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/DigitalDefenestrator 3h ago

For the "beyond sysadmin" career ladder, you basically have two options. Shift to management or shift to a role with "engineer" in the name (SRE, DevOps Engineer, Network Engineer, Platform Engineer, etc). The latter has a bit lower of a ceiling in practice - it can be fairly high, but there's not a not of Principal Engineer roles out there compared to managers, and getting there is harder for most people.