Underpaid in IT?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Another delusional and misguided one. We are talking about Singapore context, dude.

you are the one who's misguided. there are MNCs in singapore which pay well.

if you and your friends are paid by your standards and you're happy with that, that's fine.

the fact is there are good paymasters. some are really good. you just have to find them. and finding them is really not a hard uphill jump-through-hoops task. we're not talking about becoming cabinet ministers here.

rather than being bitter and putting people down in an anonymous discussion forum, you should spend your time looking for a better paying job. there are many out there. you just have to find them.

As long as you have the qualifications that the client is looking for, you can get a good pay even from local companies.

It's a very simple calculation. For an example, outsourcing full-time support for a medium size system / network infrastructure costs around 15k-20k / month. Normal margin for outsourcing service is <20%. It leaves you with 12k to be divided among senior / primary engineer, junior / backup engineer and an account manager. With the most responsibility on his shoulder, a senior engineer can easily earn 6k / month and the amount of his salary is perfectly justifiable.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Good to see another sane person in this thread.

Those who think they can get 8k doing support work in an MNC need to do a reality check.

I think you are the one who needs to do the reality check. The truth hurts. Too bad!

[kunxeno]

Cool it guys....anyway thanks for all the feedback and advises.

Yup...i have known that im underpaid and HR is soooo low balling my pay..
i'm currently doing support for the local sites and secondly for vietnam and indonesia. But i too have the skillsets to setup,design, support and maintain an infrastructure from scratch....i recieve feedback from my current users that my SLA is good which had greatly improve the current IT environment compare to the previous guy (who is still here, PR, Foreign, 10yrs)

i really hope that time will come, when the day i can do more management stuff rather then technical. Hope that the 6k-10k mark would be a reality someday...so that i no need to struggle to think of what to spend and not to spend one day...Cheers

Originally Posted by kunxeno

Cool it guys....anyway thanks for all the feedback and advises.

Yup...i have known that im underpaid and HR is soooo low balling my pay..
i'm currently doing support for the local sites and secondly for vietnam and indonesia. But i too have the skillsets to setup,design, support and maintain an infrastructure from scratch....i recieve feedback from my current users that my SLA is good which had greatly improve the current IT environment compare to the previous guy (who is still here, PR, Foreign, 10yrs)

i really hope that time will come, when the day i can do more management stuff rather then technical. Hope that the 6k-10k mark would be a reality someday...so that i no need to struggle to think of what to spend and not to spend one day...Cheers

So what is your plan? Are you going to continue working there with "the hope that one day the time will come"? Because I can tell you if you just keep hoping it will never come leh. Some more you're not young anymore.

If you really want that 10k job, gotta make some concrete steps man. Don't stay there hoping it will change one day.

Best wishes,
Goodie

[kunxeno]

Originally Posted by Goodie

So what is your plan? Are you going to continue working there with "the hope that one day the time will come"? Because I can tell you if you just keep hoping it will never come leh. Some more you're not young anymore.

If you really want that 10k job, gotta make some concrete steps man. Don't stay there hoping it will change one day.

Best wishes,
Goodie

mmm....my plan ah..
next would be PMP certification and ITIL...too bad im bonded for 2yrs here till 2012 thus i can only leave this place and look for better prospects at a later time.. in the meantime, i guess i would start to volunteer to handle more projects and gain more experience, these would be good for both my skillsets and portfolio..
Advises, what do you think?

[sgsw0skl]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Good to see another sane person in this thread.

Those who think they can get 8k doing support work in an MNC need to do a reality check.

you are a frog still stuck in a well...

[sgsw0skl]

Originally Posted by kunxeno

mmm....my plan ah..
next would be PMP certification and ITIL...too bad im bonded for 2yrs here till 2012 thus i can only leave this place and look for better prospects at a later time.. in the meantime, i guess i would start to volunteer to handle more projects and gain more experience, these would be good for both my skillsets and portfolio..
Advises, what do you think?

Good for you .. here's a lobang

photo.jpg

[sgsw0skl]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

As long as you have the qualifications that the client is looking for, you can get a good pay even from local companies.

It's a very simple calculation. For an example, outsourcing full-time support for a medium size system / network infrastructure costs around 15k-20k / month. Normal margin for outsourcing service is <20%. It leaves you with 12k to be divided among senior / primary engineer, junior / backup engineer and an account manager. With the most responsibility on his shoulder, a senior engineer can easily earn 6k / month and the amount of his salary is perfectly justifiable.

There are other incident cost to work out.

Medical, insurance, family benefit, allowance, CPF, Leave so it adds up.

What is missing in this equation is the knowledge transfer that you have gotton when you were in the organisation as well as the ability to accomplish a number of task that made you a asset than a libility.

We must be practical. No one is here for fame and glory. Even then, it comes with a price to serve the nation well. (I leave it as that).

If you were to monitor the pay level of someone who stay put in an organisation vs one that practically change job to garner experience, you be able to made a quantum leap in terms of salary.

Job hopping is now not consider a sin, rather a avenue to gauge the ability of the employee to adjust to changing environment and its needs.

HR use to sing a different tone on life long employment, now its an ever changing environment with people who are not only able to blend in well BUT have the ability to change accordingly.

If you stay in an organistaion with 10 years vs every move you made with a 1.5 yrs to 2 yrs period, the learning you get from one organisation to another would help you fill up the gaps in the dimension that is sorely lacking from someone who has done the same job 10 years in a row.

Getting a cert or a degree only means beyond s doubt that you know how to "operate", once you step in the door, you need to deliver and that will be from the experience that you get when you move from one place to another.

Some of the reason why the SI is involve in outsourcing is the budget for the organisation had ballon up and thats a quick way to reduce it by outsourcing / cleansing the organisation of the fats.

Once the dirty job is done, they in-source back. Look around and you know what I mean,


The discussion here lies in the fact that is quite prevalent here is that everyone thinks HR is lowballing one another.

Have another here tried to get that information out of the job agencies. Have those that approach you draft a plan with you to work out the market wnats and needs analysis for you so that you can get ahead, or are those people that you applied with (guessing that most jobs goes to an agency as HR is rather tie up with dun noe what ) just churning commission and not sharing with you in depth discussion on the market rates and the bench mark level ?

I agree. Tier-3 support could get at least 8k per month.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

my first time posting in this thread. i'm not sure about tier-1, but if you move up to higher levels of support (tier-2, tier-3), with 8 years experience i'm sure you can get more than 8k in an MNC.