1) Learn UML. 2) Earn $101,000



  • Business Insider tells all!: 10 Tech Skills That Will Instantly Net You A $100,000+ Salary

    For the lazy, here is what you should earn instantly if you have the right skill set:

    1. PeopleSoft = $110,000
    2. PMP certification = $108,000
    3. Clojure = $108,000 [1]
    4. Erlang = $107,000
    5. CISSP = $103,000
    6. Silverlight = $103,000
    7. Hadoop = $103,000
    8. PowerBuilder = $102,000 [2]
    9. J2EE = $102,000
    10. UML = $101,000

    This list look like an Excel spreadsheet stolen from the laptop of a retarded headhunter. I'd like to make further comments but I have to go prepare my PMP certification (I'll never work again with PeopleSoft)

    [1]Clojure has "become popular because it works with the Java Virtual Machine, used by web browsers"
    [2]They really meant $102k for the salary of a developer, not the total value of the technology



  • Can anyone explain how the silverlight one is... existent?



  • I think the PeopleSoft one includes all the overtime you spend on weekends and nights making that pile of sh*t work correctly.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Can anyone explain how the silverlight one is... existent?

    It's the Cobol/RPG/JCL argument, this time applied to a technology that was never the Backbone Of The Universe.

    @Business Insider said:

    If you don't already have Silverlight skills, don't kill yourself to get them. Although Microsoft won't formally admit it, Silverlight's lifespan is limited. Microsoft has thrown its support behind the up-and-coming HTML5 standard. Windows 8 style apps don't support Silverlight.
    However, there are a lot of companies that have Silverlight apps that need tending to. And there's a dwindling number of developers who know Silverlight, so it's a nice specialty to advertise, if you happen to have it.



  • None of those are skills, though.

    It's perfectly possible for someone to know those products (be well-experienced in them) but still be a poor PM, useless architect, shit designer and crap coder... and still command a large starting salary because of what's written on their CV, not for what they're actually worth.



  • @Cassidy said:

    None of those are skills, though.

    It's perfectly possible for someone to know those products (be well-experienced in them) but still be a poor PM, useless architect, shit designer and crap coder... and still command a large starting salary because of what's written on their CV, not for what they're actually worth.

     

    See that other thread about the industry being unable to separate crap from crop. ;)

     



  •  Hey, I know Clojure, J2EE and UML! I'll have my $311,000 right now, please, and I'll forget about the bit of Hadoop that I learned.



  • So according to BI every second year CS student can make $101,000? (at least we learn extensive UML in the first year).
    CS might have just become the most profitble study to ever have existed, at least in the short term.



  • @dhromed said:

    See that other thread about the industry being unable to separate crap from crop. ;)
     

    yeah.. I had a pang of deja vu there.

    Similarly, let's drop a sprinkling of graduate-entitlement culture into the mix.

    Twatting journos.


  • Garbage Person

    @dtech said:

    So according to BI every second year CS student can make $101,000? (at least we learn extensive UML in the first year).
    CS might have just become the most profitble study to ever have existed, at least in the short term.

    Yeah, really. Of course, my takeaways from that were the useful parts, which I still use daily. 75% of UML is useless formality, 25% is incredibly useful ways to describe technical processes.

     



  •  We all here know this, but just to confirm:  having certifications does NOT mean you garner a high salary.  You also have to have experience, and the twits at BI should not be spreading this misinformation.  Using my own experience, when I was job hunting last year I was also working on my PMP certification.  In my job search, I was checking both BA and PM jobs.  I also need to mention that I'm in the Northern Virginia area, which is rife with federal contracting jobs, an affluent area, and salaries are generally "up there".

    Entry level PM jobs (certified but little demonstrable PM experience) were advertised at the $45K/year mark.  About the same as an administrative assistant.  Only with 10 years PM experience and squishy* skills like "executive presence" did the jobs advertise salaries near or over $100K.

    * I consider this not even a soft skill because it's undefinable.  I even asked on one internet forum that is full of high level executives how they defined "executive presence".  A few said it was unshakable confidence and authority; most said it was utter BS.  I then asked their advice for how I could go about learning/gaining that "skill".  Nearly everybody said you can't; you either have it or you don't.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Only with 10 years PM experience and squishy* skills like "executive presence" did the jobs advertise salaries near or over $100K.

    Not to negate your point, which is a good one, but only an idiot accepts the salary on the job listing without negotiation. I'm making a fuckload more than the $70k my job was advertised as.

    @jetcitywoman said:

    * I consider this not even a soft skill because it's undefinable. I even asked on one internet forum that is full of high level executives how they defined "executive presence". A few said it was unshakable confidence and authority; most said it was utter BS. I then asked their advice for how I could go about learning/gaining that "skill". Nearly everybody said you can't; you either have it or you don't.

    It's a state of mind where you:

    1) Consider attending meetings as "work" with more value than actually working on a project

    2) Consider buzzwords as valuable communication tools and use them at every opportunity

    3) Engage in every tiny political spat in the company while simultaneously complaining about how much you hate corporate politics

    4) Enthusiastically embrace woo like Round Peg or Briggs Myers and think the results actually mean something

    5) Suck-up like an overloaded Dyson

    My current boss is an expert. In other news, I'm finding another job soon. (Tempted to go back to my old place of 6 months ago and say, "fuck, I had no idea how healthy your corporate culture was!"



  • @blakeyrat said:

    "fuck, I had no idea how healthy heathy your corporate culture was!"

    x-FTFY



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Tempted to go back to my old place of 6 months ago and say, "fuck, I had no idea how healthy your corporate culture was!"
     

    Stories like these make me wonder whether it's a good or bad thing that my ass has been rusted to this seat for a while now. I think the grass is exactly the same everywhere, but maybe a little greener this side of the fence.



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Tempted to go back to my old place of 6 months ago and say, "fuck, I had no idea how healthy your corporate culture was!"
     

    Stories like these make me wonder whether it's a good or bad thing that my ass has been rusted to this seat for a while now. I think the grass is exactly the same everywhere, but maybe a little greener this side of the fence.

    [Exit stage left]



  • @dhromed said:

    Stories like these make me wonder whether it's a good or bad thing that my ass has been rusted to this seat for a while now.
     

    Reduces battery usage for the purple dildo. It's a good thing. Others are still whinging about it being hogged.

    @dhromed said:

    I think the grass is exactly the same everywhere, but maybe a little greener this side of the fence.

    No matter how green your grass is, you'll always see the molehill in the middle - and that's what you judge the lawn by.

    Cast your mind to other jobs. Now, did they have a molehill or two? And were they better or worse than what you see?

    ... kinda puts your side of the fence into perspective.



  • These salary figures always boggle my mind. I'm quite certain I'm being underpaid. I don't want to complain too much, because ever since I've been hired, it seems my boss has been giving me bonuses and substantial raises to try to catch me up. They are categorized as performance raises, but everyone I talk to just says it means I was way underpaid to begin with. I'm sure they're right. Hrm. I really need to get out of Amish country.

    When I first started this job out of college, I was impressed with myself for earning a salary right-off-the-bat higher than the "average" American's. That was several years ago. Now I can't fathom how those "average" Americans can afford to live. There's no way the economy is that bad. Or maybe I'm just getting constantly screwed for rent and groceries. (Seriously, how is it that living in/next to farmlands raises prices of produce?) Ugh.

    How do I go about getting a real man's salary..? Should I really jump ship off a stable and relatively unstressful job?

    EDIT: I felt compelled to fact-check myself. Instead of "average American's salary" I should have wrote "median annual household income". According to Wikipedia, "the median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14)" is pathetically, pathetically low. Where do these people live that they can get by like that??



  •  

    How do I go about getting a real man's salary..?

    make sure you always play with the right toys and have the right personality. That is far more important than being able to develop.

     



  • @Xyro said:

    EDIT: I felt compelled to fact-check myself. Instead of "average American's salary" I should have wrote "median annual household income". According to Wikipedia, "the median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14)" is pathetically, pathetically low. Where do these people live that they can get by like that??

    Every State has its own economy. I could live the same lifestyle I have now in Kansas City for about a third the cost (and as an added bonus, move into a neighborhood getting Google fiber-- for some reason areas with strong tech economies never get decent Internet connectivity, but every person I know who lives in Bumblefuck, North Appalachia has FIOS.) If you want to stay in tech and not work as IT in some farmer's bank, or building websites for a chain of truck stops, your best bet is Austin where tech jobs are all over and (for the moment at least) prices are still super-low.

    Stats like "median household income" are trash, IMO. Even in Washington State, the "median household income" of two people with equivalent standards-of-living can vary by 30%, just by being on one side of the Cascades or the other.



  • Paychecks form a natural distribution, and that means that having just the median tells you nothing useful about the entire set. What you want is the holy trinity, i.e. average, median, and mode.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @dhromed said:

    Paychecks form a natural distribution

    What does that even mean?

    @dhromed said:

    ...and that means that having just the median tells you nothing useful about the entire set.

    That's not true.

    @dhromed said:

    What you want is the holy trinity, i.e. average, median, and mode.

    I can't imagine why I'd want that (maybe median, plus the first few moments which include the mean). The mode is particularly useless here, I think. As is often the case, a picture is probably what I'd really want.



  • Stats are always skewed, especially salary statistics. A geography professor at the university in my town was always trying to get students to select geography as their major. He'd tell all these wonderful stories about how much geography majors can make. However, if you dig into his statistics you'd find people like Michael Jordan were included when determining the (average|median|whatever marginally useful statistical metric he selected) income for geography majors. Michael Jordan actually majored in geography, but obviously his income had nothing to do with that. I believe there were several such people skewing the value towards the high end.



  • @Xyro said:

    These salary figures always boggle my mind. I'm quite certain I'm being underpaid. I don't want to complain too much, because ever since I've been hired, it seems my boss has been giving me bonuses and substantial raises to try to catch me up. They are categorized as performance raises, but everyone I talk to just says it means I was way underpaid to begin with. I'm sure they're right. Hrm. I really need to get out of Amish country.

    When I first started this job out of college, I was impressed with myself for earning a salary right-off-the-bat higher than the "average" American's. That was several years ago. Now I can't fathom how those "average" Americans can afford to live. There's no way the economy is that bad. Or maybe I'm just getting constantly screwed for rent and groceries. (Seriously, how is it that living in/next to farmlands raises prices of produce?) Ugh.

    How do I go about getting a real man's salary..? Should I really jump ship off a stable and relatively unstressful job?

    EDIT: I felt compelled to fact-check myself. Instead of "average American's salary" I should have wrote "median annual household income". According to Wikipedia, "the median income per household member (including all working and non-working members above the age of 14)" is pathetically, pathetically low. Where do these people live that they can get by like that??

    You will never progress salary-wise if you stay a long time in the same jobs and if your resume does not include companies that everybody know. Not a lot of people will say: "let's pay this dude the big bucks, he was Chief Architect in many small, unknown companies and he has good references" but they will happily shovel money your way if you have been working in something vaguely related to IT for Microsoft, JP Morgan and GE or some other well-known big shop. The more the better. A stint in the military (doing something IT-related) can also give a good boost.

    If you really want good money then it's better to become a contractor than an employee. However as a contractor you'll usually end up doing boring work and since a contractor has a "client", not a "boss", whining or calling out WTFs without the proper spin or sugar-coating is not an option.

    So the magic numbers would be 2-4 years for permanent jobs (no matter how many promotions you get) and 3-12 months for a contract (in some jurisdictions, if you have only one client for more than one year the Tax Man may come after you, calling you a hidden employee).

    I think the best progression is the following:

    1. Internships / summer jobs during college
    2. Full time job in a basement company to discover that what you learned in college is useless
    3. Full time job working IT in a non-IT company to understand that IT is not ruling the world and that nobody cares about how computers work outside your department
    4. Full time jobs in well-known companies to give more credibility to your resume
    5. Contracts or work for a consulting firm doing shit work in lots of organizations
    6. Work in a startup to wash out the feeling that IT sucks
    7. Work as Enterprise Architect in a big organization to maximize the impact of your skills without putting in endless hours, or switch to management


  • BINNED

    @dhromed said:

    Paychecks form a natural distribution, and that means that having just the median tells you nothing useful about the entire set. What you want is the holy trinity, i.e. average, median, and mode.

    I'd add standard deviation.



  • @mott555 said:

    Michael Jordan actually majored in geography, but obviously his income had nothing to do with that. I believe there were several such people skewing the value towards the high end.
     

    Pedantically, the geog prof was right - just that everyone took his claims to imply that having a geography degree entitles you to a higher-paid job.

    Damn, I'm glad the same thing doesn't apply to IT degrees....



  • In fact I am working at a big-name international company. It's probably not too well known in the IT world, but it is very significant in a multitude of manufacturing industries. (I guarantee you that you own numerous products of the company, incorporated into the various goods in your possession.) I do not fear for my resume.

    I've thought about going into contracting... Not sure I'm ready to take the plunge. I really like having steady employment... I've also heard of that 2-5 year figure, although more often as 4-6. In either case, I'm due for a change. I'm so conflicted about it though. I'm not sure I'm comfortable rocking the financial boat until my wife is re-established in her field, but on the other hand, I've spent a lot of time at this company. I've been recognized for my success and abilities, but not with salaries like IT publication say I could earn. hum hum hum.

    On the other other hand, my wife and I have more than a half a mind to move far away to where the cost of living is much less. It's possible I could telecommute, earning my meager Pennsylvania wage at some Kentucky-like backwards world. That may be idea. Or it may suck even worse.

    I know! An unnecessarily complicated Perl one-liner should help!

    
    perl -e '*S=*ARGV;($_,@q,$s)=(0x73BA1CF8D,split//,qq(no dit\x27));@S=split//;$s.=$q[shift]while(@S);@S=split q( ),$s;(time&1)&&shift;print uc qq(@S);'
    

    :D


  • @Xyro said:

    some Kentucky-like backwards world

    You miss out on some of the cheap if you pick a city like area in KY, but it can help you dodge some of the suck that you get from KY.



  • @PedanticCurmudgeon said:

    @dhromed said:

    Paychecks form a natural distribution, and that means that having just the median tells you nothing useful about the entire set. What you want is the holy trinity, i.e. average, median, and mode.

    I'd add standard deviation.
     

    Three.

    Not three deviations, just 3.

     



  •  @blakeyrat said:

    Not to negate your point, which is a good one, but only an idiot accepts the salary on the job listing without negotiation. I'm making a fuckload more than the $70k my job was advertised as.

    Oh, don't assume that I didn't apply to a few of them just to see.  The few who responded to me were all of the opinion that I was too technical (20 years technical experience) and would be bored to tears as a PM, so I didn't get past the phone interview (why'd you call me, then?)  Which leaves me to assume the ones that didn't call me felt the same.

    At the time I was transitioning from a $100+/year legacy developer role (which sounds good as long as I don't tell you how teensy the pigeon-hole was that I was stuck in... for almost 10 years).  I was willing to take a pay cut to step into a non-developer role, but not by half.  I did end up with a business analyst gig for over $85/year.  That's what I found odd:  entry level business analysts, which are generally seen as worker bees are paid more than entry level project managers which are supposed to have some authority and one step into management.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

     @blakeyrat said:

    Not to negate your point, which is a good one, but only an idiot accepts the salary on the job listing without negotiation. I'm making a fuckload more than the $70k my job was advertised as.

    Oh, don't assume that I didn't apply to a few of them just to see.  The few who responded to me were all of the opinion that I was too technical (20 years technical experience) and would be bored to tears as a PM, so I didn't get past the phone interview (why'd you call me, then?)  Which leaves me to assume the ones that didn't call me felt the same.

    At the time I was transitioning from a $100+/year legacy developer role (which sounds good as long as I don't tell you how teensy the pigeon-hole was that I was stuck in... for almost 10 years).  I was willing to take a pay cut to step into a non-developer role, but not by half.  I did end up with a business analyst gig for over $85/year.  That's what I found odd:  entry level business analysts, which are generally seen as worker bees are paid more than entry level project managers which are supposed to have some authority and one step into management.

    BAs are a dying hype, like social media analysts. This is 2012, by now everyone knows that the gap between business and IT can only be filled by marketing.



  • @dhromed said:

    @Cassidy said:

    None of those are skills, though.

    It's perfectly possible for someone to know those products (be well-experienced in them) but still be a poor PM, useless architect, shit designer and crap coder... and still command a large starting salary because of what's written on their CV, not for what they're actually worth.

     

    See that other thread about the industry being unable to separate crap from crop. ;)

     


    Can someone link this? I don't recall that thread. The search is only showing this conversation for "crop crap".



  • @Xyro said:

    On the other other hand, my wife and I have more than a half a mind to move far away to where the cost of living is much less. It's possible I could telecommute, earning my meager Pennsylvania wage at some Kentucky-like backwards world. That may be idea. Or it may suck even worse.


    Come to Kutztown, Pennsylvania. We're right in the middle between Reading and Allentown (15 miles either way), rent is incredibly cheap and the town is wired with fiber by the town government (8mb down/2 mb up, no caps, free wifi hotspots all over town, ~$25/month http://www.huhomenet.com/services/internet.html).



  • @Gazzonyx said:

    @Xyro said:

    On the other other hand, my wife and I have more than a half a mind to move far away to where the cost of living is much less. It's possible I could telecommute, earning my meager Pennsylvania wage at some Kentucky-like backwards world. That may be idea. Or it may suck even worse.


    Come to Kutztown, Pennsylvania. We're right in the middle between Reading and Allentown (15 miles either way), rent is incredibly cheap and the town is wired with fiber by the town government (8mb down/2 mb up, no caps, free wifi hotspots all over town, ~$25/month http://www.huhomenet.com/services/internet.html).

    Pennsylvania? Isn't that where the cities are going bankrupt?



  • @Speakerphone Dude said:

    Pennsylvania? Isn't that where the cities are going bankrupt?

    [url=http://topics.pennlive.com/tag/harrisburg%20bankruptcy/index.html]y[/url][url=http://www.pennlive.com/harrisburg-debt/]e[/url][url=http://www.pennlive.com/pennsylvania-budget/]s[/url].

    @Gazzonyx said:

    Kutztown, Pennsylvania.

    I don't live too far away form there, maybe an hour's drive or so. I'd rather move south and west rather than north and east, but you can't go wrong with a Dutchy name in Quaker land! Do you have to deal with tourists tearing up the roads, and then the local government charging excessive personal taxes to fix it up instead of taxing the businesses that benefit from the tourists? Because we do. I see you guys are nearish a lake. How'd you survive the flooding last year? God that was awful.

    Unfortunately, Kutztown is still in Pennsylvania, which means the State government thinks of it nothing more than a tax revenue source to help deal massive fiscal shortfalls in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and the wasteland that is Harrisburg. Oh, and the incarceration centers called schools that the State has taken over.... I think I may decline the offer. Thanks though.


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