I fell into IT almost three years ago, I tried to start a company in an unrelated industry, which failed, and I needed a job to support my family. That first IT job paid $30k/year. In the last three years, I got a B.S. in IT, a bunch of certs, and worked my way into a Sr. Cloud Operations Engineer position where I sit now, with a salary of $85k/year and a 10% annual bonus. On my current path, I can see myself over $100k base within 9-12 months, and probably around $110-$130k base within 2 years, with similar bonuses. I see posts on here pretty often about people that have reached $200-300k+ TC within just a couple years, people getting sign off bonuses that are half my annual income, etc. At this point, I know I need to do something different if I want to get there. From what I've seen, it looks like I need to become a developer to get there. I was originally going down the DevOps route, because that pays high by IT standards, but seems to be pretty low compared to a lot of developers. I'm looking for general advice about this path, and anything I should focus on or pursue. I know I'm going to have to learn actual programming, grind leetcode, and it's going to take a while for me to get there. I'm trying to find the most efficient path to get from where I am to where I want to be.
I'm in IT and my TC is about 180k. Takes time to get in a good company. Dont worry about others people TC. Be the best you can be at what you do and money will come in time. Higher TC's are probably managers.
You see people here getting 200-300k within a few years because thats pretty much poverty line in the Bay area. Location matters. FWIW I'm a SA with FAANG and 175k TC in a LCOL state. Came from a similar background to you.
I agree. Location does matter. 200k in Bay Area is barely making it especially if you have a family. So damn expensive there.
I know that living in the Bay area is a lot more expensive, but I've also seen some good arguments that it's easier to save on such a high salary, even with the higher COL. I'll have to pen that out based on my expenses and see if that's the case I suppose.
You have to also look at where the people with high tc are at. Those numbers are mostly in SF and Seattle. It is also exponentially more expensive to live in those areas than most of the country. In general I would say do what you like and what you’re good at. DevOps roles (with an engineering emphasis) can pay well. If you’re making a switch solely for TC it can be hard to put in the work that’s needed to succeed if you don’t actually enjoy the work.
I actually like coding a lot, from my small amount of exposure. I do a fair amount of scripting, which I very much enjoy, and I've started going through appAcademy Open. I've got the right head for programming, I'm good dealing with many layers of abstraction at once, and love the problem solving aspect that comes with programming/scripting.
There is a pretty obvious path for you that can take you to the $200k-$300k+ range. With background in IT and Cloud, being a customer facing resource for any of the major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) will get you there. Typically the TC is 1 level below what a dev at that level makes. However, it's also generally easier to get promoted than as a dev. The roles you can consider are Cloud Solutions Architect, Sales Engineer, Account Executive, Technical Account Manager, Account Technology Strategist etc. For even higher TC, consider that as an Account Exec, if you blast past your quota you can have a massive payday that dwarfs any role. But this isn't easy necessarily. Seven figure TCs for major coups as an Account Exec is not unheard of.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about an Account Exec role, I'd have to learn more about it. I'm pretty good at sales(sold >$100k in 7 months going door to door for my business), but it wore on me. I think it was primarily the type of sales I was doing. I wasn't aware that the Architects/Engineers brought in that much money at the major providers, I'll have to look into that more.
Yep, the Account Exec role isn't for everyone. But the other customer facing roles do have solid TC as long as it's at one of those three companies.
Curious how old were you when you made the switch to IT?
24. I joined the Navy out of high school, did that for 4 years, and originally got out and was pursuing finance at a state college prior to starting my painting company.
It's too late, sorry.
OP,It’s never too late !
Blind is getting far too wholesome.