Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median
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Either way, I don't feel like your particular path from beginning to now is in any way applicable to what most people experience.... ergo my earlier statement "you are the exception, not the rule". Your path to success is an exception to what most people are able to do.
I don't believe that I did anything that most people can't do. Just something that most don't do. If, for example, you go to college instead of studying IT, you have diverged from my path (and my recommended path.) If you wait till you are twenty to start on that path, you've diverged heavily already. If you just stick to your first jobs for a few years, diverged again.
It's not hard to start early, change jobs for opportunities often or study in your spare time. It's just that very few people decide to do that. Nothing wrong with that, but it is important to understand that the path that I took was not special in a "only a few people can do it" way, only that it was special in a "very few people will do it" way. And often the only reason that people don't do it is because they claim that they don't believe me or feel that my experience was somehow special.
But I can tell you, random guy that I worked at a grocery store with decided to do the same thing as me, same time. He was younger and had a little less background that I did. We studied together, contracted together, did all the shit jobs together. He had no degree, very few certs and none that applied to what he did. But he's a "name your price" consultant in Austin. Sure, he lagged a few years behind me on salary, but we were always close. He had no background similar to mine - different high schools, different families completely, different cultural background... but he followed my "hey let's get into IT this way" and he was making $200K in his 20s no problem.
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Remember that I was a career counselor for IBM and Lockheed. I've put a LOT of time and effort into thinking about how people get into their careers, what helps them to advance and so forth. This isn't something that just kind of "happened", I've focused heavily on the science behind career development for much of my career. I help people all the time and show them paths to very high likelihood career success, but almost all have someone tell them that it "won't work for them" and they decide that that is true and stop. That's the biggest problem I've seen with these paths, if you don't have the support to keep you from giving up because family, friends, even peers, tell you that it doesn't work then the chances that you will just give up are very high.
I was lucky, I did my early career with @andyw and we were always there to support each other. That made a huge difference. It was like having ML around, but there were just two of us. But there was always someone to talk about work, bounce ideas off of, kick around career stuff, push each other to answer things like "how did you improve your resume today." When we felt like our careers sucked and were going nowhere, when we got scammed on jobs or whatever we had someone there to be supportive. That mattered so much.
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary:
How is an employer supposed to know whether a person can do the job or not?
That's the job of an employer. Hire someone that knows what they are doing, or teach someone to do it. If you can do neither, you have no business hiring that position. That's what outsourcing is for.
Ask this about any non-IT position. What if you can't figure out what a good manager, HR, finance or anything else is. What do you do? You hire a firm that does that, you would never just hire random people claiming to have those skills at the lowest price and hope for the best.
If I have to turn down every job that I think I may not be qualified for I'd be unemployed. I have no particular strengths, only preferences.
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@irj posted this but because of the fork, it go lost. So posting it back for him.....
@IRJ said in Are IT Pros to Blame for Low Wages:
I was talking with one of the top posters on SW, a really good and knowledgeable guy, one day. I was surprised to find out how little he was making at his job, while we was literally solving problem after problem each day for others.
I am not talking about @scottalanmiller , but somebody else that posts alot like he does. It was really shocking to me.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary:
If I have to turn down every job that I think I may not be qualified for I'd be unemployed. I have no particular strengths, only preferences.
That's because you have a tendency towards the impostor problem. Most SMB shops don't anything that you don't have. Especially if not putting you in the manager hot seat.
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary:
Either way, I don't feel like your particular path from beginning to now is in any way applicable to what most people experience.... ergo my earlier statement "you are the exception, not the rule". Your path to success is an exception to what most people are able to do.
I don't believe that I did anything that most people can't do. Just something that most don't do. If, for example, you go to college instead of studying IT, you have diverged from my path (and my recommended path.) If you wait till you are twenty to start on that path, you've diverged heavily already. If you just stick to your first jobs for a few years, diverged again.
It's not hard to start early, change jobs for opportunities often or study in your spare time. It's just that very few people decide to do that. Nothing wrong with that, but it is important to understand that the path that I took was not special in a "only a few people can do it" way, only that it was special in a "very few people will do it" way. And often the only reason that people don't do it is because they claim that they don't believe me or feel that my experience was somehow special.
But I can tell you, random guy that I worked at a grocery store with decided to do the same thing as me, same time. He was younger and had a little less background that I did. We studied together, contracted together, did all the shit jobs together. He had no degree, very few certs and none that applied to what he did. But he's a "name your price" consultant in Austin. Sure, he lagged a few years behind me on salary, but we were always close. He had no background similar to mine - different high schools, different families completely, different cultural background... but he followed my "hey let's get into IT this way" and he was making $200K in his 20s no problem.
Very few (like single digit percentage) people in their 20s are actually career minded in that way. That's my entire point. Even though it is possible, it's pretty far from likely to happen. Plus, those of us who are around your age had zero access to these revelations that you now post online. Additionally, many people change their minds about what career to pursue as they go from HS to college or working. Very few people have the laser like focus on "I want my career to be this" when they are in freaking grade school. I think you're failing to look at what actually happens in the real world for the bulk of people that exist. Sure, anyone could do what you did, but how many even know that such a path (skip college, go to work) even exists??? Very few when I was that age. Think about the realistic type of life that the vast majority of people live... it's nothing like yours. That's my point. You are drawing your conclusions based on what a few individuals (like count them on one hand few) have done vs. the other 98%, which is what most of the rest of us here are.
All that being said, I wouldn't trade the life experiences I've gained by not having a laser focused career path for all the money in the world. If I had gone into any field in middle/high school like you did, I would be a shell of a man, or would have eaten a bullet long ago. Life is for living, not working. I was at least 30 before I had any idea what I wanted to do when/if I ever grew up. Still not 100% sure on that.
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@RojoLoco said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Very few (like single digit percentage) people in their 20s are actually career minded in that way. That's my entire point.
Well then sure, I totally agree. It's just often put in such a way as that I was special, which I am not. I just avoided the things that I warn others about. I had no one to warn me about the dangerous of college, for example, and not much direction on how to find work. I had to stumble into it.
I totally agree that most people (20s or not) are not that career minded. But it is important to understand that that is a choice that they make. They have every possibility of choosing to be career minded and do that instead.
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Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
So the problem of a lot of "IT People" is generational too because we have an older generation that doesn't know anything about IT thinking the younger generation knows a lot more than they do.
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary:
If I have to turn down every job that I think I may not be qualified for I'd be unemployed. I have no particular strengths, only preferences.
That's because you have a tendency towards the impostor problem. Most SMB shops don't anything that you don't have. Especially if not putting you in the manager hot seat.
I honestly can't tell if it's imposter syndrome or just reality, but im not trying to fork this thread again
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@RojoLoco said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Even though it is possible, it's pretty far from likely to happen. Plus, those of us who are around your age had zero access to these revelations that you now post online. Additionally, many people change their minds about what career to pursue as they go from HS to college or working. Very few people have the laser like focus on "I want my career to be this" when they are in freaking grade school. I think you're failing to look at what actually happens in the real world for the bulk of people that exist. Sure, anyone could do what you did, but how many even know that such a path (skip college, go to work) even exists??? Very few when I was that age. Think about the realistic type of life that the vast majority of people live... it's nothing like yours. That's my point. You are drawing your conclusions based on what a few individuals (like count them on one hand few) have done vs. the other 98%, which is what most of the rest of us here are.
I guess what I never understand in a discussion of this nature is... what difference does "it isn't likely to happen" have to do with what I said? I never said that people following the path that I did was likely. Only that it was open to nearly all people. It's not like I won the lottery and that's how it happened. It's all about choices and options that are widely available.
And yes, few people know about these options, but that's why I'm preaching them all of the time. Because people need to know about them! If the solution was "go to college, get two certs, get a good job and retire" no one would need to say anything because their high school guidance counselor would handle everything for us.
My conclusions are about what is available to people. I never suggest in any way that people HAVE done this, only that they could have.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
Example is streamers knowing about packet loss. Older generation thinks the IT equivalent of opening a hard to open jar of peanut butter "you're so good at the computer jonathan"
These are the kids getting hired in IT for jobs they can't do.
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This is before we even start talking about ageism which I'm sure is even worse in this field.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
So the problem of a lot of "IT People" is generational too because we have an older generation that doesn't know anything about IT thinking the younger generation knows a lot more than they do.
I don't agree with this at all. If anything, what I see is absolutely the opposite. The upcoming generations have SO little IT knowledge, it is going to be a problem as we lose those skills. One of the marks of the newest workers is how computer illiterate they are, much like those that were retiring several years ago. A culture of "it's cool to not understand computers" is currently entrenched (in the US at least) and I can tell you, high school programming classes are often a fraction of the programming today that "basic computing" was when my generation was little.
We used to learn, for at least one generation, about computers. How they worked, what they did. Today, I knew almost no one who knows that stuff under 18 years old that didn't go out and teach themselves.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
Example is streamers knowing about packet loss. Older generation thinks the IT equivalent of opening a hard to open jar of peanut butter "you're so good at the computer jonathan"
These are the kids getting hired in IT.
I think you are thinking of retirees. Where are you finding this older generation in the workforce? Maybe if you are employees those in the 70+ range. But at 60 and under today, you are dealing with a generation that always had computers, too. Maybe not as babies, but their meaningful lives.
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
Example is streamers knowing about packet loss. Older generation thinks the IT equivalent of opening a hard to open jar of peanut butter "you're so good at the computer jonathan"
These are the kids getting hired in IT.
I think you are thinking of retirees. Where are you finding this older generation in the workforce? Maybe if you are employees those in the 70+ range. But at 60 and under today, you are dealing with a generation that always had computers, too. Maybe not as babies, but their meaningful lives.
That is not what I have experienced, but I live inside a very violent bubble here in NJ. At least I don't live in Florida.
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@RojoLoco said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
All that being said, I wouldn't trade the life experiences I've gained by not having a laser focused career path for all the money in the world. If I had gone into any field in middle/high school like you did, I would be a shell of a man, or would have eaten a bullet long ago. Life is for living, not working. I was at least 30 before I had any idea what I wanted to do when/if I ever grew up. Still not 100% sure on that.
I may have always known, but I explored, too. I've run hotels, restaurants, been a newspaper photojournalist (that was those weird big paper things thrown at your house in the morning), worked in medical care (in food service), done sheet metal forming, been an engineer, been a concierge, even a cashier in a grocery store. I was a bag boy for a while, too.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
This is before we even start talking about ageism which I'm sure is even worse in this field.
I'm not sure. I've never seen it. Experience is so critical in IT, hard to believe ageism would be very significant.
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@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
Example is streamers knowing about packet loss. Older generation thinks the IT equivalent of opening a hard to open jar of peanut butter "you're so good at the computer jonathan"
These are the kids getting hired in IT.
I think you are thinking of retirees. Where are you finding this older generation in the workforce? Maybe if you are employees those in the 70+ range. But at 60 and under today, you are dealing with a generation that always had computers, too. Maybe not as babies, but their meaningful lives.
That is not what I have experienced, but I live inside a very violent bubble here in NJ. At least I don't live in Florida.
One is just a cold version of the other. Whenever we go to FLA, it's NJ accents everywhere. It's really two locations of the same place. Quantum entanglement at the human level.
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@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@scottalanmiller said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
@wirestyle22 said in Salary, Are You At Your Areas Median:
Information Technology is only going to get more annoying. Think about who are the worst users to support. People who used to do IT. We're going to get a couple of generations in and these kids are going to know more and more but not in a real way, in an annoying way where they think they know.
Not sure what you mean here. What kids and what will they know more of?
Example is streamers knowing about packet loss. Older generation thinks the IT equivalent of opening a hard to open jar of peanut butter "you're so good at the computer jonathan"
These are the kids getting hired in IT.
I think you are thinking of retirees. Where are you finding this older generation in the workforce? Maybe if you are employees those in the 70+ range. But at 60 and under today, you are dealing with a generation that always had computers, too. Maybe not as babies, but their meaningful lives.
That is not what I have experienced, but I live inside a very violent bubble here in NJ. At least I don't live in Florida.
One is just a cold version of the other. Whenever we go to FLA, it's NJ accents everywhere. It's really two locations of the same place. Quantum entanglement at the human level.
Well, I'm dead inside
