Underpaid careers

[FlameCity]

I think dentists are overpaid.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

Import Models are overpaid

[Looger]

Originally Posted by FlameCity

I think dentists are overpaid.

so do doctors...

dentists do ok.

doctors in general are well paid here, up north it seems most little towns have south african doctors as i've heard they make something like $30,000 in their own country and maybe those places aren't on the top of a canadian's list.

[Dion]

Prison guards are underpaid. Having to deal with people who hate your guts on a daily basis, and the constant threat of violence should things ever get out of control.

[brownie]

Originally Posted by V

Why? Just because we're better than everyone else, and they're all jealous??

LMAO good one

[Looger]

Originally Posted by Dion

Prison guards are underpaid. Having to deal with people who hate your guts on a daily basis, and the constant threat of violence should things ever get out of control.

yeah...

but if they were paid enough then they wouldn't sneak drugs in, and they'd probably make less money on average!

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

Did I say I wasn't happy with my guy? Or that I was snippy?

Nope. I did not. I like my IT guy, and don't get snippy when my computer doesn't work. I don't really get snippy at work at all.

So no need to get defensive.

But IT professionals need to look at the folks they serve as their "clients" and treat them as such. If they do, perhaps their services will be more valued.

Again, some do this, but some do not.

It has been mentioned, no doubt, but a lot of clients (and yes, they are my clients) have wildly unrealistic views of the capability of the IT person helping them. There are a lot of people who expect that we can just push a button, or waive a magic wand, and everything will work again. When reality meets this fantasy, the client often gets visibly annoyed. Doubly so when their fantasy is crushed both by reality, and by company policy.

IT is a lot like officiating. When you do a good job, nobody cares about you. When you do a poor job, everyone wants to lynch you. More often than not, the conflict is caused by the client's beliefs and expectations.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by fotze

Well after all the information contained herein my answer is now Social Workers and those who help the disabled. You rarely hear them go on about their pay and that means something to me.

Thank You!

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by V

Why? Just because we're better than everyone else, and they're all jealous??

No, it is because you take a program where they beat you down, treat you like crap and then you guys have all this misplaced anger that you randomly spew on the rest of the world when you should have just made peace with the fact that your instructors were jerks.

[V]

To be clear, my statement regarding engineers being better than everyone else was completely tongue in cheek. I don't think a lot of people read it that way.

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by MacDougalbry

The pay isn't bad, it's the working conditions that suck. My wife works this complicated 13 week schedule that is impossible to keep track of. I'm never sure if she is working tomorrow or not. She works every second weekend and some 3-11PM shifts as well. We have small kids, so this sort of schedule is hard on family life. She works a "0.7" position, which is 70% of a full time shift, but not by choice... It is hard to get a full time shift, mostly the Health Region creates these stupid part time positions and then tries to manage the workload by calling people at 6AM for extra shifts (which they don't have to pay overtime because you aren't working full time to begin with).

On the plus side, most patients are quite appreciative of the Nurse's work...

My mom is also a nurse, the govt does that because there is a special pay rate they get or something if the nurse works a full time shift. Nurses can thank their militant union for that.

MYK

[jar_e]

Originally Posted by socalwingfan

Crap my wife worked as an EMT and made 1/2 of what EMTs there make!! She moved into dispatch and actually got a raise over her EMT salary. EMTs here make close to minimum wage and are dealing with crazy **** everyday - it's freakin ridiculous.

Yeah I've heard some crazy things from the states in regards to pay and such. It's interesting you mention the dispatch thing...things are the same here. If you work up in dispatch, you definitely make more than a base EMT and paramedic. It's kinda weird, you'd think it would be the other way around.

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

To be blunt, one of the primary reasons why IT folks are treated this way is because of how they treat their customers. Inability to explain the problem, talking down to them, arrogance and what not.

You are dealing with people when they are likely stressed and suddenly without their primary work tool. No wonder they are stressed and perhaps a little snippy. Good people skills can disarm a situation but quite often the IT professional will say the wrong thing and instead escalate it.

Not saying, you or all IT guys are like that, but there are some out there that certainly qualify.

Inability to explain the problem? That is purposefully done because it would take 30 minutes to explain it an all possible side problems that also could have caused it and when 2 IT people look after 640 people across Canada, umm yah we dont have time to explain every little thing to you. Does your mechanic explain to you whats caused your brakes to fail or does he say your brakes failed.

There may be some IT persons that talk down, me and my co-worker dont, if your ##### is broke we come down with a replacement and fix your old one and then bring it back down, very little chit chat goes on with people we know to be IT troublemakers - its easy to tell those people from the ones who are at least thankful they didnt have to wait a few hours.

I dont believe IT is under-paid, I am very happy getting paid 50K+ 2 years out of school and am now on the Network Engineer Path. I dont work alot of overtime (except when Enmax decides to do power upgrades on a weekday night - idiots), I am on call 24/7 for all VP and Managers, about 18 people in Canada.

I agree with other posters, I would NEVER NEVER NEVER work in a contract situation - if the job isnt in house then see yah lata, thats why I am still with my current jobs, all the job sharks that call me are all offering contract jobs with average 40k+ more cash and I always say sorry, I care about the quality of the work experience.

Also, IT has a bad rap because companies has often used it as a pasture ground for employees not wanted else where. In a company I worked for as a summer student, senior IT project managers were former secretaries with no training - needless to say projects were drastically over budget and very coookily designed.

Short story: When I was first out school lookign for a job I had an interview (4 actually) with the Red Deer health authority among others, I was 99% guarateed the job by people who ran the IT situation there as a junior network admin (I even started to study hardcore for about 2 months for my CCNP and turned down interviews with the Royal Bank and ATB) and then - oops, the guy I had an interview with drives to where I was living at the time to give me the bad news that a former assitant was given the job, no computer network training, no nothing. I asked him why he drove 150K instead of just calling and he said he had never felt that bad in his entire life and he knows that he will just be looking for someone new in 2 years max after this person doesnt pan out and causes his workload to double - I then applied to a few places in Calgary and within a week was hired after 1 phone interview, 1 drive down interview, 1 phone inview with IT in Houston, then bam, can you start next week.

MYK

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Inability to explain the problem? That is purposefully done because it would take 30 minutes to explain it an all possible side problems that also could have caused it and when 2 IT people look after 640 people across Canada, umm yah we dont have time to explain every little thing to you.

And that's the type of terse response that ticks off management when dealing with IT personnel.

Every employee in an organization has to justify their place in an organization. Particularly those that don't generate revenue.

If a sales guy is unable to perform his job because his email is down the company is losing money by the hour. If the IT guy can't get it back up and running and can't explain why that is - well that's when you have a problem.

Bottom line is that in many organizations the IT team operates in a world of mystery where no one else understands what their job involves - this impacts both the IT employee and the organization negatively. The IT employee feels and is underappreciated and management can't figure out why they are spending so much money on it.

Better communication between the two would do wonders.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

And that's the type of terse response that ticks off management when dealing with IT personnel.

I guess I would say that if a manager wants to know; I'll be happy to make the time. If Joe User wants to know, then I will be happy to explain it to his or my manager if the need is there.

I just see many times where I know what the fix is, but don't always know what the cause was as well. For example; why did your account get locked out? I don't always know the exact cause, but it takes me 10 seconds to unlock it, and if it happens twice then we'll look deeper. Instead of me spending 30 minutes to look at every scenario to find out you don't know the difference between your number lock being off or on, I just correct the problem and move on to the next issue.

Obviously that is just a very simple example, but hopefully I've made my point.

[mykalberta]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

And that's the type of terse response that ticks off management when dealing with IT personnel.

Every employee in an organization has to justify their place in an organization. Particularly those that don't generate revenue.

If a sales guy is unable to perform his job because his email is down the company is losing money by the hour. If the IT guy can't get it back up and running and can't explain why that is - well that's when you have a problem.

Bottom line is that in many organizations the IT team operates in a world of mystery where no one else understands what their job involves - this impacts both the IT employee and the organization negatively. The IT employee feels and is underappreciated and management can't figure out why they are spending so much money on it.

Better communication between the two would do wonders.

I dont know any inhouse IT persons who are terse with management - that would be a big no no for in house IT persons.

If you computer is not working, why exactly would be an appropriate response. IT persons are expected to solve problems as quickly and expediciously as possible. We bring down a replacement machine to get you working and take your broke one to fix it. Why exactly do you need to know what was wrong, honestly half the time we dont know what caused it, we can theorize (java, acrobat update, opensource music player etc) and normally I will give a best guess answer to it but that is about it, normal in houe IT dont have time to chat for 15 minutes about the problems with comptuers - honestly half the time I am afraid the conversation will ere off into a problem at home and the user asking if "he can bring his machine in for me to look at it". We know what what is broke and how to fix it and that is what we are paid to do.

What do you want to know about IT.

How is it magical and mysterical? Firewalls connected to routers, connected to switches conencted to servers (domain controller, dhcp, file, print, app, Exchange (M$ email server) etc, connected to users computers). VPN routers connected so you can access files in houston, singapore, chicago etc.
Domain controllers authenticate your user account based on a list of permissions called the ACTIVE DIRECTORY and domain controllers talk to each other (replicate their database) normally once a night with other domain controllers around the world.

Sometimes things break, normally no warning is ever given.

What company do you work for that the IT person doenst tell you why the email is down? I will agree, that is an a$$munch of an IT person.

Top 5 reasons why email is down.
(1) Your network cable is unplugged/wall jack busted/cable ripped/you disabled your network connection (normally happens when attempting to connect notebook to home wireless)
(2) ISP Internet line to your office is down
(3) VPN connecting your office with the exchange server is down (VPN is a virtual tunnel created across the Internet to provide secure access to your network) normally a routing issue with ISP or Router died/needs reboot
(4) network problems where exchange server resides/email storm (people sending 50mb pdf files between each other instead of keeping them on the file server - much bigger problem then you may think/personal-funny videos
(5) exchange server is down - likely database is currupted and the server requries a reboot.

I cant honestly believe that any in house IT persons wouldnt tell at least a manager of a location why the email is down - sales persons, aux employees not the priority - manager who might have an ear of a VP - PRIORITY.

Top reason why commucation between the "peons" and IT isnt the greatest, said above, when 2 IT persons handle 650 computer users plus are responsible for 26 different locations, there isnt alot of time for that. The reason for that is that in house IT knows it will ALWAYS be the first division looked at for cuts - so must keep its operation lean and that hurts communication.

MYK

[fredr123]

Lawyers! Well, prosecutors and those that work for legal aid. I think they're underpaid for what they do. Pay varies widely for other lawyers and I won't stand here with a straight face and say some of them are underpaid...

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by mykalberta

Top reason why commucation between the "peons" and IT isnt the greatest, said above, when 2 IT persons handle 650 computer users plus are responsible for 26 different locations, there isnt alot of time for that. The reason for that is that in house IT knows it will ALWAYS be the first division looked at for cuts - so must keep its operation lean and that hurts communication.
MYK

Perhaps the differences in my experience rests with the type of businesses I've worked with. I've typically been involved with small-mid size companies where the IT department consists of 1/2 people. But a lot of what you say above is true - in one company I had to convince the President that we couldn't just fire the IT guy because he "didn't know what he does all day". or because "my email is always down".

In this organization the IT guy, who was great at his job, but bad at communicating, would be a source of frustration for the President. This was the type of boss for whom "no" was never an answer you should give him. And the IT guy couldn't figure that out.

That's just one example. Coincidently as I sit here today working away, I overheard one of my bosses ranting about the IT support he's received, and at the same time. Earlier I heard our IT guy basically tell one of the other guys here that he didn't have time to look into his problem until sometime "late this week". For someone on a deadline that's not a good answer.

Thinking about this out loud, I think the challenge is that in a small/medium sized business the IT guy is undermanaged. He's the only guy here that does this - he reports to a VP, but the VP has no clue about this stuff. So he pretty much is free to "run amuck". No one knows what he does, and the guy can't seem to communicate it either.

In a larger organization you have someone in place to manage the IT department as a whole, set standard and evaluate performance (I assume).

[Phanuthier]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Yah, ok there buddy. Considering all the engineers (real engineers and not the technicians that come out of SAIT, cuz they don't count) I know started at 50+ after grad, and once they get their P.Eng, make close to if not over the 6 digit figure, they're really underpaid there.

Engineers in Oil and Gas pulls that up. For ones that don't, they're alot lower.

Engineers in Management are way overpaid. R&D engineers are under.

[maverickeastwood]

Originally Posted by brownie

Millwrights are underpaid IMO

I agree, because we have to deal with engineers