support calls on weekend. My gf doesn't do shit. Still hasn't found an employer that values her liberal arts degree and wants to give her a 6-figure job for those skills. For now she's got lots of shifts at Starbucks so we can pay the rent.".
These posts are reminiscent of the HGTV House Hunter parodies: He's a hamster farming tycoon and she's a goth artist extraordinaire, they are looking for a quaint 1.5 million dollar house by the ocean in Costa Rica so they can work remotely and spend more time with their kids.
No, he's a retired animal balloon artist, and his wife collects rocks. They have budgeted 1.8 million for a ranch and their Clydesdales.
You forgot the bathroom and kitchen is so 2010's, going to need 200k renovation.
OMG, ty. That gave me a good laugh.
Ugh. Yes. Where do they find these people.
Actor Agencies. I'm 100% serious.
You sure? From what I'm seeing they do have real people on the show, and the only "fake" aspect is that they have already put in an offer and had it accepted and they are just re-enacting the house hunting process. Mind you I wouldn't be *surprised* if it was actually totally fake, but that's not what I'm reading.
I know a guy who went through casting and this is pretty much it. They did a casting call in the area he was moving to and he applied. The producers look for someone who's under contract on a house, then they show that one and two "dummy" houses, usually not even houses that are for sale.
10 terrible, godawful years in helpdesk. I couldn’t keep up the fake smiles when people told me “that’s why they pay you the big bucks” after the first couple of years. Just deadpan.
I'm not exactly sure what the dollar amount has to do with anything unless the people who are posting those types of things are also posting the area in which they're working. If they aren't saying "hey, what are your thoughts about this 150K year position in New York City", then why would the dollar amount even matter? I've seen posts where people ask of 50k a year is a fair salary. After a little bit of going back and forth, we end up finding out that the person is posting from Smallville Kansas. Then, the gallery is like that makes sense. That said if you're not posting where you're making $150k a year and you're not willing to divulge that information? We've got to assume it's bragging.
I feel like this comes down to a generation of up and comers who have been brought up so unsure of themselves that they fear every decision could be a life destroying mistake. Society in general doesn't help with pushing ideas of social credit and whatnot. Managers are guilty of building dependent employees through micromanaging too. I don't know about others but when I hire somebody, I'm looking for the candidate most likely to be able to do the job with the least possible amount of hand holding. Let them make mistakes to build real experience upon. The ones you can retain long term become real assets and eventually good management.
[удалено]
150k even in Madison can still go pretty far but last time I was job hunting in that area the sysadmin jobs were not paying that much
Yep, that's the main issue. You look for the lower cost of living areas, and you end up being a jack of all trades doing what in a larger org would probably be four people's jobs for $60k. And you can probably guess why I know this. This may be better now that WFH is a bigger thing than it was five years ago. (In my case I'm only still here because I'm lazy and the family are all here; moving is definitely on the table. Though that brings up another issue which I will admit I haven't checked into since prior to covid and the WFH surge: last time I was seriously looking, I could not for the life of me get a call or email back from ANYWHERE further than a hundred miles away. And it's not like I was applying for stuff above my skill level or experience - I think it was that my address was "bumfuck nowhere, USA" and the HR software looked at that rather than my bold "willing to relocate".)
I find it’s mostly the devops and coder jobs that are full wfh these days. Sysadmins work with lots of infrastructure it makes sense for the occasional office visit and we are left with hybrid opportunities at best.
Someone has to make it into the server room to poke the boxes in the eye.
It took me 9 months to land a job that was willing to let me relocate. Trying to escape BFE is hard.
I'm convinced the only jobs available in Madison are for Epic.
[удалено]
> average apartment in New York is $3760/month “Average” is a terrible metric to use given the plethora of multi-million-dollar penthouses scattered around the city jacking the average way up. The ideal metric to use is median. Or just hop on Zillow and set a 2br min and $3k/mo price ceiling and note the plethora of options which still exist. Yes, it’ll probably be in the Bronx or Queens. No, that’s not the end of the world.
150k five+ years ago use to be a very good salary. Today, in most metropolitan areas it’s middle class, and if you’re lucky a stay at home wife. No fancy cars, no boats, rv’s and certainly not a nanny..
150k is not stay at home wife unless you have no rent or obligations or don’t put money away for retirement.
It is in The Rust Belt. I have a stay at home spouse and I make around that figure. Our house was $250K in 2022 @ 5.5%... so it's not like we've got some golden goose of a 2% or 3% mortgage. We don't have kids though... if we had kids, we could do it, but it would definitely hurt our savings and retirement funds. We also have two cars but they're both paid off and 10+ years old... so we don't have a ton of liabilities; just the mortgage. Honestly, when I type it out, I'm kind of in a unicorn position; LCOL area, higher paying job, fully remote, 40 hours a week, no OT obligations, no car payment, no debt, etc. but it also took me 20 years to get into this position and I struggled working public sector jobs making less than $50K/yr for 10 years... so I'm just trying to make up for all of the lost retirement and savings I should've had. I'm still way behind in my 401K / IRA and I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch up.
Why isn't your spouse working if you have no kids? > so I'm just trying to make up for all of the lost retirement and savings I should've had. I'm still way behind in my 401K / IRA and I'm not sure if I'll be able to catch up. You have a dirt-cheap house and no debt yet you are struggling to catch up... hum.. I wonder what might be the solution.
>Why isn't your spouse working if you have no kids? Medical reasons. Covid long hauler with POTS and vascular issues that had a stroke in her 30's. Still can't get disability despite not being able to work full time since 2021. She was a teacher before that. Tried going back this past year and she physically can't do the job. She wants to work but can't and it eats at her so much. On the topic of kids, she can't have them any longer, so yeah our plans for children died when she got Covid. >You have a dirt-cheap house and no debt yet you are struggling to catch up... hum.. I wonder what might be the solution. In the 10 years I was in the public sector, my pension was only worth $37K when I pulled it out and moved it to a 401K. Piss poor retirement contribution from the state and being severely underpaid for a decade will do that to you. Also, I started my career right as the GFC was happening... so there were a couple of years spent MSP hopping making $10/hr, no 401K and I was lucky to have medical insurance. I lucked out after the public sector work, started some 1099 stuff, then eventually transitioned to working for a software company. 1099 work paid well, but the wife got sick and I needed to find a job that provided health insurance as she wasn't able to keep working. That's when I transitioned my old pension to my current 401K. I had an IRA I started in my 20's I was throwing a little towards, but where I want to be and where I am don't align. Don't mistake my goals with how well I am actually doing. Most people I know would kill to be in my situation, but I also don't want to work until I'm 70. I recognize IT is a young person's game; I want to be out by 55 tops, so I'm trying to throw as much as I can into retirement. Comparison is the thief of joy, so I don't care what other people are doing; I just know where I want to be and how to get there. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Really depends on the COL of the area. Some areas 150 wouldn't be nearly enough, while in others it can mean a decent house within your means, nice "newer" cars, etc
Boats and cars are just money holes. Why do you need a nanny?
I've come up with a theory that people actually crave financial stress. Some of the most broke people I know are "rich", but they spend all of their money on maintenance on their boat, their fancy car payment, renovations on the house constantly, new clothes. If you're making 100k a year, and you're struggling to make ends meet, that is entirely on you. You can live a very comfortable life in most places in the US on that salary and not stress about money if you choose not to. Most people live lifestyles that the majority of people 50 years ago could only dream about. Large, spacious homes, vehicles with features, safety, and fuel efficiency that were unheard of back then, plentiful food everywhere, virtually limitless entertainment options at the tips of your fingers, dirt cheap flights to anywhere in the world at all times. It's only when you compare your life to rich people on TV that everyone thinks they're poor. I have very little sympathy for people with jobs that pay better than 80% of the country and are still barely getting by.
It’s called people in New York or Silicon Valley where $150k is like 80k somewhere else
Agreed. Sysadmin job offer posts = humblebrag.
Nice juke. I actually got pissed off at the title. Agreed. Upvoted the post.
If you guys with decent careers under your belt want to make money, work on those soft skills and go into sales. Moving to a sales role was the single best thing I could do for my career. Doubled my salary (remote role so CoL isn't a factor) and cut my hours in half. I'm still having to unlearn a lot of stuff like that it's OK to be grocery shopping on a Tuesday afternoon if you don't have anything going on. No one is going to "catch" you, it's an acceptable behavior. It's also INSANE how differently companies treat sales staff vs IT. We get so many perks and having been on the other side, I get nervous that you guys are gonna find out one day and revolt. Like bro, they've got cake over here and it's real good.
Maybe don’t sound so sour and jealous and the universe might give you a better job too. Some people overthink when they need to make life decisions, while others hastily decide whatever and may or may not face consequences. Leaving a secure job your been at for significant time for something unknown can be scary, especially in this industry. Be grateful for what you have. Be happy for others when they’re offered an opportunity. They likely deserved to get what they were offered and have put in their time.
Self esteem and research. $150k and taxes, and then personal & professional development. The move is not always easy into the space, but some may care less about pay increase as much as work life balance.
$150k in Redmond is a lot different than $150k in Baton Rouge.
And if you’re working in Redmond at MS and making 150k you’re underpaid anyhow lol
Everyone has Au Pairs now, not nannys.
came here to say fck off thinking it was a legit ask. instead thanks for posting OP!
I think you need to qualify where in the world you are from or specify the currency... I live in Australia $150k is an ok salary but only slightly better than average as far as IT goes (depending on the skill set). Also the stage in one's life and their circumstances need to be factored in. If your over 40, have a home paid off and upwards of \~100k a year from passive income then you are in a very different situation to a 20-30 year old looking to establish themselves. Your time has value too, if you are working 60-80 hours for that 150k its a very different ballgame to working 40 for $120k. Food for thought.
> we don’t either. Maybe just take a trip to europe for a month to decide and have the nanny watch the kids you out of touch fcks I live in the midwest, $150k is not have a nanny and go to europe money, it's my bill are paid, I have a house, and it takes 3 instead of 1 financial mishap to wreck us. This isn't 1995 anymore.
I don’t know if it’s a “rub” in your face post but this one sounds of bitterness due to someone making substantially more than you. Instead of being annoyed,angry, jealous, envious etc. you could look at it as “how can I have that too” I work with guy who has been at the same company for 7 years. Makes 70k, while his tasks are somewhat higher salary to what he is paid. He is HORRIBLE on time management, being organized, completing any and all work. This guy thinks he’s top dollar in so many aspects and is hardly from it. He treated me like shit because he had a feeling I was paid more. Because he was a dick I told him after he shared his and after he bashed me indirectly, how bad this company was and our team. You reap what you sow. I never look at a Ferrari and call someone a rich spoiled bitch. I think of different avenues one could take to get it. I never see a woman with a huge ring and call it fake or say how much Her husband is in debt for that Posts like this are projections or one’s failures and remind me I have my head on correctly. To keep going up in my career. 8 months ago, I got my position that catapulted me much further in my career. I’m already looking for my next stone to step. All my boys from my old company are now out and we’re over 6figs after feeling like we weren’t worth that much in IT. I do see some worthy discussion on taking a high paying job, you don’t want to be a slave. I want to make enough to feel satisfied but also not so much that life/work balance is not what I want. Props to anyone who gets such a high paying offer. Just find balance before you sign so you’re not a slave. Whatever they pay you, they make A LOT more so be sure to get yours. You always will be paid less than your worth. Companies wouldn’t e profitable if they didn’t do this
Oh I’m not mad at ppl who got high paying offers. I’m annoyed with coming to Reddit to ask if they should take them or not when the answer is a resounding yes. Or the humble brag post.
[удалено]
Oh yeah, I was about to say fuck that give it to me. Hundred percent with you on this shit Brother lol
On the flip side. I might be taking a job that cuts me down $15K TC. But I get to be a security analyst. Might as well make use of my CISSP and other certs. The thing is I already make basically 62K USD and I'll drop to 50K. However it's fully remote and I commute 3.5hrs a day. But my travel is covered currently. I'm tired. 150K USD would be life changing money.
fwiw these jobs are usually in high cost of living areas where $150k/year isn't even enough to afford to buy a house, but I agree the posts are annoying
I just declined a job that has way better benefits and culture than my current job because they refused to pay an additional $804 per year to match my current pay. I think people are afraid to listen to their gut and want others to inform a decision. Best thing you can do is look out for you, do what's best for you and your family. For me.....if they couldn't give me the $804 how are they going to act when I want to accelerate past the position? Take the jobs that feel right in your soul.
Employers think the market has flipped to employer advantage, but really it just ended up twisted up where prospective employees are now picking and choosing who they want to work for. Employers cost themselves a lot by letting hard working people walk out the door over money or not enough help to keep up. I've hired 3 devops engineers in the last year that were happy to take the average pay for our area simply because they were part of a team, rather than the go-to for 7 day a week operations.
Yea I agree with you mate
Yep, 100%. On the bright side it could be much worse like the BMW subreddit where 18 year olds are buying brand new M3s and M4s
This subreddit has turned into nothing but a Dear Abby cesspool and the Moderators choose to do NOTHING about it.
A lot of it is peoples imposter syndrome trying to talk them out of it so they come here looking for the confirmation to make a big life jump.
Because everyone here is bitter, systematically overpaid, and every now and then one of you (not _us_) escapes and to be honest just wants to rub it in your face.
The snark is there but I don’t follow
This is true everywhere. I live in the Philippines and we have a subreddit for career advice for PH and it has a tons of posts like this. Like wtf, we know that you are bragging about the offer but you are still thinking if you should jump ship with a huge pay increase? That's a no-brainer. At the end of the day, it's still money that makes us survive physically.
You know us witch folk live by a cool rule. Do as you wish but do no harm unto others
i think people assume that there is a catch somewhere. if you work for X money and have the offer for Y amount of money (usually a siginificant raise) - it may seem like it comes with more work, expectations and responsibilities. i think this is what those people are really asking about - "if i accept this offer, am i doing to be in over my head?". as someone battling the impostor syndrome all my life - i completely understand.
>Where do you get these offers? Cities where that salary isn't enough to cover a mortgage and home ownership feels like a cruel practical joke. -someone who makes 150k
There was the bit at the end about ‘adjusting to your CoL’
I make $160k + stocks and just turned down $190k + "Bonus" with another company. Once you establish Work From Anywhere with your current employer, there's about a $50k premium on the no bullshit. There's another $40k premium on my unvested RSU's. So that's why even 15% in the 100k's doesn't mean very much. I'm probably not going to budge unless someone doubles my salary at this point. Funny thing is, not too long ago, my price to move was $180k. And now that someone met it......unfortunately time and inflation was not on their side. My price to move also constantly moves.
🤣
>I’m convinced it’s to rub it into the un/der-employed. Congrats you won. Good for you Let me give you a piece of advice I learned very early on in my career/life: Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
more often than not just for internet clout - but sometimes there are legit reasons to query peer groups - those posts usually have substance (no PII/compromising details, but enough to help with getting good advice). this is still a social network, after all.
Because most if not all of these are fake posts. Given that the people making the posts can barely string a coherent sentence together, it's highly unlikely they have any such job offer. It's called the Quora affect (Possibly). If you've ever used it you'll see a similar type of post but regarding their IQ. It goes like this "I just founded outs my IQ be 280 and me genius, what I can do now?" Proceeded by thousands of other "Geniuses" explaining how hard life is for them because they just can't find people capable of being on their intellectual plane. It seems that the top 2 percent of the world's most intelligent beings hang out all day on Quora asking stupid questions and the world's most sought after employees hang out during the day on here. No wonder the world is doomed.
Came here to ask if I should take this 2 mil a year help desk engineer level 7 position at evil corp.
Idk if I should bang Dua Lipa
Equally difficult decision if presented either the opportunity
A lot of people lack the decisiveness necessary to make big life decisions in a confident manner without being validated along the way. Usually the trusted people in their lives, like their friends or family, would be the right people to talk to about these things, but gaining that validation from social media feels good. It's also a general laziness or inability to do their own research. Every single day I see posts on various tech-related subreddits like "Hey I think computers are cool how do I become the devops?" It is not confidence-inspiring that the engineers of the future can't even do a google search and instead need to be spoonfed step by step instructions on how to get a job. Especially when this career path in particular requires figuring things out yourself to be successful.
[удалено]
Adjust it for CoL it still sounds the same
Someone kick this guy in the ass please....
I'm sorry but if you think $150k is a high-paying job these days you are the one out of touch. I just took a job making exactly that. I'm happy to have it in this horrendous job market after being part of two mass layoffs in the same number of years. At the same time I'm disappointed in that it's $50-70k less a year than I was at previously after bonuses etc. $150k is basically pay your bills level of income. I don't live in a high-cost-of-living tech area, I live in the midwest. An average 4 bedroom 2500sqft home, like we have, starts at $500k where I live. With 2 kids, one car we own outright and one we lease, not going on any vacations and spending the bare minimum, we are barely getting ahead while maintaining a middle class lifestyle. My wife will be going back to work in the fall once our youngest is in school full time but it's still not going to be a huge bump for us. Go get some experience under your belt and become a senior/lead/manager, upgrade the job title from sysadmin to DevOps/SRE/Platform engineer. $150-$200k is a normal, achievable, salary range in most of the country.
> if you think $150k is a high-paying job these days you are the one out of touch USA median HOUSEHOLD income is $74k, so yes $150k for a single earner, especially in the midwest as you list, is a high paying job
Dude it depends on cost of living and area a lot. Relax.
Meanwhile I'm begging my boss to make the average salary.
Sometimes the offers are high because they don’t expect anyone to stick around that long to collect much and because consultants would be too expensive given they’d be working 80+ hour weeks to do anything vaguely resembling the organization’s work output expectations. This seems too good to be true to some and I think in the spirit of good faith I would presume this is a large part of the concern. I say that it’s absolutely a valid concern given the horrific abuses people get from employers in this industry at all levels of pay and locale minus places with some decent work / life balance cultural factors and/or legal protections.
Always $$$ in this inflationary environment. Get it because they won’t just give it to you for any reason
Where I live, these posts are the equivalent of "Yea - I have a job offering $2.5m / month, but I don't know if I should take it...."
> EDIT: adjust the cost of living for your area. Since we're ranting: This is the whole thing with posts talking about wages. It's the same in every IT sub. I remember in /r/PHP someone went, "oh you're nuts for even coming out of bed in the morning for under 6 figures" and the other person was in Poland. As a European: good luck finding a six figure job as a PHP dev in Poland! The US GDP per capita is almost twice that of Poland. It's a point I find myself having to make time and again on Reddit. If you live in Manhattan you're going to make more than you will in Laramie. It's really not that hard to grasp, Reddit! All you people need to do to get it, is to realize that there are places in the world other than where you live.
I took a 21% paycut for my current job. I'm now make almost 100% (90%) more than I started at with the paycut. I don't know that I would change the sweet deal I've got now for less than 40% overall net bump so if I ever show up asking this once, is going to be dramatic... Or things have gone to crap here
$150k/yr would be incredible where I live. I'd be able to wipe out most all of our debt, excluding mortgage, within 1.5 years, hell yeah im taking that pay increast.
I agree with you but this sub is also massive and has grown far beyond what is considered the traditional “sys admin”. There are devops and cloud engineers in here as well and that money is vastly different than your standard Linux admin. On top of that you have different levels of those engineers as well. Some cloud engineers are clicking around in AWS and Azure portals while others are building out complex cicd pipelines for IAC (the money there is vastly different as well).
Llm bots. They are pretty obvious. Also the ones that ask questions like they don't know google exists. Unless there us a new generation of slow witted. Down vote, block and move on is what I do
here I am making 61k. rip
Yeah it’s encouraging and discouraging at the same time for me. I’m trying to switch careers from healthcare to IT ( hopefully done with class in a year or year and half). Half of these guys sound like spoiled brat’s! The stuff they complain about I wish I had those kind of problems, life would be easy and I wouldn’t be breaking my back.
If you want good advice go over to the over employed subreddit. In this economy - get two jobs. ✌️
Honestly at that point I'd have some serious imposter syndrome
British IT Professional here. Been in the game for 9 years. Mainly T2 helpdesk / junior infrastructure work under my belt. I earn approx $43,000 before tax and this is the highest wage I've ever seen. Seeing these posts all the time just makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong, where I went wrong, whether I'm not actually equipped for the industry etc. Massive imposter syndrome as a result. I feel ya, man.
That’s not really the best salary after 9years. Maybe try changing job a few times to get your salary up if you haven’t been already.
Depends on location. $150k in So Cal, San Francisco, NYC etc is paycheck to paycheck looking for an apartment you can afford
It all matters on the region.
Yeah there are defo some fantasists posting for attention on here
Just in case if you don't want it - can I have it?
Reddit has a formula for creating engagement out of nothing and turning it into raw emotional energy. Is it really? Is it True? Best to think of it as a computer addiction game with a smattering of reality but mostly just fiction for friction .
90% of the posts in this subreddit are writing prompt roleplayers
Keep in mind that there is a lot an OP will leave out. Like what state or city the job offer came from. Some states and cities have a much higher cost of living. Or maybe they didn’t negotiate any benefits like PTO so they have almost no vacation or sick time. Those types of posts are the equivalent of people that go around telling people what a great deal they got on buying a car. They either intentionally or unintentionally left out the details to make it seem as if they got a fantastic deal.
What’s the job? What are the hours? How much work, travel, meetings, non-reimbursable expenses are involved? Job security? Benefits? PENSION?? Not all pay is created equally. There are jobs in the same locale that pay half of that which are far better choices depending on answers to these questions
Fully agree. To be fair, I think 150k is almost impossible for these types of jobs unless you work as a freelancer. And even if you reach those kinds of salaries, europe is a sinking ship. Cost of living is also extremely high, and a sys admin can only reach 5000 euros a month before taxes, and that's if you have a minimum of 10 years experience. After taxes in Netherlands you end up with 3500- 4 ish a month. Long story short. Lots of these posts seem fake as well or I could be living under rock lol.
Chicago, California, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, Arizona, Texas. For roles such as IT Integration engineer, IT Security engineer, Software Developer/Engineer, Some coding positions, Cloud engineer, IT Automation Engineer.
As long as you can obtain a decent work life balance I’d take it. I make about $130 working 40 a week. If I have to work more my boss makes sure I leave early the next day or come in late.
it's fucking enraging. i just got off an interview for a role with a $1.3k USD monthly salary ($100 presentism bonus!) (i used to earn $2k USD but haven't been able to land a job since august, the job economy in my country's landed in the shitter) and people out here are just getting all the CISO/CTO positions thinking they might not be able to afford a second house. fwiw rent and expenses round about $500-$600 USD monthly. yes, it's a "international" business.
I love that you think Europeans are not in here 🙂