Salaries

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MrAlan

98 posts

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#109594 23-Sep-2012 14:01

Hi all,
Just wondering what a reasonable salary would be for an IT Administrator that was responsible for:
400 desktop computers,
90 laptops,
the technical design and implementation of the network switches,
Managing and maintaining 3 VMware host servers with 19 virtual servers,
The backups and disaster recovery of servers,
User management on an AD domain,
Website design and development,
General help desk,
and other projects such as implementing single-sign on.

Complete wireless coverage is also being implemented in the next few months which will add to the above workload.

Just would like to get an idea of what others in similar situations would likely be paid.

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#690150 23-Sep-2012 14:07

70k+

Do whatever you want to do man.

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nathan

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#690155 23-Sep-2012 14:24

Where and how many hours a week is it full time?

Linuxluver

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#690158 23-Sep-2012 14:30

MrAlan: Hi all,
Just wondering what a reasonable salary would be for an IT Administrator that was responsible for:
400 desktop computers,
90 laptops,
the technical design and implementation of the network switches,
Managing and maintaining 3 VMware host servers with 19 virtual servers,
The backups and disaster recovery of servers,
User management on an AD domain,
Website design and development,
General help desk,
and other projects such as implementing single-sign on.

Complete wireless coverage is also being implemented in the next few months which will add to the above workload.

Just would like to get an idea of what others in similar situations would likely be paid.

If it's a 40-hour week (a real one) then 70k sounds about right.

If it's as-needed, whenever, upgrades on every long weekend and ater-hour callouts....then either get a good overtime rate with days in lieu or $100k.

But you don't really want that kind of job anyway because it wrecks marriages and burns you out in about 5 years. (Seen it first hand...over and over).

No job is worth that.

_____________________________________________________________________

I've been on Geekzone over 16 years..... Time flies....

MrAlan

98 posts

Master Geek

#690255 23-Sep-2012 19:46

nathan: Where and how many hours a week is it full time?

Yes full time 40 hours per week.
I work in a school with 1400 users (students+staff). As such I don't expect market rates as every dollar I earn is a dollar removed from student resources and most schools aren't very well funded. However I don't like to drift too far from the rest of the industry rates as I start feeling undervalued, especially considering that the workload is always increasing.

BTR

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#690261 23-Sep-2012 20:03

I would agree with 70k

gzt

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#690303 23-Sep-2012 21:35

I do not work in this area but have sometimes worked with network specialists and contractors. The number of users is not a big factor in salaries. Salary varies more depending on the line of business and business critical nature of the systems. In many financial institutions for example a serious system failure is potentially the end of trading until systems are restored. The business critical and line of business implications of IT in education are increasing as newer technology begins to take a larger part in the delivery of the curriculum.

Your current level of responsibility in the private sector tends to be spread across multiple specialists or/and managed with outside contractors for specialist tasks - in contrast to yourself being responsible for absolutely everything from planning and implementation to break/fix.

In some ways the question is difficult because your role is non-specialist.

Given the number of users, my guess at the number of line of business critical users, your planning role, and the minimum level of skills and experience required to pull all this off successfully every day - I would put this at 80K++ in the private sector.

In many ways it is a difficult question simply because the private sector would be unlikely to structure all these responsibilities as a single role.

mattwnz

20045 posts

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#690330 23-Sep-2012 22:35

How much are they offering, or do they think it is worth? Being a school , I am not sure if it is exactly mission critical, unlike a business. So I would expect the pay to be less. Just because it is a school though and you are working in the public sector, don't think that you should be paid less that the private sector. There are plenty of people in the public sector getting paid a stack load of money at rates above the private sector.

DonGould

3892 posts

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#690347 23-Sep-2012 23:21

$90,000.

I expect that secondary education won't be free but on student loans by the time my son is in year 9.

This year 50,000 New Zealanders headed over seas. We grow kiwis and then we export them.

Schools are all about funding and funding is based on numbers.

If you asked my son to choose between a foot ball and his computer it would be a no brainer.

When it comes to choosing a high school, I have no doubt at all that he'll be looking at what technology is in the school.

Schools need to understand that if they want the students then they have to invest in the best resources for them, and that includes system administration, you.

The systems in a school are just as critical as any commerical business.

If you let systems be off line when staff want them then eventually those staff will go looking for a better school to work for.

Schools want to attract good teachers as well. Teachers talk and if a school has a reputation for shocking IT then you'll quickly find they have trouble retaining and hiring staff.

Schools are a business. They're in the business of education and education is a massive global industry.

New Zealanders are sought after and valued over seas because we're known for our good people.

I see no reason why we should be paid less in New Zealand to teach and resource our kids and teachers when those products then head over seas to earn some great incomes by providing some great service to international companies.

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

Klipspringer

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#690367 24-Sep-2012 07:57

$70k. Unbelievable really. It just shows why so many kiwis are heading overseas.

Dairyxox

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#690433 24-Sep-2012 09:53

Wow some of you guys might be shocked. I recently turned down a job with the nz police. I would have been servicing an entire region (many police stations), doing work very similar to the description in the OP.

No website design or development. BUT other stuff (dont know if its 'kosher' to detail too much here).

Applied for the full time position. Was offered the part time position, was much like linuxluver described:

"If it's as-needed, whenever, upgrades on every long weekend and ater-hour callouts....then either get a good overtime rate with days in lieu or $100k. "

They wanted to pay me $20 per hour. Casually. (Im not new, I've got about 10 years experience with this sort of thing)
The 'recruitment agent' put an un-holy amount of pressure on me to accept, telling me this was normal. "What did you expect??"
:SHOCKED:

And now I'm looking to move to Aus.

newbellies

159 posts

Master Geek

#690454 24-Sep-2012 10:23

Dairyxox: ...
They wanted to pay me $20 per hour. Casually. (Im not new, I've got about 10 years experience with this sort of thing)
The 'recruitment agent' put an un-holy amount of pressure on me to accept, telling me this was normal. "What did you expect??"
:SHOCKED:

And now I'm looking to move to Aus.

Unless NZ makes it a lot more difficult to import employees from overseas, I don't see the low wages in NZ changing anytime soon. I'm not saying stricter immigration is the answer (especially as someone who wasn't born in NZ), but jobs I find here can easily be half what I could get overseas. As a result, I deal strictly with foreign contracts, but I'd love to keep it local in NZ.

Then again, if wages got more inline with other first world countries, maybe housing prices would be even more crazy.

Sorry to hear you're looking move to Aus!

Kyanar

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#690480 24-Sep-2012 10:53

Wow. $70k? And you guys are calling that underpaid? I work for an extremely large company. And we're paying less than $70k for our server admins.

nathan

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#690504 24-Sep-2012 11:14

No where in this thread as anyone discussed location

70K in Bluff is different than 70K in Auckland

nova

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#690546 24-Sep-2012 11:59

You can download the Hudson salary guide from here:

http://nz.hudson.com/salary-guides.aspx

It's a bit tricky to match your role against the descriptions in here, but I would have said you are looking somewhere in the 65K to 80K range.

gzt

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#690561 24-Sep-2012 12:13

Kyanar: Wow. $70k? And you guys are calling that underpaid? I work for an extremely large company. And we're paying less than $70k for our server admins.

Nobody is calling underpaid, and we do not expect to know what the OP is paid anyway.

The OP is asking what the renumeration is for this position in the private sector.

The way I read it - the OP is carrying all responsibility for all systems, user support, planning, deployment, etc and is the sole person in that environment responsible for everything. For the number of users and size of the LAN this combination of roles is unusual in the private sector.

This makes it a difficult question to answer.

The OP's role is vastly different from a server admin role mostly restricted to the server room and network cabinet where skillsets and responsibility are clearly defined in nice replaceable chunks and work arrives as clearly defined tasks.

ICT everywhere has grown in all directions but in educational environments more than any other this has often left the same experienced and talented person managing growth, taking care of everything, and innovating all the way to keep service delivery - which probably occurs because retention is higher due to other factors.

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