boyko@rastro.uucp (christina boyko) (05/15/91)
I posted a request for salary info for system administrators a couple of weeks ago because the company I have had a long-term consulting contract was making me an offer to become a permananet employee. I got a few responses from some brave souls who volunteered their salaries. Most wished to remain anonymous which we can all perfectly understand. Naturally, salary depends on geographical location, experience and how good a negotiator the perspective employee is. I'm not a statistician so instead of trying to come up with specific numbers, I just compiled the pertinent info from each volunteer. (I hope that I have suffeciently protected the anonymity of each. I am posting it to the net for the idly curious and sending it directly to each person that requested it. As for myself, from these responses and a couple other sources, I am satisfied that I am being offered an average salary. So at least I'm not feeling insulted by management. I'm still trying to decide what to do. So, many thanks for the input. I really apprectiate this net! --Christina uunet!rastro!boyko ************************************************************************** From San Francisco: Wow, we haven't conducted a survey, but I've seen salaries range from $25k to over $90k a year depending upon experience, nature of the job, location, and phase of the moon. Location seems to play a large part -- in the SF bay area, good admins (i.e. people at large sites who act more as super-gurus) rake in near $100k a year. ************************************************************************** [From Ohio] Post whatever results you turn up. Around our university sysadmins tend to do triple duty as sysadmins, system programmers, and user services. Some when I think sysadmin, I think about people who hack kernals as well as writing perl scripts to drive backup systems. Anyway, around here people with a few years experience (or a BS in compsci and a year of experience) tends to make around $24-28k. Our more experience people make between $30-40k. I did a number of interviews out in the SF/Bay area in the alst 6 months. [I am not your typical sysadmin since I have 10 years experience and can write code as well as your typical software engineer, and hack device drivers if forced. A glutton for punishment I guess.] Anyway, the offers I got ranged from around $45k (for typical system admin positions with a full mix of responcibilities) to around $65k for sysadmin positions which would be doing mainly software maintaince with little of the other sysadmin sort of responcibilities -- mainly backing other up. ************************************************************************** Here in Portland, a really good senior SA at a commercial site gets 42 to 48. ****************************************************************************** From Austin, Texas: experience - 4 years title - systems programmer salary - ~40k I was recently offered 45-60k by Sun but didn't talk with them long enough to pin them down. ******************************************************************************* From Silicon Valley: I came here to California, where I work now, and started in the low 40's. I run about a hundred Unix systems, the company data communications network, a large IBM mainframe, take care of PC's and Macs, write Purchase Orders, do long range planning, user support, and everything else. Burn out city. I was ready to leave, since I realized how underpaid I was, and went in, told them so, and basically said, raise or else. I'm know in the low 50's. They finally hired another guy to help me out, but we still need at least one more person. ****************************************************************************** From LA: Oh, it would depend on the years of experience. I would guess $35-$45K per year is average 'round these parts. ********************************************************************************** From a University in Anytown, USA: I work for a University. Have for three years now. For my fourth year, the salary I was offered was on the order of 30K. Reasonable, but below industry standard. I got the job right out of school (BSEE, not computer science), so obviously I only have the three years of experience. ************************************************************************************ From Alabama: Personally, as a non-degreed UNIX/Novell admin, I get about $28.5K. I almost had an opportunity at a position earlier this year that would have been around $35K (the guy who was going to point me to it ended up taking the position, at a "very generous" increase when they counter-offered against the other offer he had). I think that position was filled at over $40K, and it was basically production line work--unpack computer, install AIX, install companys' package, check it out, pack computer, and ship. ********************************************************************************** From the Bay Area: I have no exact figures for what a sysadmin makes, beyound that it is in the high end, at least here in the Bay area (60k+ in the cases I know about, for a senior sysadmin) ************************************************************************************** From Florida: I was a system administrator of a Xenix system with over sixty users. My base was $28,500. The biggest mistake I made was not getting paid overtime when I took it. *************************************************************************************** From Ohio: I am the manager of System Engineering for a software development company. I have 7 sys. admin. types working for me, and two actual administrators. the administrators make anywhere from $20 to $30K. Systems Engineeers, (the other seven), make $25 to $40k. All this depends on education, experiance, and ability. **************************************************************************************** From Pheonix (from misc.jobs.offered) This position will be responsible for maintaining the individual computers (workstations and servers), the networks linking the UNIX machines, any non-UNIX components in the network, and the UNIX network's connection to the corporate IBM computing environment. A broad know- ledge of the UNIX industry, familiarity with all aspects of system and network administration, script developemnt and the ability to gauge all components in relationship to one another are critical to this position. Salary Range $35-60K **********************************************************************************