[ale] interesting salary data posted by Red Hat

[Jerald Sheets]

I've been known to laugh in HP's face.  I don't recall what the salary range was, but it was an insult.  15/hr, I think, but I could be mistaken.

We had a similar conversation here in like 2003 or so regarding salaries, and some folks on the list were content with 40-ish salaries, and suggested that "holding out" for a higher salary than that would cause all sorts of trouble for you, and keep you out of the market and all that.

I beg to disagree.

Most of the large shops in this town are now running Linux.  If you're a competent admin with 3-5 years on you, you should be able to start mid-60's easy (70's seems normal for this town to start, and there's plenty of six-figure to be had).  

The thing I've seen a lot of here, though, is that from company to company (and even divisions within companies) you find a wide array of difference between what is considered a UNIX or Linux admin.  I was really behind SAGE's efforts to quantify and fully describe the jobs of sysadmins at various levels of career that is found here:  http://sage.org/field/jobs-descriptions.html

Nowadays, though, many of the "nice to have's" on those lists get pushed up to the "this is what we're looking for" area.  Case in point.  I'm a Sr. Linux admin.  Have been since about 2002.  I've come into contact and experience with a WIDE array of interesting and fun tech.  I've done tons of rank-and-file admin, and lots of rack and stack.  I've done some cool things where I've had to build stuff that didn't exist before.  More often than not, though, a position has you specialize in something or be the SME and your other UNIX-y things start to slide away some in favor for the skillset associated with your SME.

I recently applied for something with a company I've been with in the past (just a different group).  Nearly 60% of the interview was programming of some sort.  Whether Bash or Perl, it was just forever programming.

Now, some of you guys are always programming something, and I admire that.  My memory doesn't allow for that unless I'm doing it every day/all day.  Most of my programming-fu revolves around making something that happens when I'm not around.  i.e., I need X to fire at 3AM, check itself, exit when done, and email somebody the status when done.  Or, extentions to Xymon to automagically make stuf happen for me.

Or, I need a perl script that can poke the DBI for some info I have in MySQL over "here".  Nothing fancy, and certainly not a developer.  Ask me what |$; is, and I'll have to look it up.  Hell, ask me what set -e, set -u is or what some of the more than "loop around this list and run a UNIX command at it" sort of things is, and I look it up.  My career hasn't given me the occasion to have to know how to program other than in a basic utilitarian way.  Do I want to learn more?  you betcha.  I'm getting a little tired of asking myself the question "how did that work again?" every time I've gone back to write a new script.  If I write one in June and the next in August, I'm not going to remember...that's just the way it is.  These old brain coils aren't retaining things as well these days.

I have a family, a nursing-home ridden wife, and a full/part time volunteer position as a pastor.  My job is to care for life, not become a programmer.  We parted ways and I didn't get the gig.  Nevermind I built major portions of that very company's  "money-maker" infrastructure, and nevermind I know big chunks of the political structure and have already built bridges there.  I'm not a bash expert, so I don't get the Linux job.   Could I do the scripting?  Sure.  Not off the top of my head right now, but I could certainly get there and in relatively short order.  That doesn't seem to be desired, though, and "Sr. Linux" means yet something else to this division than it did the other (and the preceding and following positions for that matter)

All I'm trying to say here is that salaries would be easier to predict/maintain/hold and know precisely what is expected of you and at what level if everyone measured the same.  Until we have some sort of clarity across the career space, wide gulfs between salary levels will still show up, and it'll be hard to determine what exactly you're looking at, or how to predict just what that salary level means.


(I really don't know where that came from)


On Dec 23, 2010, at 1:10 PM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:

> I’m pretty sure it was for HP-UX.   Maybe HP moved to an outsourced agency after you worked there?   The guy I was talking to at the time led me to believe it was a 3rd party company staffing at HP’s tower near Perimeter.    (Of course HP has since sold that.)
>  

#!/jerald
Linux User #183003
Ubuntu User #32648
Public GPG Key:  http://questy.org/js.asc

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GIT/MU d-@ s++(++)>+++:> a+ C++++(+++)$>++ UBLAVHSC++(on)$>++++ P++(+++)$>++++ L++(++++)$>+++ !E---(---)>--- W+(++)$>+++ N(+)$>++ !o !K-- w(--)>--- O()@> M++(++)$>++ V()>- PS+++()@>-- PE(++)@>+ Y+(+)@>+ PGP++(++)$>+++ t+(++)@>+++ 5(+)@>+ X+(++)@>+++ R+(+)@>++ tv-(+)$>++ b+++(++)$>++ DI++++(++)>+++ D++(++)@>++ G++(++)@>++ e++(++)$>++ h(-)$>- r+++(+++)@>+++ y+(+++)>++++@ 
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