The average wage for someone working IT is 35 k,

Thats according to the adverts on the tv, anyone ever used these training companies,and actually got a job on 35k from them.
Also the companies that will train you to be a joiner , plumber, gas fitter, or banker within 2 weeks.

Any experiences.

think theres a good company that train folk who were desk jockeys to be plumbers in london but as to telly ads? wouldnt touch it with yours mate

We used to take lots of them from Cerco for general IT field work
~£16 p/a – 2 or 3 years ago

most of those IT training providers are good at employing great salesmen, and that’s about it… they’ll try to convince you that you’re capable of anything at all, get your over-inflated fees and then give you minimal/no support when (not if!) you run into difficulties with the course you never stood a chance of passing in the first place!

okay, this isn’t always the case but as someone already working in IT for the past 9 years, i’d say avoid them like the plague and either do self-study (if you can motivate yourself sufficiently) or do a course at your local college instead… it’ll cost you a hell of a lot less and you’re likely to end up in a better position at the end of it all.

IT worker here wondering who the hell is skewing the average so much.

(or it’s an “advertisers are liars” shocker)

I’ve worked in IT now for too many years, am in charge of the IT in a private school and certainly don’t come into that 35k bracket!

The trouble with all these courses is that it doesn’t give you any ‘real’ skills in IT. It’s those common problems that you pick up on over the years that course after course won’t teach you.

Yeah you can reload Windows or replace a hard drive but what about getting system critical data back online within an hour after 2 drives in a raid configuration has failed!

“but what about getting system critical data back online within an hour after 2 drives in a raid configuration has failed!”
Get one of the overpaid buggers who’s skewing the average to sort it 🙂

That 35k figure will include developers / engineers (where the well paying jobs often require a degree – and it certainly is possible to earn > 35k), managers, and generally people who have a lot more experience than just doing one of those courses to qualify themselves to do help desk type IT, which will more likely pay <20k at the low level that you’d be going in at.

Joe

You won’t walk into a job on £35k after a few weeks training in basic computer maintenance. Maybe with a degree and 10 years experience… I find it hard to beleive 35k is an average, it’s certainly not the figure you see for most programming jobs advertised.

I work for an IT consultancy and the average there is rather higher than £35k I’m sure. Everyone has many years of experience though – we mainly do .NET and Oracle Apps. A premium is needed for consultancy though as can spend quite a bit of time travelling each day or staying away from home on top of a 40 hour working week though many do a lot more than that.

I’m just about in that scale but I work for one of the 3 biggest IT companies in the world. So, yeah, the likelyhood of someone getting that off the back of a course is highly unlikely.

All the people I know in IT earn around 3-4 times that, they are all code monkeys in the city though

Thats according to the adverts on the tv, anyone ever used these training companies,and actually got a job on 35k from them.

Could easily be the average, but you’d be extremely unikely to get that as a new entrant to the sector …

Don’t forget that IT encompasses nearly as many job descriptions as ‘white collar worker’ and a lot of those are fairly low paying- in fact I’d say that in general but not exclusively stuff outside of the developer and architect/analyst type roles at non managerial level are not very well paid – quite common to see entry level hell desk and networky/pc moving around the office/ type roles advertised in the low teens. Which if I’m correct are the sort of roles you’re likely to get if you throw cash at one of these outfits due to their training orientation. That’s if you can find a job in the current climate.

On the other hand a mate who manages the trading platform at an investment bank in the City (starting with ‘S’) tells me their first line support’s on c40k, so it depends on the industry sector you’re in and location nearly as much as the role as to whether you make reasonable dosh.

2 drives in a raid configuration has failed!

Happened to us… Lost of a Tera bites :(.

All the people I know in IT earn around 3-4 times that, they are all code monkeys in the city though

I doubt that “code monkeys” get that much, even in the madness of the square mile… some talented people working stupid hours and on call 24/7 might earn good money but, that much?

Get qualified in IT, and get offshore ‘on the rigs’. You’ll end up earning a good chunk more than £35k – but it isn’t the right working environment for everyone. And it has its inherent risks (well publicised recently)

Suits me fine though. 2 weeks working, 3 weeks off, repeat.

On the other hand a mate who manages the trading platform at an investment bank in the City (starting with ‘S’) tells me their first line support’s on c40k,

I’d be very suprised if they were, we deal with a different kind of end user but nevertheless a very demanding one and our first line are on a third of that.

porterclough – You’d be surprised. Six figure salaries for great developers are still out there and the average is still probably 40+.

All the people I know in IT earn around 3-4 times that, they are all code monkeys in the city though

Contractors?

porterclough – You’d be surprised. Six figure salaries for great developers are still out there and the average is still probably 40+.

Not round here they’re not. ;-(

Yeah I worked my arse off 3 years of a degree and for a good few years after that and I’m still a little below that as a salary, although with oncall and bonus I make a bit above that.

Yep Contractors, on between 8 and 11K a month

I’d be very suprised if they were, we deal with a different kind of end user but nevertheless a very demanding one and our first line are on a third of that.

That’s not much above minimum wage, based on a 35 hr week… I was rather surprised as well, but high twenties aren’t uncommon in finance, sector dependant, as I said.

Yep Contractors, on between 8 and 11K a month

Again, not too unusual- last year you could still pick up 500-600 a day in the City coding and support with certain technical and business skills and a track record – eg sybase, investment banking, lloyds of london.

MI5 are advertising for IT staff, ranging from Head of Service to helldesk. I think the salaries are fairly representative, but doiubt if a 2 week A+ course is what they’re looking for.
https://www.mi5careers.gov.uk/job.aspx?jobid=141

I was earning £350 per day on fairly long contracts 5-6 years ago.. Now i’m earning around the £40k bracket and i’m quite happy with it. I’ve moved around with my skills, from developing in c, vb6 to pre-sales, then sales, then back to technical consultant and now prof services and coding again in Perl (hate) and vb6.0 (just about remember). I’ll get into .net (vb2008/c#) as soon as I can.

I suspect a lot of the well paid city based job people are referring too are front office based:
http://www.jobserve.com/JobListing.aspx?shid=6CE8631826FD4010
in which case they need a lot of financial knowledge, experience and a very good academic background. its unlikely any training course will get you into anything like this. Though the adverts may well have used them to bump up the ‘average’ IT salary.

I used to run Development teams (SW & HW) in Telecoms and only graduates / new starters would be on less than £35k. The mean salary was about £50k.

I used to run Development teams (SW & HW) in Telecoms and only graduates / new starters would be on less than £35k. The mean salary was about £50k.

Location?

I’m a Senior Software Engineer / Tech Lead, based in Rosyth, approaching 12 years experience and I’m on 34k.

I work in IT for a US multinational and in my company 35k would be a relatively low wage for anyone in the UK (I earn a bit more than double that in a technical role with 12 Years experience and I’m not that highly paid within my grade). The reason being that very few lower skilled/lower experience jobs are located here – they would be in low cost countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe and SE Asia – so that sort of thing would skew the average upwards I guess as it’s fairly common practice.

It would be more useful for people interested in the course to know the average salary received after course completion, how many succesfully complete the course and how long it takes, on average, to get a job on completion. I suspect if this information was available less people would take the course so probably best they don’t mention it!

GrahamS – same here (Sheffield) senior software engineers are on about 35k ish, less senior on £25k+, similar for post sales support. A little more perhaps for presales types jetting round the world to customer sites. Managers in the £40k + area. I’m sure the sales manager makes a good wedge if he gets his targets.

I earned £40k in my last job as a programmer, with a degree (but not IT related) and 10yrs experience. We used to employ contractors, with no degrees but a lot of experience, most of it self taught, on £125k p.a.

Then again, 3 years ago, before I left, there were 600 of us in that company. Now there are 22 left, and the rest are Indian workers in Bangalore.

Area, company, skillset, experience and whether you’re happy to go contracting or not all play a big part in what you can hope to earn. The courses advertised on TV teach you what you could learn by pulling apart your own PC and not a lot more though I suspect.

While recruitment companies might like to tell you that a degree and this or that qualification are essential to even get an interview, in my experience of being recruited and recruiting staff it is the real world experience that gets the person into the interview.

As for a £35k average salary, that may be true but it took me a long time to get there. However, I know I could earn an awful lot more if actually having a life wasn’t so important to me 😀

GrahamS – same here (Sheffield) senior software engineers are on about 35k ish, less senior on £25k+,

Yeah, it is possibly a “grim oop north” thing. Softy southerners seem to be paid better.

The company I work for is essentially a contracting/outsourcing company. Other companies call us in to write software for them either on-site or in-house. Typically fairly specialist stuff like firmware, telecoms, card terminals etc. So we are effectively working like contractors, but we are full-time employees.

So all the benefits of contracting – long hours, being disliked by full time staff, getting the blame for stuff – with none of those nasty downsides like good pay and holidays. 🙄

My degree walked me into my first job back in the mid-90s in a way that a training course like the OP described wouldn’t have (good degree from a uni with an excellent engineering reputation).

For my current recruiting, if you can do well in the tests you don’t need paperwork. Problem solving skills mean you don’t even have to get a perfect score on the test if you understand the right approach. We can teach people the specifics of systems or languages, we can’t teach intelligence.

I doubt that “code monkeys” get that much, even in the madness of the square mile… some talented people working stupid hours and on call 24/7 might earn good money but, that much?

If you’re a trading systems developer working on exchange interfaces or the like for someone like Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan then 100K+ a year by the time you’ve got your bonus I would say is about the average. Frontoffice pays serious money but then they’re usually in possession of a Phd / mathematical / engineering / IT degree, a full knowledge of trading and derivatives as well as being good coders. From experience they are often decent traders themselves, or could be if they wanted to be. It’s a nice life if you’re good at it and even now decent developers are in high demand – get your head around algorithmics and financial engineering and the world’s your oyster…

Systems Administrators are on significantly less in the City which is more the area you’re going to be looking at following training from one of those companies. For what it’s worth I don’t think the qualifications or promises they might make are worth jack – you’re better off looking for a support role on an IT helpdesk at a big financial institution and then working your way up based on experience than shelling out for a useless qualification.

As far as making you into a banker in 2 weeks – even more cobblers I’m afraid. Our traders usually have to start at the bottom as clerks and serve an ‘apprenticeship’ of roughly 18 months training. The hours will be ridiculous – covering trading hours so it might be sharing the 6am to 8pm shifts on a trading desk between 2 or 3 clerks. The pay isn’t bad (approx 30K starting) but the competition is fierce and the attrition rate high. We had approx 5000 applications for the last 3 positions that we advertised…

Just my 2p’s worth.

So as i thought pointless courses, im no way computer literate, so just wondered if people actually retrained and got a job, whod employ a plumber or joiner with two weeks training.

I just want to know what ‘IT’ actually is, as some one said above, its a broad spectrum that covers the world & his wife 😯

Oh, & seeing how I can use a keyboard, how much would one have to earn to clear £50k PA?

it’s certainly not the figure you see for most programming jobs advertised.

I think it would be a decent average. I’d consider that pretty low for someone with my 10 years experience, but given the current market that’s about the level of the lowest jobs I’ve been called about by agents.

But yes, IT runs the gamut from 16 year old PC support kids on £14k to City architects and say Weblogic specialist contractors on £800/day or more – they do exist. The boss of the project I just worked on was a contractor on over a grand a day, that was IT technically and only in Cardiff never mind the City.

Study hard at school kids 🙂 Or rather, don’t, you’d be better off skipping homework and spending all your time messing about with your computer…

I.T = Incredibly Tedious, I approached Compuserve not cos I wanted to be a nerd but was interested to see what they offered – I had the full hard sell – told them to go F… themselves but my email box filled up, somehow they think that YOU are going to go and work wherever they put you if you complete the course, also a lot of up front money involved…