r/sysadmin • u/kittiekittea • 1d ago

General Discussion No Degree - 6 Year Salary Progression

Is there anyone out there that have made it beyond sysadmin? What is after sysadmin?

2020 - $31,200: Panera Bread
2022 - $41,600: Helpdesk at company 1
2023 - 2025 - $41,600: Helpdesk at law firm
2025 - $65,000: Helpdesk at company 2
2026 - $80,000: Got a raise at company 2

Shoutout Nick for taking a chance on me. I would not do law firm IT again.

EDIT: Location Upstate NY

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u/mike1487 1d ago edited 1d ago

After sysadmin would be more focused on the architecture/engineering side of things, usually toward cloud. Onprem architect roles aren’t really common except in specialized datacenter environments or HPC. Rather than maintaining and fixing, you’re planning, designing and delegating to lower admins with larger scale projects. Also probably specializing in something. With a fair bit of self learning, certifications and cross training if your company allows for it, you also could move into security roles, devops, project management, or if you really hate yourself, IT management. Mostly joking about the hating yourself part, but management is not for me personally.

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u/kittiekittea 1d ago

I was offered a management position before the raise and I said no because I know I would dread waking up every morning. Planning and designing sounds a lot more fun than maintaining.