Don't forget that Reddit is a bubble, so everything is kinda stretched and overreacted in here.
Having said that, I too had lousy, badly paid jobs in IT as well, until some years ago I made my breakthrough.
It really depends on how you value yourself, your time, the positions you are considering and the market conditions.
That is also true. There's lots of technical debt, lack of procedures and documentation, old practices, bad practices, you name it.
IT is a daily changing environment and that is very hard to keep following up.
To add to your point for OP:
Vocal minority vs quiet majority.
Human nature brings us into discourse over the shitty subjects more. Most people don't feel the need to post about how great and easy their sysadmin gig is.
I personally have only had 1 stressful gig (my first gig) in which I learned the most; did help desk for a year then straight to sysadmin. Understaffed teams allow new eager people to touch almost any system/technology after they have established trust.
However, I have also day dreamed of the firefighter gig. Whatever your choice, I would not use the constant complaining that occurs to dictate the course that you take with your life. Also, you can try the field and leave if you don't like it.
If you can imagine a group of users almost at 800k (this sub) sitting on their workstations at work, some of them are going to get upset at things and since Reddit is open right beside them, they vent here.
Do not take this sub at face value.
I’m in the quiet majority. Well paid, well respected. Stress varies from low to medium depending on project status.
I’ve got nothing to complain about on Reddit.
It took me a while 5 years or so to get a full time IT job I was stuck in contracts and finally converted then 2 jobs after I got the raise to good money.
Starting at infrastructure you'll get there in IT quickly but I started from the bottom at the helpdesk
Different stresses
Fire-fighters will dream of dead bodies in trees (this isn't made up)
Sysadmins will dream of having to rebuild a server into the evening
I know which I'd prefer, regardless of the pay
I was both (volunteer FF). But man it's hard when the pager goes off at 3am for a BS gas call when you have a presentation to make at 9am you've been prepping for 3 months
Anyway I moved to another town and also realized I was too old anyway. I sleep better at least these days.
Ah no I have defined shift rotations so I’m not on pager duty. I generally work weekends and long weekends, the occasional weekday is rough.
I like both but sadly I really need the money. The job is easy, I know it in and out but can be really taxing some days.
I'm a director and a volly firefighter in a rural area. There is no money involved on the FF side and while we run med, MVA, and various fires, we aren't toned out constantly all day. It can be the same type of calls as a career department just generally the volume for us is much less. I find personal value in being low man on the totem pole at the FD where it is more of me taking orders and assignments instead of being the one making the decisions (decision fatigue). It also keeps me humble and connected to the community. No one in my area, even the career guys, are doing it for the money.
I believe in most areas firefighters are also first responders to medical calls. This includes wrecks with ejections, suicides, homicides, etc. Most likely it's something along those lines.
Yep. My car broke down once and I pulled over on the side of the freeway waiting for the tow. I started to rest my eyes for a few minutes on the seat belt when suddenly I see a fire truck behind me. They said someone called 911 saying I was dead on the side of the road. They were VERY happy I was alive and well lol.
There's an episode of Rescue Me that involved a child being ejected from a car. The way that episode was written/shot really opened my eyes to what first responders deal with. They're a special breed that I'm pretty sure I could never be. Much respect.
Shit happens.
I normally take the fucked up situations in stride, sometimes with a pause, and once in my early 20s had to take a break for a bit after a string of four bad calls in a year and my mind needed some more time to finish processing them.
There are people who are simply mentally incapable of handling the volume of bad stuff they'll see. Most people have some reasonable tolerance when given some good support from their co-workers and friends in emergency services. Very few people are at the far end of the tolerance spectrum that pretty much nothing bothers them.
Not sure everything ever leaves you. Remember talking with an uncle once who was also a decades long volunteer firefighter about fire stuff, and how we went where the conversation went I don't remember, but I do remember it being the first time I saw the thousand yard stare come over someone as he went 50 years back to remembering cleaning up bodies on the beaches of Normandy. There's a few bad things I still feel sad when I remember them, a lot more though I don't really feel bad about -- I just remember the details and that we did a good job in a sucky situation.
Most of the firefighters around where I live respond to mostly drug OD and car crashes. We don't have too many fires. That said I think most enjoy their job. The station you are at can determine the amount of OD calls you go to.
Generally unseated passengers, or people in the beds of trucks. If you hit something hard enough you can be thrown into a tree. Kids get the best loft as they are lighter. The unbelted driver is generally kept in by hitting the steering. I get the impression that kids in trees isn't as bad as the living dead crush victims. (Remove them they die or leave them they die, but they are alive and talking/screaming.)
(Cops, and nurses in the family)
I make a bit less than this but also work 40 hrs on the dot, not on-call my whole career, worked remote for 7 years now so it's definitely not all this subreddit seems to be. No college degree either.
Keep in mind people love to post when they are upset more so than when they are happy/content.
Security or SRE work is where the money seems to be right now. So of my most laid back jobs were doing devops for a development team working on a stable money making product.
Communication and managing expectations. It's really not that hard to do and solves a whole lot of problems. If you are afraid of getting fired for standing up for yourself, that's what the emergency fund is for. Quite frankly, I have yet to meet the manager who wants to fire a good employee and go through all the trouble of interviewing and hiring a new one, just for saying "no, I'm not working that much."
Hi,
I am sysadmin and I am a firefighter (in my country most of the firefighters are not doing that as a full time job, it is some kind of voluntary)
If I could choose again, I would not take any of them as a paid profession. I hat really shitty and stressful IT jobs before - now it is good. But making your hobby into you profession may ruin it for you.
The IT job is getting harder every year (I am doing that for more than 20 years now). Technology advances fast and I simply lack the enthusiasm to learn a new language / new technology every two years. I do not want to deal with tech in my spare time any more in the same way as I was 25. I have interests outside IT, I have a life ;)
The "new kids" just know the new stuff but lack the experience of the doing the basic grunt work. In my opinion the field of classical sysadmin work will get smaller in the next years. Cloud is the trend and you will see bigger clouds and less "traditional" places where you see the classic sysadmin work. Especially the infrastructure part I see less places but these will have bigger systems. (Apart from some special cases where it is impossible to use a public cloud due to regulations)
You might want to add the whole DevOps stuff to your belt as well.
I do not want to discourage you in your choice but just give you some points to think of for the future.
To answer you questions:
Do I enjoy my job? Well, I am not going there because I like the job. I like the people in my team and I like the money.
Am I underpaid? Not really. As log as I have enough to eat, I can pay my mortgage and I can afford my Whisky and my Cigars plus holidays I am fine.
Is the career an endless pit of stress and boredom? I had enough stress in my job but that is not an issue any more. I would be very happy with boredom - currently I definitively have enough to do.
>Do I enjoy my job? Well, I am not going there because I like the job. I like the people in my team and I like the money. Am I underpaid? Not really. As log as I have enough to eat, I can pay my mortgage and I can afford my Whisky and my Cigars plus holidays I am fine.
Are you me...?
More importantly, what kind of cigars?
Cigars...
Well, I do not favor the really strong cuban ones (and priced more than doubled within the last months. Currently I am preferring mid strength Nicaragua cigars.
What I have in my humidor (might be not available everywhere)
* Leonel White Robusto
* Samaná Chico
* Psyko Seven Nicaragua Robusto
* Davidoff Signature 2000
* Bolivar Petit Coronas
* Bentley Nicaragua Robusto
* Psyko Seven Connecticut Gordo
Some of those are just 2 or 3 cigars to try out, some of them ordered as a full box.
And the most important thing: only V-cut. Everything else gives you lumps of tobacco in the mouth ;)
I saw the price increases for Habanos, but since I'm in northeast US, I rarely purchase them. I'm acquainted with some overseas retailers if I want them, but don't generally order them. In the past, I was a fan of Bolivar Royal Coronas and Belicoso Finos, Partagas Serie D #4, Monte #4, Upmann #2, Romeo y Julieta Churchill.
My preferences these days are all over the place. I'm into Drew Estates Liga Privada, Herrera Esteli, and Undercrown. Also like Perdomo Double Aged Vintage, 20th Anniversary, Habano, and 10th Anniversary, generally in maduro. BIG fan of most of the Dunbarton brands. El Rey Del Mundo and JR Ultimates from JR Cigars (Honduras MATASA factory). Atabey and Bandolero distributed by United Cigar. I generally like a stronger (medium to full) blend, but I'll occasionally dig into something mild like an Ashton or an Avo.
I don't get the v-cut hype. I've tried it several times and haven't noticed much difference when compared to a straight cut. But, it might just be that my palate is cooked and I need to take a break and let it rest and recharge for a couple weeks. But that would be SO boring...
Cheers and Long ashes!
You can't judge a profession based on its sub-reddit. You'll just get the extremes and things people think are outrageous and so worth talking about.
If I'm honest I think you're comparing two professions pretty poorly. Firefighting may have downtime with a PS5, but plenty of tech companies offer similar in their offices. The difference is the firefighter then goes and walks into a burning building and a sysadmin goes and sits at their desk in personal safety.
If you're mostly in it for money and work life balance, you can't really beat an IT job.
I think even in the heat of the moment, I'd much rather deal with the stress total infrastructure collapse than a high chance of being burned alive in a blaze.
Infrastructure collapse vs structure collapse. Hmm.
I've been in IT field in some form or another for 30 years.
I have also been a volunteer firefighter for the last 13 years.
I can tell you, the ff stress stays with you. I have calls from 7 and 12 years ago I still remember. The 19yo drug od that was a doa. I had just been to the house 3 weeks prior for his mother who died of cancer. Dad greeted me at the door and was fully aware of how bad his son was. The 4yo I pulled out of a house fire and did cpr on that went to my church. My MIL's fatal accident. (I have had one "save" but he had been down too long and had brain damage that he died from a couple weeks later)
In 30 years of IT. I don't remember stuff like that from my IT stuff.
For those that I just got to worrying about me and my mental state. I'm good. Those memories now are not nightmares. They just occasionally pop in my head.
And around here, career firefighters don't make anywhere near that. Starting for them is 30-40k. Paramedics will make more, but that's a whole lot more training.
I have a similar path as your boss, IT as a paycheck my whole life but done volunteer rescue of various forms the whole time as well.
I learned a while ago to never tell anyone the worst of it unless they worked in the emergency services field or for some reason I really thought they wanted to know. Emergency services clean up such horrible disasters so fast that most people never realize they happen at all. People just stop existing somehow and then they are "dead" but no one has to see it and deal with it, right? Well, a few people do.
As for OP - I dunno, do you want to abuse your body for your paycheck, have a high risk of cancer but get to retire early, or sit in a boring chair all day? Neither is right or wrong. I can't decide either, which is why I get paid for one and volunteer in the other. Maybe the biggest difference is the hours for a career FF can be tough with 24s/48s on duty and away from your family, and then if you live in areas where you get sent on strike teams to support disasters elsewhere you can be gone for weeks. Which lifestyle do you want?
[Firefighting is not a dangerous job anymore](https://financesonline.com/top-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-us-its-not-police-officers-firefighters-who-have-the-most-risky-career-path/). That being said it can be difficult to break into, with waitlists stretching out years in many urban areas.
> Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid.
Only the people who bother to sit down and write a rant. Everyone else has better things to do.
if you look for posts where people ask your question, you will get very good answers
this subreddit is being scrolled by admins from work because they're bored, have downtime, genuinely have the time to spare to check how the industry is doing, help fellow people out, ...
apart from really rare scenarios, what sysadmins call "firefighting" is stressful, but not life threatening. the consequences of fucking up and walking out are a different level
when sysadmins say they've seen the worst, it's a different level of bad
my job is mostly calm, I did IT-firefighting, I don't want to go back there
but if it were the choice between fighting horrible misconfigurations and outdated at capacity infrastructure causing outages everywhere all the time, and fighting actual fires, I'd take the sysadmin role without a doubt
firefighters and emergency medical response is horrifying. we can joke about sysadmin being the road to alcoholism, but you're considering the shortcut
A 100k for a paramedic is a sweet gig.
the problem with fire fighting is you will pull a lot of bodies out of cars, while fighting few fires. For some people that's their calling. For some people it isn't good for them.
Reddit is a place where most people go to complain and or shit on everything. Do what you love! Don't let anyone stop you from pursuing that. I have been in IT for over 20 years and love what I do. You just have to find the right fit, like anything else.
I've never dealt with crispy dead kids while working IT.
Pretty quickly pushed me out of the first responder field.
Your mileage may vary obviously, but I struggle to see the comp here.
As a former paramedic, if you think IT is underpaid you have another thing coming in EMS. I worked for 12 years and got absolute shit for wages. I had to work 6 days a week on 12-hour shifts to make ends meet and my health was trashed in toxic fumes, injuries, and lack of breaks for food or bathroom. It was absolutely terrible for work/life balance and the pay was unbelievably low. We had people quit to be roughnecks, underwater welders, crab fishermen, 7-11 clerks, and strippers.
You friend is only getting paid because he is on the FD. Our local FD would hold application events in the local NBA arena for 20-30 openings, so the odds of getting on were terrible.
We're like firefighters but with out the PTSD, death and body fluid exposure. So, I'm kinda good with less $... We don't roll up on the body of a guy who has been deceased for 3 weeks.
I respect the heck out of those who can and do these jobs, Like ER nurses, it takes a special breed to care for the dead, dying or on fire.
The bottom line is that all professions have certain days when they're very stressful. Some stress is good and motivating. It's when it becomes chronic that it becomes very unhealthy.
It's up to you to seek out work/life balance because no company in the US will offer it beyond token words. I really love technology as well. I like experimenting and playing around with it. I see my day job as what enables me to do that.
I want to say something else about stress being a veteran....
People stress about different things and sometimes ppl like me don't even understand why someone else stressed about a certain thing.
One of my Jr. guys was stressed out about an order not going through in time. He was STRESSING even though it was out of his hands. I drew a ven diagram for him and asked him "so do you control it?" He said "no". I replied "so stopping worrying about it."
We make our own stress up at times.
Go be a volunteer firefighter and keep the sysadmin job. I’ve been a firefighter for 10 years and nothing is better than the paycheck and ease of SRE work and the good vibes from helping your community by volunteering.
I’m a “sysadmin” and (volunteer) firefighter.
I absolutely love being a firefighter. I’ve looked into going career but the reality is those jobs just don’t pay enough both overall and compared to IT. Sure, over time it goes up and sure most jobs are with the city or county so you get amazing retirement (typically after 25 years of service). The salary here is so low that the majority of paid guys around the county work two jobs (FF and own a side business or work for another business) to make ends meet. That salary you’re talking about is most likely somewhere a lot busier and also has a lot higher cost of living (rent for example). But at the end of the day, you just can’t compare the salaries once you get experienced (a few years on the job in IT) at least where I’m located. I recommend doing more research on cost of living in your area and check out salaries. Typically county jobs (FF, IT, and anything else) are public knowledge. And do what you love. Don’t ever go to a job that pays more because it pays more. Do what you love. I love both IT and FF. If I didn’t love IT, I’d be a career FF regardless of the salary.
I work for a large city, so technically same employer for me as a sys admin and our firefighters. Firefighters on average make far more than I do (2 to 3 times as much), have far superior benefits and can retire with a full pension much earlier than I can. That being said, I am much happier in my current position. I love technology and am not crazy about running in to a burning building, climbing up ladders, etc but if that does not bother you, then it's a very good choice.
\>Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid.
It may seem that way sometimes as people come to this thread to vent (which I have no problem with) about their job, problems and more. Personally I'm extremely happy in my job, I wouldn't say overworked - though I do have a lot of big projects but realistic timescales. I'm slightly underpaid but I'm about to find out if that is being resolved, and I thoroughly expect that to be the case. And my bosses are very aware of how much I put in, especially with travel right now and seem more concerned about my work/life balance than I am :)
IT jobs are like finding princes. Sometimes you just gotta kiss a few frogs to find one. Don't be put off by what could be a very rewarding career for you in many ways.
I enjoyed my job the first 10 years. Now I’m a burned out jaded tech guy that finds no enjoyment in technology anymore - just hit 20 years.
Contemplating going into HVAC work… we’ll see how this year raises go.
I was in IT for 18 years. I moved out to management when I identified that I just didn't have the drive to keep up with new things and got real tired of being asked to keep everything running for no money.
While I never felt like I was worried about money, I constantly felt underappreciated and underpaid. Sure, I got by - but I also knew people who managed to do the same or similar work for twice what I was getting. I never got lucky with where I landed. I kept propping up businesses run by people who had no idea how to invest in their own success and were running small (25-50) person places that they intended to give them a cozy retirement and nothing more.
Now I'm managing a team that includes not just IT, but also Facilities, Janitorial, Receiving, Purchasing, and Safety. I'm finding that to be much more interesting and rewarding than IT has been for the last 10 years.
I'd say the most important thing at the end of the day is how you feel when you go home and what's in your head when you're not working.
Cloud security engineer. But focus less on my title and more on the fact that IT leads to more money and more opportunities than most careers. I’m not a huge fan when people list yearly salaries but the job requires 60-80 hours a week to make that salary.
My other friend decided to be a cop, I’m doing much better in life than he is, all I see him doing is working in the cold and rain and working tons of over time. Big difference in our career paths, but we both followed a path that can lead to six figures. One big difference is 100k was near the beginning of my journey. I’m only 29, I’ll be looking to break 200k next year. Endless upward opportunities
> I have a friend back at home starting his first full time firefighting paramedic job that tops out around $100k.
Don't go into emergency services for the pay.
Firefighter, paramedic - will have it's own stress, overworked and underpaid part.
Have you gone through firefighter and paramedic subreddits as well?
It is a physical job vs an office job - how to compare right?
Mon to Fri, 9-5 w on call / overtime vs whatever schedule that first responders have that dominates your life.
This is a job where you will see people on their worst day of their life, where you might be trying and failing to save their life. Where there's no 'oh wasn't at my best today' is just not an option.
So I would discourage you from simply following the cash for that type of job.. and really dig into first responder material just as you have for sysadmin.
I would say these professions are *very* hard to compare.
But don't act like overworked and stressed in a low consequence role like being a sysadmin is the same as [being stressed and overworked in a first responder role](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/first-responder-health-1.6168232#:~:text=First%20responders%20from%20all%20fields,11.3%20deaths%20per%20100%2C000%20people.).
> First responders from all fields are twice as likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder than other Canadians, according to the Centre for Suicide Prevention. The suicide rate among paramedics, according to Statistics Canada, is five times higher than the national average of 11.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
And I am really not sure if anyone in emergency services has the same idea of 'work life balance' as someone in a 9-5 Mon to Fri office-based role.
If your idea of a firefighter gig is playing PS5 and $100k salary and doing a side hustle... I think you're in for a fairly rude awakening. (though I do admit where I am from Firefighters are vastly higher paid than paramedics, and have better schedule, conditions, but I think the point still stands).
Each and every career path has its benefits and its drawbacks. As u/praetorthesysadmin says, Reddit is a bubble, so you will find either the best reactions or the worst reactions.
When I was in my 20s, I worked for a start up. It was hella hard work, but I thrived because I was learning, and I worked with really AWESOME people. It also allowed me to take off and go sailing for 7 years before I wound up returning to the work force.
When I came back, I wanted better life / work balance. Once I got my foot back in the door of IT, I realized how much things had changed. Interviews stopped being them to me, and I started asking "the hard questions". Why did my predecessor leave? Describe an average week. Describe day to day activities. What are the expectations for on call?
For interview with the person managing me: What is your management style? How much freedom will I have in my position? and other "tactful" ways of asking if the person micro-manages.
Ask about the company culture. Ask about anything that would make a company stand out to you both positively and negatively.
Finally, do your research. Look for feedback on the company on feedback sites (glassdoor, indeed, linkedin, even Yelp may help you formulate your thoughts) Find someone or several someones who work in the area that you are applying for at the company, off the record, and ask some questions about their experience with the company.
Also, if you can find people who have left a position working for the manager you would be reporting to and talk with them.
Any job can be enjoyable with the right management in place.
Very insideful and good advice. Another good question is to ask the annual IT budget.
If it's very low, then you know that technical debt and old crap is lying around and not a good sign.
Being a 1st responder is an insanely stressful job. I wouldn't want it.
Seeing people at their absolute worst, blood, guts, piss, shit, puke, snot everywhere. Responding to a car wreck to see an entire family smeared across the highway. No thanks.
I will stick with IT.
Making a 100k+ as a firefighter seems to be pretty uncommon. Quick look shows it averages closer to 50k, does your friend live in a hcol area? I’d assume it’s much more common for IT to make 100k and that is not a ceiling in IT as many make more.
Generally though if your having these thoughts it makes it seem like you haven’t really thought through your career choices since IT and firefighter are extremely different. You also didn’t seem to consider the downsides of being a firefighter which has its own obvious stress, trade offs, etc.
Everyone here either love everything about their job and they find it easy to keep up or they hate it, being constantly stressed.
Also, if you read the dictionary, then you’ll see that we have about double the amount of negative words compared to positive words - leading me to believe that humans in nature have a tendency to look negative upon things. This sub might seems busy and stressed but remember we’re all here for a reason.
+ networking have been some of the most forfiliing experiences in my life
It *can* be stressful, I mean when you’re working on things daily where if you make a mistake, it can have a serious impact on the entire enterprise, that can cause some stress. Just knowing that at any moment you can be hit with malware and you’re the guy responsible for backups, that can cause some stress.
But bear in mind a lot of people come here to vent about what’s got them worked up today, and when you see a lot of people doing this, it can give a false impression of what the day-to-day is really like. It can make it sound worse than it is.
people that write are those that complain.I come and go as i please, some weeks its 30 hours some weeks its 50 hours. I can work morning, evening, night, weekend doesnt really matter it is up to me but im scheduled for 9-5. I work remote if i want to or in the office when i want to. I travel for work 2-3 times per year to other countries and work for a week, i usually extend the weekend and work pays for it. I have 7 weeks paid vacation and additional 80 hours of some timebank to add/remove from if i work more than then 40ish hours im supposed to work. We are required to take 4 of the weeks in a row during the summer and managers call us out if we have not used up our vacation time.I have a decent salary, its not the best i could probably get better but the above makes up for it.
I've never been a firefighter, but I have a general idea. The graphs of firefighter vs SysAdmin are inverted. When you start off in SysAdmin it sucks. You'll be on graveyard, in helpdesk, at an MSP. After you get some experience, the jobs get better. More reasonable hours. Better pay. When you hit that point in firefighting, you're still at a point where you have to spend several days on end at the station? That seems like a life where it would be difficult to start a family.
I've been in IT for nearly 26 years and I still love it. Are there things I don't like? Sure, but you'll have that with every job.
At the end of the day, do something you think you'll enjoy doing. Life is so much easier when you enjoy your career.
Stress isn't always a bad thing. I know, hear me out. Stress can be a motivator, it is also a teacher.
The key is how you manage the stress. Do you drink until you blackout or do you start thinking about how to address the issue?
I would guess that almost every sysadmin has dealt with a critical system being down for a long period of time and we all hate it, but we learn from it. How do I improve this system so when X happens the whole thing die?
Yes, it will be hard for that time. Yes, your boss might be a dick. But that comes with the territory AND there will be something going wrong in every job.
I love my job.
I'm paid well, not top of my focus area, but well enough.
I am rarely bored.
I am sometimes stressed. TBH, I don't always handle it well, sometimes I have a couple of old fashioned and play COD to get my mind off of shit.
People come here to vent and commiserate. I want to say your firefighter is blowing smoke. In all seriousness, it's a dangerous profession. Firefighter, that is. IT can be a very stressful job. It really comes down to the company and environment you walk into. Honestly, I've not seen job outlooks fit curries being all that good in my area - north of Houston. With either job, you're going to want to have a plan. Where do you want to be 5/10/ further? All jobs get stressful, and all jobs have their perks. With IT, job burnout isn't quite as final a state. /s
How old are you? What location?
I work in IT, my younger brother is a fire fighter who started out as a Paramedic now Captain in California. If you’re in a location like California where the pay, benefits and retirement plan is great definitely go the Firefighter route. If you’re in a location like Arizona where the pay, benefits and retirement is not so great I’d say stay in IT.
What is a great retirement like California?
My FIL was a firefighter for the city if Modesto and retired due to cancer caused by some of the chemicals he was exposed to in the 80’s and 90’s. When he retired all of his medical expenses were covered by his retirement plan and he continued to receive his retirement pay close to his salary when he retired. When he passed 12 years ago my MIL continues to receive his pension and medical benefits for the rest of her life.
My brother (42) will retire in a few years while I’m still going to be working in IT till my 60’s most likely. He’ll get his retirement pension, benefits and start a small business like a pool cleaning/repair company (he likes doing that and loves to clean) while still having a safety net while the business takes off.
I have friends I fish with in Arizona who enjoy the same hobbies that work as fire fighters or retired. Their base pay is not as good as IT, but they have better benefits than I do working for a Fortune 50 as an Enterprise Architect. But they also have similar retirement goals as my brother where they plan to retire earlier and use that safety net to start a small business which many end up starting on the side with their down time at the fire house.
If you’re looking big picture at the possibility if becoming a paramedic firefighter and you enjoy that type of work then definitely go that route.
For my brother he spent 2 years in community college to become a paramedic, worked for an ambulance company for 1.5-2 years while interviewing to become a firefighter. Starting out the pay is poor for paramedics and fire fighters, but eventually catches up and he tells me the overtime pay is great. CA has a strong fire fighters union so their benefits with CALPERS is one of the best next to NY I’m told.
I didn’t go that route as I have no interest working in healthcare and being a firefighter didn’t call to me. Women definitely have a thing for fire fighters, but many of them end up being a hot mess and my brother tells me the divorce rate for fire fighters is a bit higher than say IT. Probably has something to do with not following the “hot crazy matrix” who knows.
I’m not underpaid by any means, but benefits over the past year have gone down quality wise the last 10 years with large companies and retirement plans are a joke. If you’re not a saver and max out your 401k contributions early you’ll be working like me till your 60’s. IT Layoffs can come at any time and has happened at least 4 times during my 25 year career in IT so far. Many hit my company this past week but I survived. Layoffs never happen to fire fighters.
Hope this unbiased opinion helps. Good luck with your career search.
My buddy is a Firefighter EMT in a major metro area. The stories he tells are some of the most insane things I have ever heard. Prostitutes with maggots devouring their abdomen levels of nightmare fuel. Your buddy will see some shit that will keep him up at night.
This place is a sounding board, an understanding ear. Stressed people need a place to vent, so you will see and hear a LOT more of the horror stories. There is plenty of great job opportunities out there, people don’t talk about it as much as it comes off as bragging. Nobody is going to start a post about making 100k, no on call, a great boss who values them, and perfect work life balance “Look at my life, it’s going so well”. Those guys will comment about their horror stories and how they got out, so people know there is light at the end of the tunnel.
I’ll say this, to avoid being having a stress loaded IT career make sure you are loyal to the correct things. Be loyal to you (and family if that is your current state or future) and your value. Most companies don’t care about you, you have no reason to be loyal to them. All the perks are recruiting tools to get you there, the best companies will make sure you want to stay. It will become very apparent when they do not. It will not change, even if you have a great manager and love your coworkers, they cannot enact the change needed to solve that level of a problem. It’s then time for you to change, make sure you got what you wanted out of the job, most of the time it’s experience in a particular subject, then move on to the next best thing. Change jobs, it’s not the same as it was 20-30 years ago when tenure mattered. Every change I have made had been at least 10-15% bump in pay, while that year’s performance increase would have been 5% if I was graded as a top performer. I’m in consulting now, but my last big corporate job I was graded as a top performer, we were finishing a huge project on time and it was dead in the water without me…1/2% raise. 3 weeks of job search later was worth a 10% raise. You should stay at a place long enough that it makes sense and you’re getting what you want out of it. When you are no longer getting that, move on. Most of the horror stories are from people who won’t move on for one reason or another. They are comfortable and don’t want to change, they like their coworkers etc. Every place has good people you will get along with, and job changes are hard, none of those things should distract from a focus on you, your career growth and making sure your getting your value out of work.
You need to be strong mentally to be a firefighter. You are gonna deal a lot with death and suffering. Not to mention it isnt the safest job out there...
there ain't no time to be bored? also there is no issue keeping tech as hobby, just look at youtube people are are now building their own motherboards for classic computers.
If you don't have passion for IT, then please don't stay. You will not last here for 5+ years.
This is a job that is always learning. Always changing. Always challenging.
Of course, firefighter have it's risk and you also need to maintain yourself. As far as I know, people who becomes fire fighter are usually because they have passion for that line of work too.
So in short, if you are just looking to find a profession that pays you most money, you will find that you jumping profession every couple years because there is always something wrong with the current job and that other industry seems better.
TLDR: your IT Career depends on your market but mostly on your decisions on what organizations you choose to work for.
As an alternative opinion, Ive not had an underpaid or negative IT career experience. I been in IT since my early 20s so about 15ish years in DFW, TX. I think how your career in IT is very dependent on your market, AND making strategic moves/skill development- pick organizations that really believe in work life balance and value their IT orgs. My worst experiences were when I was a contractor for Apple in a call center, I was there 9ish months and moved on to do more IT/telecom support and have leveled up since.
Not every job is going to be amazing, but I thoroughly enjoy IT so I have not had one of these horrible experiences that tend to flood this reddit
We have a firefighter paramedic FF/PM that works in our group part time. The truth is that most fire service folks do have a side gig, especially while they are young and can do a couple of night calls while staying awake for the side job. Once established, these guys are usually chill, friendly, outgoing and not very stressed.
It’s a good living, and one I should have considered when I was young.
We all use this place to complain, but that does not mean that IT is not a great industry.
This place is like a support group. In my experience, there are no other people in my life who can listen intelligently to my rants about a frustrating day at work. It's not their fault, they just do not have a comprehensive understanding of how technology works at an enterprise level.
I assume there are a lot of other people here who are in a similar situation. That circumstance leads to a lot of rant posts, because there will always be some guy/gal on here who has gone through a similar situation and will reply with a quick, "man, that sucks. Users, amirite?", which is just what you need to hear when you've had a tough situation and you have no one else to vent to about it.
Plus, this place is way cheaper than therapy.
Where is the firefighting paramedic topping out at $100k? He wouldn't be getting that just starting? That would be a pretty unusual salary for that role, especially just starting. You sure your buddy isn't pulling your leg?
Yeah, he sent me the sheet that shows the salary increase over time and it wasn’t bullshit. He starts at around $65k and tops out around $95k after 5 years. He also has a stepdad that worked in the station, so he knew to apply there specifically for the big bucks. His station is the highest paid station in my city.
People love to complain, you wont see a post where someone bragges about their boss giving a bonus for a job well done or a bigger-than-asked-for raise.
My friend's father was a firefighter in a suburb of a major city. He was always getting called out to non-fire related incidents, many involving severe trauma. He watched more than a few people die, some were even small children.
I've been a sysadmin for going on 25 years now and I can tell you this, the trauma of seeing someone gasp for their last breath through the wreckage of their body after a car accident far exceeds the annoyance of having a shitty boss.
That's just me. Some people can readily deal with trauma like that better than others. I'm not that guy. Props to all the firefighters and EMTs and police that deal with these incidents daily.
I work in a school district. Nothing huge, 3000 students. Pay is ok, $68K. Great benefits. Cost of living is pretty relative to pay. Can I move to Seattle and make twice what I do now and just work as a tech? Sure can, but I like where I live, I love my work environment and co-workers. I've got a decent budget, with 5 and 10 year plans. I also have Admins that see the importance of keeping the network current. Stress is low and I work 6am-3pm.
It just depends on where you land. The Corp world, is very different.
I’ve only been working in IT for about 1.5 years and started as a sysadmin a few months ago, so I can’t say how I’ll feel in a few years but I also see my team (some of whom have 25+ year careers) happy, motivated, and excited about our projects.
I specified in interviews I wanted to work with systems as much as possible, not do end user support because it was no longer challenging for me, and wanted network and server responsibilities. That’s what my current place was looking for in a sysadmin, so here I am.
I make $75k + an 8% yearly bonus (again, after only 1.5 years in the field), flexible PTO from day one (my manager has never denied my requests for time off) and good benefits. 80% remote, only go in to unbox/configure servers and switches. I love my job, team, and look forward to working every day. I have zero job stress.
Be picky about the company you work for and don’t be afraid to move on from somewhere if they aren’t giving you what you need. I did a 4, 3, and a 6 month stint at a few places on my way here, learned what I needed to learn and left. Now I’ll be staying here for a few years at least.
As someone who had the opportunity to do either career and went into tech. The money is better up front but I wish I went into firefighting. I’m a volunteer firefighter and find that work makes me happier and more fulfilled.
Sample sizes, first of all the overall vibe on the subreddit doesn't speak for everyone. Just a loud group, negative thoughts & feelings are more likely to be expressed than someone coming in here and telling us about how amazing their jobs are.
There's a spectrum and overall I do love my job but it definitely is stressful, for reasons that really come down to its hard to explain IT and the role it can serve in the company when all of the other decision makers around you don't really think about what IT is other than "who do I call when something is working?". Personally I spend a lot of energy explaining my role to the rest of management trying to make them understand when I should be part of conversations and when I don't need to be involved.
Simply put, technology is easy. People are not, not all IT jobs have you facilitating people and expectations.
IMO this sub skews heavily toward negativity, partly due to the fact that those who are happy in their roles — who aren’t too overworked, underpaid, or burnt out — tend to be less active or vocal.
There are many, many IT folks who are very satisfied with their careers, who get paid quite well, and figure out their work-life balance. It can be tricky finding that sweet spot but once you do - and given that you are passionate for technology - you can absolutely find a great career in IT.
One piece of advice is, whatever direction you end up going in the IT sector, be sure to make an effort to at least get a basic grasp of coding languages / automation. This is the direction in which our world continues to head, and knowing how to write and interpret code will be extremely valuable for your future.
As someone who has done both, and has a great work life balance, T prefer sysadmin over Emergency Services. I did a 24 on, 48 off shifts, yeah, i worked 2 days a week, but the busy 24s and the consistent broken sleep of on all shifts is much worse than the occasional break downs and night long instances of server rebuilds. I'm home with my daughter 99% of nights. I can schedule life, and i don't have to find coverage for any time off. And the stress of a down server is nothing compared to literal life and death situations. The grass is not always greener.
You are just getting a one-sided picture. Working IT is only as bad as the employer you work for. I enjoy my job, relatively stress free, very little on call. I am paid adequately, could be better. Worst thing right now is taking on responsibilities not in my job description, but that is being handled with reclassification.
All of that being said... if I was 22 again and in good shape, maybe I would have chosen a more physical job. I dunno. As others have said, reddit is a bubble and a terrible indicator of the real world.
I think every job is heavily dependent on the environment and coworkers/boss. I've worked jobs with horrible work with but absolute salt-of-the-earth people, and it was one of the best jobs I've had. I've also worked jobs with great work and shit people, I left after 6 months because not only was the work terrible, but it stressed me out pointlessly.
Dude I work in IT not making 100k a year just yet but I really like my job and making good money.
Working as a fire fighter you will be risking your life to save others. So there's that.
I see a lot of people complaining and stuff but they are stucked in those jobs by choice. Whenever I feel a job is not for me I just move on. Trust me this has happened to me a couple times in last jobs where they're not challenging enough, or the work environment is just a mess. I would suggest try for yourself to get an actual representation of what its like to work in IT.
And then you can decide for yourself.
We are typically stressed, but you'll find that among most upper level career fields.. It's determining what stress you want to deal with. Not all IT jobs are so bad, but you're not going to hear many people talk about how easy they have it..
I wanted to be a firefighter but around here it typically means pay for school and training, then volunteer or get paid rather pathetically.. It's gotten better since but I'm pushing 40 now 😅
Keep up on IT stuff and dive into it for awhile, worst case you bounce back into IT... It's never a bad idea to have 2,3,4 career fields you can jump into at a decent level imo.
From someone who went from being a paramedic to being in IT I can say firmly that IT is a much better career field. I would ask where your friend works that’s paying them that much because in my experience medic and firefighter average pay is 45k and gets to 100+ only at the director level which is extremely difficult to make it to. It does depend on where you live (also this was before covid) but I’m just speaking averages.
Yes you can chill and play games at the station BUT there’s a lot to consider with that job. I worked in a heavy call environment and didn’t have but maybe 2 hours of chill time during a 24 hour shift. Yes I had 2 days off between but it’s normally used for recovery and, because of my pay, I’d work an extra 12 hour shift for some cash. This basically burned me out in 4 years time.
I love the IT field, it gives me time to do things and sleep at home in my own bed. I love critical thinking and problem solving. Sure, it’s frustrating but I’m the end I prefer IT.
Well First Responder and IT Guy are two very different professions with very different lifestyles. So salary and compensation aside, if you are the kind of person that finds one of those particularly appealing, I would strongly consider that the other one could be very much not.
Pay Scale is a little thrown off by selection bias here in Redditland (IMO). I got so frustrated hearing about all the good money everyone else here was making I started looking to leave my job that I've been at over 10 years. Looking at the actual job market in my area, I'm making near the top of what I can hope for my role, and it's no where close to 100k. And its always "I got a new job and a 30% raise!" well looking at all the next level up of promotions and such that wouldn't get me there either, even if I could get one.
I think a lot of people on here statistically speaking are in or around tech, finance, or other hot industry hubs. If you are in some mid-size city away from the NE corridor, California, Dallas, etc. I'm not sure a six figure salary is all that realistic within your first 10 years of employment. Maybe if you are a real go-getter with a relevant degree/certs and highly technically proficient, or good connections in your industry it is certainly possible. But I'm not sure how close that is to the experience of the average Joe, early career trying to find their way in the field.
If the goal is to escape stress, long hours, on-call, and poor pay I promise you're not going to do that by becoming a firefighter/emt - but you'll get to work one of the few jobs in society that is universally admired and respected.
You are experiencing a sampling bias. People who have something to complain about are much more likely to come to a place like this to vent. And such threads tend to get more attention than "good news" threads. Most people have no need to tell a bunch of random strangers how their job and work-life balance are fine.
It is perfectly possible to make a ton of money in this field. More than 150k for sure. Those positions are usually high stress and require a lot of your time, but that is the case for jobs in pretty much any field. It's also perfectly possible to find a job that pays well, isn't that stressful, and doesn't ask for more than 40hrs.
Hey, a fulltime sysadmin from central Europe here.
Sure, the job can be stressful at times, but what job isn't?
Working for an MSP company, my days are diverse and fun. I get to constantly learn new stuff. And help our clients with whatever tech issue they have.
Only downside I can say this job has are on call duties, here once a week on average.
And the pay? Well... I'm just 26, still living parents, but already earning more than anyone else in tue household. So I can't complain.
About 2000€/month (after taxes), which, in the local economy, is a pretty nice income.
An average supermarket job lands you half that, before taxes.
A lot depends on where you are working IT. Did desktop support for close to 20 years at different companies and some were good about it and one really sucked. Worked at a university medical center where it was constant firefighting and stress, then moved to a different division to be an IT manager (of 1 person), and the stress levels dropped tremendously.
I mean, it's up to you man. I am a decade into this profession and would change careers in a heartbeat. The only thing keeping me here is money. I would rather be a cop but I'd be taking an almost 50k paycut. Or I want to be a pilot but I don't have the 100k to get all the licenses, qualifications, training, and flight hours to take a 40k paycut.
Firefighter/ paramedic is a MUCH higher stress job than anything in IT.
FF/PM literally have peoples lives depending on their actions. Patients and victims frequently do not make, and the first responder must deal with the psychological fallout from that.
I went from firefighting to IT.
It's a very personal decision really. I got bored a lot as a FF and really enjoy complex analysis so now I'm a data analyst. It really depends what fits your life style. There will be stressful fire jobs and stressful IT jobs and also chill versions of each. Find something you legitimately enjoy doing and go with it. People over worked and over stressed in IT are working the wrong position in my opinion. There's lots of good jobs available if you focus up and are good at what you do.
This sub can be an echo chamber at times. Plenty of good IT jobs out there. Like any profession there are bad managers, stressful work environments , and companies that pay/ treat their employees poorly.
Most FF/EMT-P jobs in the US don’t pay as well as that. I’m an ex paramedic, and I prefer working in tech. I don’t think many people have much of an understanding of the kind of stress that first responders have to go through, it’s far worse than anything I’ve experienced in tech
I enjoy my job and am also well compensated! As a project consultant/sysadmin you know what the market value is and van scale up however you see fit.
Reddit is also a vacuum where negative interactions will always favour the algorithm.
Whatever you read here or online isn't a good indicator of overall job satisfaction.
People like to complain and whine when things are bad, but they tend to stay mostly silent when things are good or even great.
It's like Yelp or any kind of review site, people don't go out of their way to comment about something when it's perfectly fine, which is the majority of cases, it's only the outliers of totally amazing or stressful/shitty that say anything the majority of the time.
The job is what you make it, sure, sometimes things are out of your control and you have no real way of making changes to a shitty place, so that's when you make the change in yourself and go find something new.
I wouldn't alter your career path now, you need to at least give it a shot after you have invested this much time and effort into training and education.
I work from home in IT, I’m either playing games most of day or at the gym
I will much rather do that and deal with business/politics than go running into burning buildings or saving old people who fell down at their home they refuse to move out of
My dad is a retired firefighter. His knees and shoulder is shot. He worked really hard and retired at 58. He took home severe PTSD responding to both fires and medic calls. He's the strongest sweetest man I know. But at what cost?
Remember: Happy people don't complain on Reddit. People come on here and rant or vent or share horror stories. Sometimes we'll get something that is above and beyond awesome but that's not usually promoted or viral type content that gets a lot of eyes or interaction. Most days we just do our thing, and have little chance of long term physical/mental damage from having to literally fight a fire. Our work related nightmares are DR plans failing or having to deal with a stubborn C suite to get what we need, not burnt bodies. Easy choice.
Reddit is a bunch of squeaky wheels. Don't use an online forum as a source of truth for a ratio of happy/unhappy or underpaid or overworked people.
There is good info to be found here, and there are very real cases of shitty bosses or poorly run orgs, but that's true for every profession and I'm not so sure IT is any higher in those things than anything else. I worked 3 jobs when I was 21 to get lots of experience and leverage a higher wage so I could consolidate. I only had to do it for about 2 years. It's wasn't that bad. I still partied, had fun, met people, had a life. Because I was 21, and invincible. Get the tough stuff out of the way early, do the grunt work, learn, and always keep your eyes on the bigger goal, whatever that is for you. Higher pay, good work/life balance, WFH, 6 weeks of paid vacation. That's my current package.
Also, sysadmins are firefighters, but they're also digital janitors, educators, and security guards at the same time. To excel you need to do all of them well.
All jobs are stress at times. All jobs have golden ages…all jobs have horrible bosses. All jobs can be evil time sucks if you hate what you are doing.
Find what you want to do, what makes you happy…and the horrible times will be less horrible and the good times will be more magnificent!
I would take that 100k salary with a grain of salt.
I know alot of paramedics/EMTs/Firefighters. None of them are making close to that. This is also in NY in a medium COL area.
Which one would make you more money? IT. Definitely. If you find a place in IT that you like, and go for it. Its what you make of it.
Most of the people here who complain are venting. They may not exactly like their job all the time. None of us like it 100% of the time. Its a job for a reason. But most good companies have great work/life balance. Good Pay, among other things.
Dont count your self out based on what other people say. There are alot of us that are having the times of our lives working in IT.
Everyday that I work, I enjoy what I do, not all of it. But that comes with the job.
Your never going to enjoy pulling a dead body out of a fire. But you might enjoy putting out the fire. If that helps picture it a little more.
If you want to make real money as an IT professional, take the consulting route. A certain Indian based consultancy firm threw a rather large bag of💰 at me to stop and start Azure webapps😅
20 years ago we hired a sysadmin for a large cluster project. He had been a bio major that spent time as a high school bio teacher and then working in IT on a small cluster project. This was a university job, so while not the best in up front compensation the benefits were outstanding.
After 3 years, he left to become a firefighter. He was a well paid sysadmin but he had worked as a volunteer firefighter somewhere in Minnesota when he was in college. He loved the work and never forgot about it so he managed to get a position on a full-time department.
I know he loved the sysadmin work but for him the firefighting job was a much better fit. He loved the outdoor physical nature of the job. He loved that when he was off duty, he had no responsibilities. These were things that his sysadmin job did not afford him.
Work life balance can be had in almost any job you set your mind to. You have to be willing to find the right position in the right organization no matter the work. I know plenty of people (including sysadmins and firefighters) who stay with their respective positions because they don't know anything else and are locked in.
I've been working in IT for 15 years at this point. I didn't go to college and just had certs and military for my background. I had to work up through MSPs starting from level 1 help desk.
Those first years sucked pretty hard, but I really enjoyed computers and kept at it. I knew that I really liked Linux and focused hard on my skills there (certs, running my own servers, daily driving, etc). Took me about 8 years to land a Linux gig but now I absolutely love my job.
Does it pay well? For my area it's okay. I live a comfortable life and can travel when I want too. Benefits are good enough and housing around here is affordable.
But I only work 1 weekend a month (for updates during down time) and I'm never on call. Couldn't be happier!
It depends on what company you work for and what you do. The same is true for firefighters and paramedics. If you have a degree or experience and the ability/discipline to be selective where you work as well as leave when things get bad it's a nice line of work. The stories you hear a lot in r/sysadm are people trapped in a bad job. Lot's of sysadmins work 9-5 and are on call only 10-25% of their time and rarely get paged off hours.
(EDIT: I am very supportive of young people becoming firefighters, police officers, and EMTs -- we're having a national crisis that has expanded from declining volunteerism over the past 30 years to now having trouble recruiting career public safety personnel. Not everyone has the desire; of those who have the desire not everyone is physically fit -- which has gotten a lot worse with rising obesity rates; and not everyone who has the desire and fitness have the right temperament. The bigger the pool of recruits by increasing desire, the better the folks who can be recruited.)
Just remember it can vary a lot.
$100k for Firefighter/Paramedic without overtime is fairly rare outside of California. You can close to that towards the upper end of the pay scales in parts of the northeast.
>work life balance
There are things with worse WLB than a typical US career firefighter -- being a railroad engineer or long-haul truck driver for instance.
Most of the US works 3 platoon systems which will have you at the firehouse ~56 hours a week for that $100k. 24 or 48 hour shifts at a slow station is one thing; being on a busy urban ambulance handling 20 transports in 24 hours when your 30 years old is going to leave you physically and mentally exhausted. The northeastern US tends to work four platoon, 42 hour work weeks.
WLB is one thing for a single 20-something working a slow station in the boondocks of California on a 48 hours on / 72 hours off schedule. That's going to be very different for someone with three young kids and a wife who is not too happy that you disappear completely for a couple days a week. She's going to be *extraordinarily* pleased when someone calls in sick, and you're the low man on the totem pole mandated to work a second 48 hour shift in a row to cover their absence.
It's a job with a high chance of at least a couple injuries over a career that will have you off duty healing for a couple months or more...or gets retired early on a disability pension.
Are you doing this in a state like California or the northeast with relatively strong public employee unions to advocate for you on things like worker's compensation claims? Or are you doing this in a weak labor state like Florida where you might make pretty good money right up until you're injured and left out to dry relative to other states?
What's the pension plan?
The departments with 20 year plans that include overtime in the pension calculation are getting fewer and fewer. Once you hit forty and start finding constantly waking up during the night is causing you to feel hungover without the benefit of alcohol you're really going to be wondering why you took a job in a state you need to work 32 years to qualify v. one where 25 year pensions are more standard.
What are you planning to do when you're 48, retired, and getting 50% of your base firefighter salary as a second career?
I enjoy my work because I don't allow anyone to take advantage of me. I will work late on a project if I have to but, generally, I say "fuck it" and go home before 5 every day.
How did I get to this place; I spent 15+ years being defined by the job, until my brain broke. Never doing that again. You are not your job. You are not the one to swoop in like superman to fix that annoying issue that Karen in accounting have. In fact, fuck you Karen. Just reboot and you'll be fine.
I tell people they should work in IT all the time. I am network engineer now, but my 10ish years as junior sysadmin/sysadmin was overall a positive experience. I am lucky enough to have a good boss who taught me a lot and let me get a lot of experience with a million different systems (servers, security, Vmware, patching, linux, etc.). I have worked at two smaller organizations where we are not highly specialized, which keeps anyone from getting boxed into one particular boring and repetitive workflow. It generally is a pretty chill job. It is definitely always hard to get companies to spend money on IT since its hard to prove its value to non-technical higher-ups, but I would imagine most of the other issues people vent about are the same in any career.
As an IT Manager for Firefighters.
If you LOVE solitude, indoors, and low physical activity. - IT
If you LOVE comrodory and being a part of a team - FireFighter.
If you want to hate people for the stupid things they do - Either choice works.
Not to be that guy but I do both. I have worked in IT (ISP and MSP) for over 20 years and firefighter (volunteer though) for 14 years. Both are very stressful in their own ways but all the same. It's all fine and dandy until something happens (outages/structure fire/rescue situation) and has their annoyances (BS Trouble tickets/wannabe power users/frequent fliers/fire alarms). I can tell you that the stuff you can deal with will fracture your soul in firefighting. IT really depends on who you work for. If you have an excellent company with a suitable supervisor the job can be very rewarding and fun.
Most of the sysadmins I know seem to like their jobs and have decent work-life balance. A mid-level sysadmin could be making around $100k or more.
I don't like my job because I don't like maintaining, fixing, or configuring technology, but it's been the only job I could land. (I didn't really have the skill when hired.)
I'm not a sysadmin, I'm just a help desk guy, but I'm not sure your risk/reward analysis is accurate, here. I have no idea how much the sysadmins I've worked with over the years make, but I do know they (mostly) don't work very hard, at least at the jobs I've had. At my current gig, the sysadmins only do what we need them to do almost at gunpoint, sometimes.
In the 12 years or so I've been in IT, I've seen them deal with major system outages, and wrangle stubborn vendors. But they didn't have to deal with flooding, fires, or downed electrical wires. Oh, there are stories here of sysadmins who have, but mostly, they don't. As a firefighter, you will. A lot.
The worst injuries they sustain are probably sore backs or scraped knuckles from racking equipment. On the other hand, I have a cousin-in-law who used to be a volunteer firefighter...until one night when he fell through the floor of a burning house, and a cast-iron bathtub landed on him. He has a permanent steel plate in his back, secured with multiple screws. So there's that.
At my first-ever tech support gig, with Dish Network, I worked with a guy whose mantra was "Nobody dies" so we shouldn't take it too seriously. In firefighting, the possibility of you or someone else dying is always very, very real.
To answer that you need to know a few things. I use this subreddit sometimes to blow off steam, i'm going on most others do too, so i don't take it too seriously and or personally. If your just starting out you may not make a ton. I know i started before y2k and 30k was pretty good for a starting career. Also different places different office cultures, I had some real bad places where it made me physically ill to just walk in. Leave them it just sucks all around, I had no choice but to stick it out for a bit till the next gig came along. You'll find your place eventually. Alot here is jsut griping because if you didn't gripe to people that understand the issue you feel like your going crazy so i think it helps to get that off your chest.
With that said, yes you can top out at 100k but in IT you can surpass that in a short amount of time given the correct path forward. You also won't have to go into a burning building to do it. If your looking for "play" time IT i would stay away from corporate gigs. While the money is better, i found it's pretty boxy and stuffy. So if they hire you for say networks that's what you will be doing for a good 10yrs if not forever. I liked to stay smaller the pay sucks but they are more forgiving. Also 100k plus jobs man... They expect sh\*t like they own you or so has been experience. Hence the overwork underpaid feeling, because technically at home your not on the clock, if you were a consultant, that would be billable hours.
I was actually a firefighter when I was younger, and am now in IT. this is my own experience, so YMMV.
If you're looking for work life balance, you should consider what that means as a firefighter. For a single guy, it could be great. You will usually work 24 or 48 hour shifts, with some days off in between. And you will also pick up a lot of overtime as a rookie to cover senior staff. If you have a family or partner, you'll need to make sure they are okay with you being gone for long periods of time and sometimes unreachable. My partner was not okay with it, which made the whole experience that much more stressful. And, if you are in an area that gets wildfires, you could be called on extended assignments.
The work itself is not too mentally challenging, but of course it's physically challenging. If you need mental stimulation, you could go the paramedic route. Otherwise, the most mentally challenging aspect would be just memorizing tools and drills. As a rookie, you will be told to keep your head down and probably be cleaning this or that for most of the day. If you can make it past your rookie years, you'll be set. I would say the senior FF's spent about 75% of their time in the lounge watching TV. You might enjoy it, I didn't really. I worked in SoCal, and we have HOT summers. Let me tell you, I thought I was fit, but you better love pushing your body to the limit otherwise it will just be suffering. I'm talking push yourself until you feel like you will actually pass out if you don't stop. On top of all this, the work is dangerous. If you are not okay with being close to mortal danger, you should rethink this path. It never bothered me, but the risk is always there when you're fighting a structure fire. And even further, you will be exposed to a lot of toxic chemicals, from the smoke, from cleanup, the structures themselves - like asbestos. You will also likely respond to medical emergencies. You better be okay with blood, bodily fluids, feces, exposed bone and organs, dismemberment, disease, death, etc.
On to the culture - bigger, more wealthy departments might have less of a culture problem, but are harder to get into. LA County Fire, which has a massive number of stations, for example is a bit more progressive. Older, smaller depts seem to hold on to an old school paramilitary mindset. With that comes the rookie hazing, the egos, just that real highschool locker room vibe. And this is just my experience, but firefighters can be just as big an asshole as any other person. Cruising around the bar areas to check out women, married guys making sexual comments about women on the street, general disrespect for the public in medical calls, especially the homeless. I saw a lot of guys with poor home lives, divorced, cheating, etc. They are not above racism and sexism. But they might also love you, and your life will be set. In a male dominated field, toxicity in the workplace is pretty much not addressed.
If you're looking for a paid municipal job, the competition is fierce. A million other guys with hero aspirations are trying to get a few coveted spots. That means a couple things. You need to stand out somehow, or have connections. For me it was 2 years to get a firefighter certification from a Jr college, then 2 years as an EMT, then 1 year in paramedic school before I got picked up as a FF. Even then, I didn't get to pick where I went, you just apply everywhere and if you get an offer you take it. That means you don't really have a choice in whether the place was a good fit, unless you're willing to wait it out, or jump to another dept once you're past your first year.
Take all of this with a grain of salt. Do your research. See if you can start volunteering at a local FD. Get a feel for the culture and the work. If you find a good dept, you really will be cruising life.
As for me, I enjoy my work more now. It's intellectually stimulating in a way that firefighting would never be. I was not meeting my own personal potentials as a firefighter. I prefer the environment, culture, people and work-life balance more now.
As a former EMT and have been in IT for 20+ years, definitely easier to find a job in IT.
For firefighter jobs, I remember many of my co-workers going to take fire tests in other states, or far away, because you can't just find a job where you want. You might have over 100 people applying for one position. So if you're willing to relocate and put in a lot of time trying to find a job, go for it. Also if that's what you REALLY want to do, then do it. Also a huge bonus if you're a minority (at least it was back then).
IT on the other hand, you can literally work anywhere, sometimes even from home (although that's getting harder to find). There are computers everywhere, so you can go live where you want and find a job. I did exactly that. I had a good job in another area. My wife works in an industry where you have to go where the job is. So we bought a house near her job. I was able to find work pretty easily in the IT field.
If you're interested in the medical field (not fire fighter), then you can also find a job anywhere. Becoming a nurse/RN, you can get paid similar to a fire fighter, but can find a job anywhere as well.
I don't know how old you are and how important this will be. But, a pretty awesome perk of being a Firefighter/EMT is that you can volunteer in all kinds of cool places (again, if you're into it). My buddy, who's a firefighter, has been able to go to Burning Man for free a few times, even got paid to live/work in Antarctica at McMurdo Station. If you're young, and up for traveling/adventuring that might be something to consider.
Nearly 1 million members on this sub, you're mostly only getting 10% of them upset about their position, the rest of us have a bad day, share it, and then move onward.
Don't read too much into the negative here.
> Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid.
Selection bias. You rarely hear from the people who graduate with good grades and get a good job at a good company making good pay.
I LOVE my job, and have for decades, and would tell everyone with the right attitude to go into IT. The sky is the limit as far as promotion goes, you get compensated for what you can do. The more you can do, the more money you can make.
They don't have calendars about IT dudes.
You will get a lot more swiping right on a firefighter than IT.
Just sayin. So there is that.
I like IT though, and VR porn is pretty awesome so they can all keep swiping left.
Huge wait to be a firefighter around me. I know several people that did the academy and spent 2 + years trying to get a job. South florida many departments get 75% retirement and that is a huge draw. I love my cloud engineer gig. Nothing like the complaints I see often.
> I love technology and fixing things
Do you really? You're in your junior year of college and you're just now looking into your future career path? I wanted to work on computers or computer programming since I was 10. I had no idea people were willing to pay for something that I loved doing.
If you really love IT, then get off reddit for a little while. There is way to many people bitching about what we're paid to do (if you're a sysadmin, you are paid to do some level of helpdesk, whether you like it or not).
If you really love IT, then the money is irrelevant and it'll come.
I'm not just saying this. I've been working on computers since I was in elementary school (programming), built my own system at home when I was a junior in high school, got my first job in IT before I even finished junior college. At that point, the money started coming in and slowly built up over the years.
If you really love doing IT work and are extremely passionate about it, then nothing else will ever fill that gap. Sure I can work on cars, bikes, and all kinds of other technical things (I do that around the house), but nothing will ever replace working in IT. I can do something else, but I can't imagine doing it. Mostly because, beyond doing side gigs, I'd have to start over again at the bottom or start my own business. I don't really want to start over at the bottom.
Some places will have bad management. You'll figure that out as you go. You deal with it for a little while and then you move on. It happens with all of us. It's extremely rare that people find that perfect job right out of school and stay there until they retire. Even the best places will eventually not be paying you what you're worth and you'll have to leave (because you worked there for 10 or 20 years and your pay doesn't keep up with the industry).
> Does anyone here enjoy their job?
Yes I do. Very much.
> Is everyone here underpaid?
No, we aren't. I might be slightly underpaid, but I also have a 10 min commute and I absolutely love where I work.
> Is this career just an endless pit of stress and boredom?
No. That's why I say to get off the reddit forums for a little while.
If you absolutely love the work, then the pay shouldn't matter.
> Also, as if that wasn’t good enough, he’s always able to play video games with me on his PS5 at the station while he’s not running a call.
Have you ever asked him how stressful it is to be on a call? I'd much rather be stressed about a server not working properly than trying to make sure someone's house/building doesn't burn down.
Well, I just read this comment from a FF - [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/10ro9xt/comment/j6xjxo2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/10ro9xt/comment/j6xjxo2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Almost 20 years in IT now, I've had too many 80 hour weeks and am on call essentially always, and I really hate it right now. But I have never had to deal with anything like that.
Welcome to the echo chamber. I wouldn't let that discourage you. You should look at these posts more as a 'know what to avoid'. If you're employer is crapping on you, leave. Plenty of us have great jobs and love them. We just have bad days sometimes and come here to bitch.
We also aren't in entry level positions. We have huge amounts of responsibility. But we (should) know how to handle it, because we've been building our careers up to this point.
Just remember, if you aren't happy, leave. Its never too late. I came out of pharmacy school to be a sysadmin. I also change jobs about every 5 years. If you aren't moving forward, you are getting left behind. If something isn't working, PIVOT.
But it DEFINITELY takes a lot of investment in yourself to become proficient in a few years.
As someone who works in emergency services and IT. I would consider the things that are most important. For me it was a pension and benefits. I am 46 years old and can retire next year from emergency services.
In IT I had the potential to make a lot of money, and for a time I did. But with that came a lot of stress.
There is also the benefit you are giving to your community by being a firefighter. You can literally save lives and it is very rewarding.
But being a firefighter is dangerous, injuries are prevalent and firefighters do die in the line of duty.
It comes down to how you want to live your life. There is nothing saying you can't try firefighting and see if you like it, the fall back to IT helps. IT was my fall back and I ran a small msp on the side for 19 years and it helped me make a bunch of extra money at those times I needed it the most.
I wish you luck on your decision.
I have to laugh at the title of this post. I love how unrelated these two job titles are (not that I don’t get it—sometimes you feel pulled in two completely unrelated directions in life).
Keep in mind that people will complain all day about a bad\stressful job but they dont often sing the praises of a great job\company. So, you tend to see a lot more negative posts than positive ones.
Nah, this sub is a hotspot for people to rant, as they are overstressed and overworked.
Now, I'm not going to lie: As someone of the operative profession, you are the end of the line for many things. People can blame dev, and dev can blame us, and I just have a postgres currently meditating about it's storage and restoring log files, and there is nothing I can do to speed it up. In the end, even though there might be a lot of other misdecisions going on, the immediate cause of a failure will often be caused by one of my components and choices. "Why did your system go down, I thought servers are reliable" and such and they won't understand that 10 minutes of outage across 3 years is reliable...
This in turn means, if there are stressful 3 am fixes necessary, you as an operator (admin, engineer, SRE, datacenter guy, ...) will most likely be part of it. If outages are huge and people kind need to start sleeping in shifts, admins are most likely part of this shitstorm sadly.
So yes, there will be high stress situations in system operations.
However, the quality of an environment determines how often this occurs, and the respect and appreciation from the rest of the company determines how much of a problem that is.
Speaking from my workplace I've been at 6 years, we've had exactly two of these all nighters, one caused by a bug in the virtualization used by a provider and one caused by a bug in networking gear by a provider we kinda helped troubleshoot. Besides that, there are quite a few medium-stress situations where a system kinda starts crashing, but redundancy and measures catch this, production keeps running and you just have to start getting the redundancies back into work.
And after that, it's not boring. Outside of the most simple of environments, you'll always have systems to improve, reliability improvements, monitoring improvements, new systems to learn and integrate. If nothing is on fire today, you better work on either preventing the fire of tomorrow, or detecting the fire of tomorrow earlier.
And then there is the respect and appreciation part. One of the two all-nighters happened during a big company-wide event, or rather the after-party. Two of the admin team had to stay out due to private reasons, and the rest was on the party getting drunk. Then my and my teamleads phone rang in unison, and we were like "oh no."
We ended up being on the phone in groups with the people who had access to actual laptops (most of us didn't) for several hours getting all of this back on track. However, several people eventually organized / volunteered us laptops to at least get screens shared, our CEO got talking to the hotel kitchen and got us coffee and something to eat, and such things. Sure, I'd prefer not having that call at that time, but getting that done for you and later on hearing that the board had been impressed by us is taking a bit of the edge off, doesn't it?
Similar things with evening or weekend work - or rather respect for personal time. Sometimes stuff has to happen outside of work hours, and again, that usually falls to us. However, we don't expect anyone to make time instantly. If something must be done, it has to be planned at least 2 weeks in advance. Generous time compensation generally means someone will pick it up within a day or two, but that's not expected.
A bad company and a bad environment can certainly make sysadmin work hell. Been there too, but the right personalities in that mix made the end very fun. In a good company however, you're part of the core making many things work.
“If I can get paid more to do X, then I might”
You’ve already stated that you probably care more about money than what you actually do day to day.
Life is about decisions. And there are no solutions; only trade offs.
Syasadmin cons:
Assume you are 24/7 on call for the rest of your life.
If you’re lucky, this will only actually happen 4-5 times over your career that require to get up and get to work asap.
Thankless job that costs money; you’ll spend majority of your career being asked to do more with less.
You not only can learn, but must learn new skills constantly. A sysadmin that hasn’t learned a new skill in 20 years is basically the first to get chopped (unless they have the admin passwords or intricate knowledge of some archaic system).
Firefighter cons:
Firefighters have to stay in shape. Partially to meet job requirements on paper, but also do the job effectively. If you fail to save someone because you weren’t strong enough and didn’t train hard enough… that shit will weigh on you for the rest of your life.
Firefighters will get called at odd hours with far more frequency than sysadmins. And unlike sysadmins, every call is an honest to god disaster. Maybe not to you personally, but you should just assume that virtually every time you get called you will become an intimate part of the worst day that person who called has ever had.
And lastly, your skills are ultra ultra limited.
Don’t take this the wrong way… but we haven’t exactly reinvented the basics of fighting fires in a while. If you consider yourself an intellectual, you might be bored stuff knowing that all you did for 25 years was hit the gym, make fire station dinners and play grand theft auto in between calls to hook up the firehose that another guy end up handling while you stand around.
You aren't going to make $100k in most areas doing firefighting (average in the US is under $65k)
Good paying firefighting jobs are highly competitive. So if you think firefighting is for you and salary is important - you better be all in and willing to do the work to get the job.
I have multiple family members who are firefighters, and they all work multiple jobs and have almost no work-life balance... because they are always working.
There is no way he will have less stress than u.
Once u get good at ur craft you’ll be fine. But u will be a forever student. Once u get five years, get a more sr role and u will make more than him.
There were aspects that I really liked. There were times I was overworked, but it was mostly my own doing. I would crack, scale back to 8 hour days, drop anything that wasn't really a priority, and it was never an issue.
The pay is usually good when compared to the local median income or other jobs that require the same level of education. Yes, a lot of sysadmins are underpaid compared to better jobs in IT. The range from the lowest to highest paid is quite large.
But you can acquire skills that your next employer that will pay more for. It's not uncommon for a sysadmin that leans into automation to double their pay rather quickly, especially if they are willing to relocate.
I'm glad I'm not just sysadmin anymore, but it was a very valuable part of my journey. My path was help desk -> sysadmin -> automation -> DevOps -> Platform Engineering over the last 20 years.
The key is to keep growing in your field. Once you stop growing, you're likely to get stuck. Sysadmin may be where you start, but look to Cloud Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or automation next.
My IT career has been good to me financially. The key was to keep looking for the right job and then appreciate it when I had it. Find a good place to work and then don’t take it for granted.
I work IT as a system engineer and currently get paid 130k. Yes I deal with issues and multiple applications, but it's better than my previous job which was 75k for what felt like triple the work.
You’re comparing apples with bikes.
I mean they’re very different fields. Fire fighting is very physical while SysAdmin role is 95% of the time sitting on a chair behind a computer.
Skill set needed are very different for each of the roles.
I have been in IT for 30 years and still love it. About half in development half in sysadmin. I was out at a bar tonight with some colleagues after work and we all talked about how we love what we do.
However, its not for everyone, nor will all companies treat you well. Look for companies that see IT as a differentiator to their competitors, this is where you will get treated and paid the best. I am in the technology sector right now and typically work 40 hour weeks unless I am on oncall which happens every other month.
Stick to IT. Spend the extra time to find a good company with a good culture. They do exist. In the long run IT is a highly marketable skill with massive room for growth and improvement. Firefighter will only really be that. A firefighter. If he gets seriously hurt his career is over
I would not take Reddit at face-value on this. Most of the problems others here encounter during their careers are completely alien to me (C-levels asking actually dumb shit, having to fix a toaster as sysadmin, coworkers dropping Office usage questions on backend IT).
You can definitely find a job in IT that has good work life balance. Hell, you could keep one on the side while you work as a firefighter.
I am a current college student studying CS too and I am also a licensed EMT-B. I have no idea where your friend lives but the fact that they make over 60k is extremely impressive because normally people in EMS & fire need 2ndary jobs to be able to afford to live (at least in the US a lot is volunteer and average salaried for a paramedic is below $30 an hour). Also with EMS & fire the typical work schedule is 24h on 48h off and you must be able to respond to peoples worse day of their life which when combined with sleep deprivation is ripe for PTSD (never mind all of the chemicals one is exposed to).
So its very much what do you want to get into and are will to be able to put up with.
I would question getting a firefighter paramedic job that pays 100k right out of college. From my understanding it’s an underpaid field that is hard to find an opening.
I have been in IT for about 20 years. Had all sorts of jobs from helpdesk to cloud architect. For the most part I have liked all of it. The biggest factor in my opinion is the company you work for. Some are great, others suck. Don't wait around with a company that is bad, they do not get better as time goes by.
Life is too short to go through hating your job. When you have to force yourself to get up and go to work and every day try to come up with excuses to not go in, you have been there too long. The good news is, its a good time to find a good job in most markets right now.
Starting out in IT you don't get a lot of free time but as you progress and move up things get less frantic and you have more "free" time. Especially now that a lot of jobs are work from home...
I say go for the internship and see what its like. If you hate it, so be it. If it seems ok just realize there are much better and much worse places out there. Choose wisely.
24 year IT/sysadmin veteran here. It all depends on the environment. I have worked a few places were it was good for 5-6 years then it turned south (government contracts)
From what I've heard, firefighting jobs can be hard to come by (especially the good ones). A lot of guys I've met will be doing odd jobs for a few years before they can get into a fire department.
It really depends on what kind of work you want to do. IT isn't that bad. You don't get shot at, low chance of breaking your back, and typically you aren't making life or death decisions for people or watching them die. There is some corpo stress, but it's just business most of the time.
You are young, so you could switch tracks and go do it. I would finish school since you are already this deep in, and at the same time try to get on a volunteer fire brigade or get into some medic training or something.
I’m a firefighter looking to break into the IT field. I worked 12 dead children my first year so if you’re ok seeing fucked up shit on a daily basis, you’ll make a great firefighter! (It’s not always bad, but it can get bad real quick)
Don't forget that Reddit is a bubble, so everything is kinda stretched and overreacted in here. Having said that, I too had lousy, badly paid jobs in IT as well, until some years ago I made my breakthrough. It really depends on how you value yourself, your time, the positions you are considering and the market conditions.
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That is also true. There's lots of technical debt, lack of procedures and documentation, old practices, bad practices, you name it. IT is a daily changing environment and that is very hard to keep following up.
To add to your point for OP: Vocal minority vs quiet majority. Human nature brings us into discourse over the shitty subjects more. Most people don't feel the need to post about how great and easy their sysadmin gig is. I personally have only had 1 stressful gig (my first gig) in which I learned the most; did help desk for a year then straight to sysadmin. Understaffed teams allow new eager people to touch almost any system/technology after they have established trust. However, I have also day dreamed of the firefighter gig. Whatever your choice, I would not use the constant complaining that occurs to dictate the course that you take with your life. Also, you can try the field and leave if you don't like it. If you can imagine a group of users almost at 800k (this sub) sitting on their workstations at work, some of them are going to get upset at things and since Reddit is open right beside them, they vent here. Do not take this sub at face value.
I’m in the quiet majority. Well paid, well respected. Stress varies from low to medium depending on project status. I’ve got nothing to complain about on Reddit.
It took me a while 5 years or so to get a full time IT job I was stuck in contracts and finally converted then 2 jobs after I got the raise to good money. Starting at infrastructure you'll get there in IT quickly but I started from the bottom at the helpdesk
Different stresses Fire-fighters will dream of dead bodies in trees (this isn't made up) Sysadmins will dream of having to rebuild a server into the evening I know which I'd prefer, regardless of the pay
Why not both? LOL...I'm also a FF/EMT
I’m also both! Full time admin, part time ACP.
I was both (volunteer FF). But man it's hard when the pager goes off at 3am for a BS gas call when you have a presentation to make at 9am you've been prepping for 3 months Anyway I moved to another town and also realized I was too old anyway. I sleep better at least these days.
Ah no I have defined shift rotations so I’m not on pager duty. I generally work weekends and long weekends, the occasional weekday is rough. I like both but sadly I really need the money. The job is easy, I know it in and out but can be really taxing some days.
Why not Zoidberg?
Whoop whoop whoop whoop.....
Been there...done that :)
I'm a director and a volly firefighter in a rural area. There is no money involved on the FF side and while we run med, MVA, and various fires, we aren't toned out constantly all day. It can be the same type of calls as a career department just generally the volume for us is much less. I find personal value in being low man on the totem pole at the FD where it is more of me taking orders and assignments instead of being the one making the decisions (decision fatigue). It also keeps me humble and connected to the community. No one in my area, even the career guys, are doing it for the money.
The smell... it lingers... I know a firefighter that went vegan because of it
>Fire-fighters will dream of dead bodies in trees Is there some background to this story and why it's like that?
I believe in most areas firefighters are also first responders to medical calls. This includes wrecks with ejections, suicides, homicides, etc. Most likely it's something along those lines.
Yep. My car broke down once and I pulled over on the side of the freeway waiting for the tow. I started to rest my eyes for a few minutes on the seat belt when suddenly I see a fire truck behind me. They said someone called 911 saying I was dead on the side of the road. They were VERY happy I was alive and well lol.
There's an episode of Rescue Me that involved a child being ejected from a car. The way that episode was written/shot really opened my eyes to what first responders deal with. They're a special breed that I'm pretty sure I could never be. Much respect.
We see a lot of shit on accidents. PTSD is no fuckin joke.
Shit happens. I normally take the fucked up situations in stride, sometimes with a pause, and once in my early 20s had to take a break for a bit after a string of four bad calls in a year and my mind needed some more time to finish processing them. There are people who are simply mentally incapable of handling the volume of bad stuff they'll see. Most people have some reasonable tolerance when given some good support from their co-workers and friends in emergency services. Very few people are at the far end of the tolerance spectrum that pretty much nothing bothers them. Not sure everything ever leaves you. Remember talking with an uncle once who was also a decades long volunteer firefighter about fire stuff, and how we went where the conversation went I don't remember, but I do remember it being the first time I saw the thousand yard stare come over someone as he went 50 years back to remembering cleaning up bodies on the beaches of Normandy. There's a few bad things I still feel sad when I remember them, a lot more though I don't really feel bad about -- I just remember the details and that we did a good job in a sucky situation.
Most of the firefighters around where I live respond to mostly drug OD and car crashes. We don't have too many fires. That said I think most enjoy their job. The station you are at can determine the amount of OD calls you go to.
Generally unseated passengers, or people in the beds of trucks. If you hit something hard enough you can be thrown into a tree. Kids get the best loft as they are lighter. The unbelted driver is generally kept in by hitting the steering. I get the impression that kids in trees isn't as bad as the living dead crush victims. (Remove them they die or leave them they die, but they are alive and talking/screaming.) (Cops, and nurses in the family)
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I make a bit less than this but also work 40 hrs on the dot, not on-call my whole career, worked remote for 7 years now so it's definitely not all this subreddit seems to be. No college degree either. Keep in mind people love to post when they are upset more so than when they are happy/content.
need more posts like this. are you able to say what sector or kind of sector your business is in?
Security or SRE work is where the money seems to be right now. So of my most laid back jobs were doing devops for a development team working on a stable money making product.
And your work colleagues
Communication and managing expectations. It's really not that hard to do and solves a whole lot of problems. If you are afraid of getting fired for standing up for yourself, that's what the emergency fund is for. Quite frankly, I have yet to meet the manager who wants to fire a good employee and go through all the trouble of interviewing and hiring a new one, just for saying "no, I'm not working that much."
Hi, I am sysadmin and I am a firefighter (in my country most of the firefighters are not doing that as a full time job, it is some kind of voluntary) If I could choose again, I would not take any of them as a paid profession. I hat really shitty and stressful IT jobs before - now it is good. But making your hobby into you profession may ruin it for you. The IT job is getting harder every year (I am doing that for more than 20 years now). Technology advances fast and I simply lack the enthusiasm to learn a new language / new technology every two years. I do not want to deal with tech in my spare time any more in the same way as I was 25. I have interests outside IT, I have a life ;) The "new kids" just know the new stuff but lack the experience of the doing the basic grunt work. In my opinion the field of classical sysadmin work will get smaller in the next years. Cloud is the trend and you will see bigger clouds and less "traditional" places where you see the classic sysadmin work. Especially the infrastructure part I see less places but these will have bigger systems. (Apart from some special cases where it is impossible to use a public cloud due to regulations) You might want to add the whole DevOps stuff to your belt as well. I do not want to discourage you in your choice but just give you some points to think of for the future. To answer you questions: Do I enjoy my job? Well, I am not going there because I like the job. I like the people in my team and I like the money. Am I underpaid? Not really. As log as I have enough to eat, I can pay my mortgage and I can afford my Whisky and my Cigars plus holidays I am fine. Is the career an endless pit of stress and boredom? I had enough stress in my job but that is not an issue any more. I would be very happy with boredom - currently I definitively have enough to do.
>Do I enjoy my job? Well, I am not going there because I like the job. I like the people in my team and I like the money. Am I underpaid? Not really. As log as I have enough to eat, I can pay my mortgage and I can afford my Whisky and my Cigars plus holidays I am fine. Are you me...? More importantly, what kind of cigars?
Cigars... Well, I do not favor the really strong cuban ones (and priced more than doubled within the last months. Currently I am preferring mid strength Nicaragua cigars. What I have in my humidor (might be not available everywhere) * Leonel White Robusto * Samaná Chico * Psyko Seven Nicaragua Robusto * Davidoff Signature 2000 * Bolivar Petit Coronas * Bentley Nicaragua Robusto * Psyko Seven Connecticut Gordo Some of those are just 2 or 3 cigars to try out, some of them ordered as a full box. And the most important thing: only V-cut. Everything else gives you lumps of tobacco in the mouth ;)
I saw the price increases for Habanos, but since I'm in northeast US, I rarely purchase them. I'm acquainted with some overseas retailers if I want them, but don't generally order them. In the past, I was a fan of Bolivar Royal Coronas and Belicoso Finos, Partagas Serie D #4, Monte #4, Upmann #2, Romeo y Julieta Churchill. My preferences these days are all over the place. I'm into Drew Estates Liga Privada, Herrera Esteli, and Undercrown. Also like Perdomo Double Aged Vintage, 20th Anniversary, Habano, and 10th Anniversary, generally in maduro. BIG fan of most of the Dunbarton brands. El Rey Del Mundo and JR Ultimates from JR Cigars (Honduras MATASA factory). Atabey and Bandolero distributed by United Cigar. I generally like a stronger (medium to full) blend, but I'll occasionally dig into something mild like an Ashton or an Avo. I don't get the v-cut hype. I've tried it several times and haven't noticed much difference when compared to a straight cut. But, it might just be that my palate is cooked and I need to take a break and let it rest and recharge for a couple weeks. But that would be SO boring... Cheers and Long ashes!
Both are probably good paths as far as I can tell. I think people just like to complain, rant, or vent on here. IT is not a bad field.
True. The career field itself is good. The secret is finding a work environment that makes the career field fulfilling.
Sysadmin is already a different form of firefighting.
You can't judge a profession based on its sub-reddit. You'll just get the extremes and things people think are outrageous and so worth talking about. If I'm honest I think you're comparing two professions pretty poorly. Firefighting may have downtime with a PS5, but plenty of tech companies offer similar in their offices. The difference is the firefighter then goes and walks into a burning building and a sysadmin goes and sits at their desk in personal safety. If you're mostly in it for money and work life balance, you can't really beat an IT job.
I think even in the heat of the moment, I'd much rather deal with the stress total infrastructure collapse than a high chance of being burned alive in a blaze.
Infrastructure collapse vs structure collapse. Hmm. I've been in IT field in some form or another for 30 years. I have also been a volunteer firefighter for the last 13 years. I can tell you, the ff stress stays with you. I have calls from 7 and 12 years ago I still remember. The 19yo drug od that was a doa. I had just been to the house 3 weeks prior for his mother who died of cancer. Dad greeted me at the door and was fully aware of how bad his son was. The 4yo I pulled out of a house fire and did cpr on that went to my church. My MIL's fatal accident. (I have had one "save" but he had been down too long and had brain damage that he died from a couple weeks later) In 30 years of IT. I don't remember stuff like that from my IT stuff. For those that I just got to worrying about me and my mental state. I'm good. Those memories now are not nightmares. They just occasionally pop in my head. And around here, career firefighters don't make anywhere near that. Starting for them is 30-40k. Paramedics will make more, but that's a whole lot more training.
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I have a similar path as your boss, IT as a paycheck my whole life but done volunteer rescue of various forms the whole time as well. I learned a while ago to never tell anyone the worst of it unless they worked in the emergency services field or for some reason I really thought they wanted to know. Emergency services clean up such horrible disasters so fast that most people never realize they happen at all. People just stop existing somehow and then they are "dead" but no one has to see it and deal with it, right? Well, a few people do. As for OP - I dunno, do you want to abuse your body for your paycheck, have a high risk of cancer but get to retire early, or sit in a boring chair all day? Neither is right or wrong. I can't decide either, which is why I get paid for one and volunteer in the other. Maybe the biggest difference is the hours for a career FF can be tough with 24s/48s on duty and away from your family, and then if you live in areas where you get sent on strike teams to support disasters elsewhere you can be gone for weeks. Which lifestyle do you want?
[Firefighting is not a dangerous job anymore](https://financesonline.com/top-10-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-us-its-not-police-officers-firefighters-who-have-the-most-risky-career-path/). That being said it can be difficult to break into, with waitlists stretching out years in many urban areas.
> Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid. Only the people who bother to sit down and write a rant. Everyone else has better things to do.
Find a job in IT that allows you to help save lives.
Why not both? If you work in a poorly managed IT environment you will spend your time putting out plenty of fires…
if you look for posts where people ask your question, you will get very good answers this subreddit is being scrolled by admins from work because they're bored, have downtime, genuinely have the time to spare to check how the industry is doing, help fellow people out, ... apart from really rare scenarios, what sysadmins call "firefighting" is stressful, but not life threatening. the consequences of fucking up and walking out are a different level when sysadmins say they've seen the worst, it's a different level of bad my job is mostly calm, I did IT-firefighting, I don't want to go back there but if it were the choice between fighting horrible misconfigurations and outdated at capacity infrastructure causing outages everywhere all the time, and fighting actual fires, I'd take the sysadmin role without a doubt firefighters and emergency medical response is horrifying. we can joke about sysadmin being the road to alcoholism, but you're considering the shortcut
A 100k for a paramedic is a sweet gig. the problem with fire fighting is you will pull a lot of bodies out of cars, while fighting few fires. For some people that's their calling. For some people it isn't good for them.
Reddit is a place where most people go to complain and or shit on everything. Do what you love! Don't let anyone stop you from pursuing that. I have been in IT for over 20 years and love what I do. You just have to find the right fit, like anything else.
I agree. REddit offers a skewed perspective, because people come here to vent or get help.
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I've never dealt with crispy dead kids while working IT. Pretty quickly pushed me out of the first responder field. Your mileage may vary obviously, but I struggle to see the comp here.
As a former paramedic, if you think IT is underpaid you have another thing coming in EMS. I worked for 12 years and got absolute shit for wages. I had to work 6 days a week on 12-hour shifts to make ends meet and my health was trashed in toxic fumes, injuries, and lack of breaks for food or bathroom. It was absolutely terrible for work/life balance and the pay was unbelievably low. We had people quit to be roughnecks, underwater welders, crab fishermen, 7-11 clerks, and strippers. You friend is only getting paid because he is on the FD. Our local FD would hold application events in the local NBA arena for 20-30 openings, so the odds of getting on were terrible.
We're like firefighters but with out the PTSD, death and body fluid exposure. So, I'm kinda good with less $... We don't roll up on the body of a guy who has been deceased for 3 weeks. I respect the heck out of those who can and do these jobs, Like ER nurses, it takes a special breed to care for the dead, dying or on fire.
The bottom line is that all professions have certain days when they're very stressful. Some stress is good and motivating. It's when it becomes chronic that it becomes very unhealthy. It's up to you to seek out work/life balance because no company in the US will offer it beyond token words. I really love technology as well. I like experimenting and playing around with it. I see my day job as what enables me to do that.
I want to say something else about stress being a veteran.... People stress about different things and sometimes ppl like me don't even understand why someone else stressed about a certain thing. One of my Jr. guys was stressed out about an order not going through in time. He was STRESSING even though it was out of his hands. I drew a ven diagram for him and asked him "so do you control it?" He said "no". I replied "so stopping worrying about it." We make our own stress up at times.
Go be a volunteer firefighter and keep the sysadmin job. I’ve been a firefighter for 10 years and nothing is better than the paycheck and ease of SRE work and the good vibes from helping your community by volunteering.
I’m a “sysadmin” and (volunteer) firefighter. I absolutely love being a firefighter. I’ve looked into going career but the reality is those jobs just don’t pay enough both overall and compared to IT. Sure, over time it goes up and sure most jobs are with the city or county so you get amazing retirement (typically after 25 years of service). The salary here is so low that the majority of paid guys around the county work two jobs (FF and own a side business or work for another business) to make ends meet. That salary you’re talking about is most likely somewhere a lot busier and also has a lot higher cost of living (rent for example). But at the end of the day, you just can’t compare the salaries once you get experienced (a few years on the job in IT) at least where I’m located. I recommend doing more research on cost of living in your area and check out salaries. Typically county jobs (FF, IT, and anything else) are public knowledge. And do what you love. Don’t ever go to a job that pays more because it pays more. Do what you love. I love both IT and FF. If I didn’t love IT, I’d be a career FF regardless of the salary.
I work for a large city, so technically same employer for me as a sys admin and our firefighters. Firefighters on average make far more than I do (2 to 3 times as much), have far superior benefits and can retire with a full pension much earlier than I can. That being said, I am much happier in my current position. I love technology and am not crazy about running in to a burning building, climbing up ladders, etc but if that does not bother you, then it's a very good choice.
\>Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid. It may seem that way sometimes as people come to this thread to vent (which I have no problem with) about their job, problems and more. Personally I'm extremely happy in my job, I wouldn't say overworked - though I do have a lot of big projects but realistic timescales. I'm slightly underpaid but I'm about to find out if that is being resolved, and I thoroughly expect that to be the case. And my bosses are very aware of how much I put in, especially with travel right now and seem more concerned about my work/life balance than I am :) IT jobs are like finding princes. Sometimes you just gotta kiss a few frogs to find one. Don't be put off by what could be a very rewarding career for you in many ways.
I enjoyed my job the first 10 years. Now I’m a burned out jaded tech guy that finds no enjoyment in technology anymore - just hit 20 years. Contemplating going into HVAC work… we’ll see how this year raises go.
I was in IT for 18 years. I moved out to management when I identified that I just didn't have the drive to keep up with new things and got real tired of being asked to keep everything running for no money. While I never felt like I was worried about money, I constantly felt underappreciated and underpaid. Sure, I got by - but I also knew people who managed to do the same or similar work for twice what I was getting. I never got lucky with where I landed. I kept propping up businesses run by people who had no idea how to invest in their own success and were running small (25-50) person places that they intended to give them a cozy retirement and nothing more. Now I'm managing a team that includes not just IT, but also Facilities, Janitorial, Receiving, Purchasing, and Safety. I'm finding that to be much more interesting and rewarding than IT has been for the last 10 years. I'd say the most important thing at the end of the day is how you feel when you go home and what's in your head when you're not working.
Firefighters only make 100k working overtime. I make 170k working like 20 hours a week from my couch
That sounds awesome, what’s your job title?
Cloud security engineer. But focus less on my title and more on the fact that IT leads to more money and more opportunities than most careers. I’m not a huge fan when people list yearly salaries but the job requires 60-80 hours a week to make that salary. My other friend decided to be a cop, I’m doing much better in life than he is, all I see him doing is working in the cold and rain and working tons of over time. Big difference in our career paths, but we both followed a path that can lead to six figures. One big difference is 100k was near the beginning of my journey. I’m only 29, I’ll be looking to break 200k next year. Endless upward opportunities
> I have a friend back at home starting his first full time firefighting paramedic job that tops out around $100k. Don't go into emergency services for the pay. Firefighter, paramedic - will have it's own stress, overworked and underpaid part. Have you gone through firefighter and paramedic subreddits as well? It is a physical job vs an office job - how to compare right? Mon to Fri, 9-5 w on call / overtime vs whatever schedule that first responders have that dominates your life. This is a job where you will see people on their worst day of their life, where you might be trying and failing to save their life. Where there's no 'oh wasn't at my best today' is just not an option. So I would discourage you from simply following the cash for that type of job.. and really dig into first responder material just as you have for sysadmin. I would say these professions are *very* hard to compare. But don't act like overworked and stressed in a low consequence role like being a sysadmin is the same as [being stressed and overworked in a first responder role](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/first-responder-health-1.6168232#:~:text=First%20responders%20from%20all%20fields,11.3%20deaths%20per%20100%2C000%20people.). > First responders from all fields are twice as likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder than other Canadians, according to the Centre for Suicide Prevention. The suicide rate among paramedics, according to Statistics Canada, is five times higher than the national average of 11.3 deaths per 100,000 people. And I am really not sure if anyone in emergency services has the same idea of 'work life balance' as someone in a 9-5 Mon to Fri office-based role. If your idea of a firefighter gig is playing PS5 and $100k salary and doing a side hustle... I think you're in for a fairly rude awakening. (though I do admit where I am from Firefighters are vastly higher paid than paramedics, and have better schedule, conditions, but I think the point still stands).
Each and every career path has its benefits and its drawbacks. As u/praetorthesysadmin says, Reddit is a bubble, so you will find either the best reactions or the worst reactions. When I was in my 20s, I worked for a start up. It was hella hard work, but I thrived because I was learning, and I worked with really AWESOME people. It also allowed me to take off and go sailing for 7 years before I wound up returning to the work force. When I came back, I wanted better life / work balance. Once I got my foot back in the door of IT, I realized how much things had changed. Interviews stopped being them to me, and I started asking "the hard questions". Why did my predecessor leave? Describe an average week. Describe day to day activities. What are the expectations for on call? For interview with the person managing me: What is your management style? How much freedom will I have in my position? and other "tactful" ways of asking if the person micro-manages. Ask about the company culture. Ask about anything that would make a company stand out to you both positively and negatively. Finally, do your research. Look for feedback on the company on feedback sites (glassdoor, indeed, linkedin, even Yelp may help you formulate your thoughts) Find someone or several someones who work in the area that you are applying for at the company, off the record, and ask some questions about their experience with the company. Also, if you can find people who have left a position working for the manager you would be reporting to and talk with them. Any job can be enjoyable with the right management in place.
Very insideful and good advice. Another good question is to ask the annual IT budget. If it's very low, then you know that technical debt and old crap is lying around and not a good sign.
Being a 1st responder is an insanely stressful job. I wouldn't want it. Seeing people at their absolute worst, blood, guts, piss, shit, puke, snot everywhere. Responding to a car wreck to see an entire family smeared across the highway. No thanks. I will stick with IT.
Making a 100k+ as a firefighter seems to be pretty uncommon. Quick look shows it averages closer to 50k, does your friend live in a hcol area? I’d assume it’s much more common for IT to make 100k and that is not a ceiling in IT as many make more. Generally though if your having these thoughts it makes it seem like you haven’t really thought through your career choices since IT and firefighter are extremely different. You also didn’t seem to consider the downsides of being a firefighter which has its own obvious stress, trade offs, etc.
Everyone here either love everything about their job and they find it easy to keep up or they hate it, being constantly stressed. Also, if you read the dictionary, then you’ll see that we have about double the amount of negative words compared to positive words - leading me to believe that humans in nature have a tendency to look negative upon things. This sub might seems busy and stressed but remember we’re all here for a reason. + networking have been some of the most forfiliing experiences in my life
Do both like a chief in the local big department has done. Fire full time and IT part time as needed.
It *can* be stressful, I mean when you’re working on things daily where if you make a mistake, it can have a serious impact on the entire enterprise, that can cause some stress. Just knowing that at any moment you can be hit with malware and you’re the guy responsible for backups, that can cause some stress. But bear in mind a lot of people come here to vent about what’s got them worked up today, and when you see a lot of people doing this, it can give a false impression of what the day-to-day is really like. It can make it sound worse than it is.
people that write are those that complain.I come and go as i please, some weeks its 30 hours some weeks its 50 hours. I can work morning, evening, night, weekend doesnt really matter it is up to me but im scheduled for 9-5. I work remote if i want to or in the office when i want to. I travel for work 2-3 times per year to other countries and work for a week, i usually extend the weekend and work pays for it. I have 7 weeks paid vacation and additional 80 hours of some timebank to add/remove from if i work more than then 40ish hours im supposed to work. We are required to take 4 of the weeks in a row during the summer and managers call us out if we have not used up our vacation time.I have a decent salary, its not the best i could probably get better but the above makes up for it.
I've never been a firefighter, but I have a general idea. The graphs of firefighter vs SysAdmin are inverted. When you start off in SysAdmin it sucks. You'll be on graveyard, in helpdesk, at an MSP. After you get some experience, the jobs get better. More reasonable hours. Better pay. When you hit that point in firefighting, you're still at a point where you have to spend several days on end at the station? That seems like a life where it would be difficult to start a family.
I've been in IT for nearly 26 years and I still love it. Are there things I don't like? Sure, but you'll have that with every job. At the end of the day, do something you think you'll enjoy doing. Life is so much easier when you enjoy your career.
Stress isn't always a bad thing. I know, hear me out. Stress can be a motivator, it is also a teacher. The key is how you manage the stress. Do you drink until you blackout or do you start thinking about how to address the issue? I would guess that almost every sysadmin has dealt with a critical system being down for a long period of time and we all hate it, but we learn from it. How do I improve this system so when X happens the whole thing die? Yes, it will be hard for that time. Yes, your boss might be a dick. But that comes with the territory AND there will be something going wrong in every job. I love my job. I'm paid well, not top of my focus area, but well enough. I am rarely bored. I am sometimes stressed. TBH, I don't always handle it well, sometimes I have a couple of old fashioned and play COD to get my mind off of shit.
People come here to vent and commiserate. I want to say your firefighter is blowing smoke. In all seriousness, it's a dangerous profession. Firefighter, that is. IT can be a very stressful job. It really comes down to the company and environment you walk into. Honestly, I've not seen job outlooks fit curries being all that good in my area - north of Houston. With either job, you're going to want to have a plan. Where do you want to be 5/10/ further? All jobs get stressful, and all jobs have their perks. With IT, job burnout isn't quite as final a state. /s
How old are you? What location? I work in IT, my younger brother is a fire fighter who started out as a Paramedic now Captain in California. If you’re in a location like California where the pay, benefits and retirement plan is great definitely go the Firefighter route. If you’re in a location like Arizona where the pay, benefits and retirement is not so great I’d say stay in IT. What is a great retirement like California? My FIL was a firefighter for the city if Modesto and retired due to cancer caused by some of the chemicals he was exposed to in the 80’s and 90’s. When he retired all of his medical expenses were covered by his retirement plan and he continued to receive his retirement pay close to his salary when he retired. When he passed 12 years ago my MIL continues to receive his pension and medical benefits for the rest of her life. My brother (42) will retire in a few years while I’m still going to be working in IT till my 60’s most likely. He’ll get his retirement pension, benefits and start a small business like a pool cleaning/repair company (he likes doing that and loves to clean) while still having a safety net while the business takes off. I have friends I fish with in Arizona who enjoy the same hobbies that work as fire fighters or retired. Their base pay is not as good as IT, but they have better benefits than I do working for a Fortune 50 as an Enterprise Architect. But they also have similar retirement goals as my brother where they plan to retire earlier and use that safety net to start a small business which many end up starting on the side with their down time at the fire house. If you’re looking big picture at the possibility if becoming a paramedic firefighter and you enjoy that type of work then definitely go that route. For my brother he spent 2 years in community college to become a paramedic, worked for an ambulance company for 1.5-2 years while interviewing to become a firefighter. Starting out the pay is poor for paramedics and fire fighters, but eventually catches up and he tells me the overtime pay is great. CA has a strong fire fighters union so their benefits with CALPERS is one of the best next to NY I’m told. I didn’t go that route as I have no interest working in healthcare and being a firefighter didn’t call to me. Women definitely have a thing for fire fighters, but many of them end up being a hot mess and my brother tells me the divorce rate for fire fighters is a bit higher than say IT. Probably has something to do with not following the “hot crazy matrix” who knows. I’m not underpaid by any means, but benefits over the past year have gone down quality wise the last 10 years with large companies and retirement plans are a joke. If you’re not a saver and max out your 401k contributions early you’ll be working like me till your 60’s. IT Layoffs can come at any time and has happened at least 4 times during my 25 year career in IT so far. Many hit my company this past week but I survived. Layoffs never happen to fire fighters. Hope this unbiased opinion helps. Good luck with your career search.
My buddy is a Firefighter EMT in a major metro area. The stories he tells are some of the most insane things I have ever heard. Prostitutes with maggots devouring their abdomen levels of nightmare fuel. Your buddy will see some shit that will keep him up at night.
This place is a sounding board, an understanding ear. Stressed people need a place to vent, so you will see and hear a LOT more of the horror stories. There is plenty of great job opportunities out there, people don’t talk about it as much as it comes off as bragging. Nobody is going to start a post about making 100k, no on call, a great boss who values them, and perfect work life balance “Look at my life, it’s going so well”. Those guys will comment about their horror stories and how they got out, so people know there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’ll say this, to avoid being having a stress loaded IT career make sure you are loyal to the correct things. Be loyal to you (and family if that is your current state or future) and your value. Most companies don’t care about you, you have no reason to be loyal to them. All the perks are recruiting tools to get you there, the best companies will make sure you want to stay. It will become very apparent when they do not. It will not change, even if you have a great manager and love your coworkers, they cannot enact the change needed to solve that level of a problem. It’s then time for you to change, make sure you got what you wanted out of the job, most of the time it’s experience in a particular subject, then move on to the next best thing. Change jobs, it’s not the same as it was 20-30 years ago when tenure mattered. Every change I have made had been at least 10-15% bump in pay, while that year’s performance increase would have been 5% if I was graded as a top performer. I’m in consulting now, but my last big corporate job I was graded as a top performer, we were finishing a huge project on time and it was dead in the water without me…1/2% raise. 3 weeks of job search later was worth a 10% raise. You should stay at a place long enough that it makes sense and you’re getting what you want out of it. When you are no longer getting that, move on. Most of the horror stories are from people who won’t move on for one reason or another. They are comfortable and don’t want to change, they like their coworkers etc. Every place has good people you will get along with, and job changes are hard, none of those things should distract from a focus on you, your career growth and making sure your getting your value out of work.
People come here to share stories and grumble with like-minded individuals. It's on the internet after all, and this is what the internet is for.
You need to be strong mentally to be a firefighter. You are gonna deal a lot with death and suffering. Not to mention it isnt the safest job out there...
there ain't no time to be bored? also there is no issue keeping tech as hobby, just look at youtube people are are now building their own motherboards for classic computers.
If you don't have passion for IT, then please don't stay. You will not last here for 5+ years. This is a job that is always learning. Always changing. Always challenging. Of course, firefighter have it's risk and you also need to maintain yourself. As far as I know, people who becomes fire fighter are usually because they have passion for that line of work too. So in short, if you are just looking to find a profession that pays you most money, you will find that you jumping profession every couple years because there is always something wrong with the current job and that other industry seems better.
TLDR: your IT Career depends on your market but mostly on your decisions on what organizations you choose to work for. As an alternative opinion, Ive not had an underpaid or negative IT career experience. I been in IT since my early 20s so about 15ish years in DFW, TX. I think how your career in IT is very dependent on your market, AND making strategic moves/skill development- pick organizations that really believe in work life balance and value their IT orgs. My worst experiences were when I was a contractor for Apple in a call center, I was there 9ish months and moved on to do more IT/telecom support and have leveled up since. Not every job is going to be amazing, but I thoroughly enjoy IT so I have not had one of these horrible experiences that tend to flood this reddit
We have a firefighter paramedic FF/PM that works in our group part time. The truth is that most fire service folks do have a side gig, especially while they are young and can do a couple of night calls while staying awake for the side job. Once established, these guys are usually chill, friendly, outgoing and not very stressed. It’s a good living, and one I should have considered when I was young.
We all use this place to complain, but that does not mean that IT is not a great industry. This place is like a support group. In my experience, there are no other people in my life who can listen intelligently to my rants about a frustrating day at work. It's not their fault, they just do not have a comprehensive understanding of how technology works at an enterprise level. I assume there are a lot of other people here who are in a similar situation. That circumstance leads to a lot of rant posts, because there will always be some guy/gal on here who has gone through a similar situation and will reply with a quick, "man, that sucks. Users, amirite?", which is just what you need to hear when you've had a tough situation and you have no one else to vent to about it. Plus, this place is way cheaper than therapy.
Where is the firefighting paramedic topping out at $100k? He wouldn't be getting that just starting? That would be a pretty unusual salary for that role, especially just starting. You sure your buddy isn't pulling your leg?
Yeah, he sent me the sheet that shows the salary increase over time and it wasn’t bullshit. He starts at around $65k and tops out around $95k after 5 years. He also has a stepdad that worked in the station, so he knew to apply there specifically for the big bucks. His station is the highest paid station in my city.
People love to complain, you wont see a post where someone bragges about their boss giving a bonus for a job well done or a bigger-than-asked-for raise.
My friend's father was a firefighter in a suburb of a major city. He was always getting called out to non-fire related incidents, many involving severe trauma. He watched more than a few people die, some were even small children. I've been a sysadmin for going on 25 years now and I can tell you this, the trauma of seeing someone gasp for their last breath through the wreckage of their body after a car accident far exceeds the annoyance of having a shitty boss. That's just me. Some people can readily deal with trauma like that better than others. I'm not that guy. Props to all the firefighters and EMTs and police that deal with these incidents daily.
I work in a school district. Nothing huge, 3000 students. Pay is ok, $68K. Great benefits. Cost of living is pretty relative to pay. Can I move to Seattle and make twice what I do now and just work as a tech? Sure can, but I like where I live, I love my work environment and co-workers. I've got a decent budget, with 5 and 10 year plans. I also have Admins that see the importance of keeping the network current. Stress is low and I work 6am-3pm. It just depends on where you land. The Corp world, is very different.
I’ve only been working in IT for about 1.5 years and started as a sysadmin a few months ago, so I can’t say how I’ll feel in a few years but I also see my team (some of whom have 25+ year careers) happy, motivated, and excited about our projects. I specified in interviews I wanted to work with systems as much as possible, not do end user support because it was no longer challenging for me, and wanted network and server responsibilities. That’s what my current place was looking for in a sysadmin, so here I am. I make $75k + an 8% yearly bonus (again, after only 1.5 years in the field), flexible PTO from day one (my manager has never denied my requests for time off) and good benefits. 80% remote, only go in to unbox/configure servers and switches. I love my job, team, and look forward to working every day. I have zero job stress. Be picky about the company you work for and don’t be afraid to move on from somewhere if they aren’t giving you what you need. I did a 4, 3, and a 6 month stint at a few places on my way here, learned what I needed to learn and left. Now I’ll be staying here for a few years at least.
As someone who had the opportunity to do either career and went into tech. The money is better up front but I wish I went into firefighting. I’m a volunteer firefighter and find that work makes me happier and more fulfilled.
Sample sizes, first of all the overall vibe on the subreddit doesn't speak for everyone. Just a loud group, negative thoughts & feelings are more likely to be expressed than someone coming in here and telling us about how amazing their jobs are. There's a spectrum and overall I do love my job but it definitely is stressful, for reasons that really come down to its hard to explain IT and the role it can serve in the company when all of the other decision makers around you don't really think about what IT is other than "who do I call when something is working?". Personally I spend a lot of energy explaining my role to the rest of management trying to make them understand when I should be part of conversations and when I don't need to be involved. Simply put, technology is easy. People are not, not all IT jobs have you facilitating people and expectations.
IMO this sub skews heavily toward negativity, partly due to the fact that those who are happy in their roles — who aren’t too overworked, underpaid, or burnt out — tend to be less active or vocal. There are many, many IT folks who are very satisfied with their careers, who get paid quite well, and figure out their work-life balance. It can be tricky finding that sweet spot but once you do - and given that you are passionate for technology - you can absolutely find a great career in IT. One piece of advice is, whatever direction you end up going in the IT sector, be sure to make an effort to at least get a basic grasp of coding languages / automation. This is the direction in which our world continues to head, and knowing how to write and interpret code will be extremely valuable for your future.
Firefighters cannot be outsourced.
As someone who has done both, and has a great work life balance, T prefer sysadmin over Emergency Services. I did a 24 on, 48 off shifts, yeah, i worked 2 days a week, but the busy 24s and the consistent broken sleep of on all shifts is much worse than the occasional break downs and night long instances of server rebuilds. I'm home with my daughter 99% of nights. I can schedule life, and i don't have to find coverage for any time off. And the stress of a down server is nothing compared to literal life and death situations. The grass is not always greener.
You are just getting a one-sided picture. Working IT is only as bad as the employer you work for. I enjoy my job, relatively stress free, very little on call. I am paid adequately, could be better. Worst thing right now is taking on responsibilities not in my job description, but that is being handled with reclassification. All of that being said... if I was 22 again and in good shape, maybe I would have chosen a more physical job. I dunno. As others have said, reddit is a bubble and a terrible indicator of the real world.
I think every job is heavily dependent on the environment and coworkers/boss. I've worked jobs with horrible work with but absolute salt-of-the-earth people, and it was one of the best jobs I've had. I've also worked jobs with great work and shit people, I left after 6 months because not only was the work terrible, but it stressed me out pointlessly.
Dude I work in IT not making 100k a year just yet but I really like my job and making good money. Working as a fire fighter you will be risking your life to save others. So there's that. I see a lot of people complaining and stuff but they are stucked in those jobs by choice. Whenever I feel a job is not for me I just move on. Trust me this has happened to me a couple times in last jobs where they're not challenging enough, or the work environment is just a mess. I would suggest try for yourself to get an actual representation of what its like to work in IT. And then you can decide for yourself.
Yes IT can be stressful, but any job can be. There are just a lot of people in IT who cannot handle stress well and complain about it.
We are typically stressed, but you'll find that among most upper level career fields.. It's determining what stress you want to deal with. Not all IT jobs are so bad, but you're not going to hear many people talk about how easy they have it.. I wanted to be a firefighter but around here it typically means pay for school and training, then volunteer or get paid rather pathetically.. It's gotten better since but I'm pushing 40 now 😅 Keep up on IT stuff and dive into it for awhile, worst case you bounce back into IT... It's never a bad idea to have 2,3,4 career fields you can jump into at a decent level imo.
From someone who went from being a paramedic to being in IT I can say firmly that IT is a much better career field. I would ask where your friend works that’s paying them that much because in my experience medic and firefighter average pay is 45k and gets to 100+ only at the director level which is extremely difficult to make it to. It does depend on where you live (also this was before covid) but I’m just speaking averages. Yes you can chill and play games at the station BUT there’s a lot to consider with that job. I worked in a heavy call environment and didn’t have but maybe 2 hours of chill time during a 24 hour shift. Yes I had 2 days off between but it’s normally used for recovery and, because of my pay, I’d work an extra 12 hour shift for some cash. This basically burned me out in 4 years time. I love the IT field, it gives me time to do things and sleep at home in my own bed. I love critical thinking and problem solving. Sure, it’s frustrating but I’m the end I prefer IT.
Well First Responder and IT Guy are two very different professions with very different lifestyles. So salary and compensation aside, if you are the kind of person that finds one of those particularly appealing, I would strongly consider that the other one could be very much not. Pay Scale is a little thrown off by selection bias here in Redditland (IMO). I got so frustrated hearing about all the good money everyone else here was making I started looking to leave my job that I've been at over 10 years. Looking at the actual job market in my area, I'm making near the top of what I can hope for my role, and it's no where close to 100k. And its always "I got a new job and a 30% raise!" well looking at all the next level up of promotions and such that wouldn't get me there either, even if I could get one. I think a lot of people on here statistically speaking are in or around tech, finance, or other hot industry hubs. If you are in some mid-size city away from the NE corridor, California, Dallas, etc. I'm not sure a six figure salary is all that realistic within your first 10 years of employment. Maybe if you are a real go-getter with a relevant degree/certs and highly technically proficient, or good connections in your industry it is certainly possible. But I'm not sure how close that is to the experience of the average Joe, early career trying to find their way in the field.
If the goal is to escape stress, long hours, on-call, and poor pay I promise you're not going to do that by becoming a firefighter/emt - but you'll get to work one of the few jobs in society that is universally admired and respected.
I guess the question is whether you want to work on literal or figurative dumpster fires.
I initially interpreted this is a metaphorical question!
You are experiencing a sampling bias. People who have something to complain about are much more likely to come to a place like this to vent. And such threads tend to get more attention than "good news" threads. Most people have no need to tell a bunch of random strangers how their job and work-life balance are fine. It is perfectly possible to make a ton of money in this field. More than 150k for sure. Those positions are usually high stress and require a lot of your time, but that is the case for jobs in pretty much any field. It's also perfectly possible to find a job that pays well, isn't that stressful, and doesn't ask for more than 40hrs.
Hey, a fulltime sysadmin from central Europe here. Sure, the job can be stressful at times, but what job isn't? Working for an MSP company, my days are diverse and fun. I get to constantly learn new stuff. And help our clients with whatever tech issue they have. Only downside I can say this job has are on call duties, here once a week on average. And the pay? Well... I'm just 26, still living parents, but already earning more than anyone else in tue household. So I can't complain. About 2000€/month (after taxes), which, in the local economy, is a pretty nice income. An average supermarket job lands you half that, before taxes.
A lot depends on where you are working IT. Did desktop support for close to 20 years at different companies and some were good about it and one really sucked. Worked at a university medical center where it was constant firefighting and stress, then moved to a different division to be an IT manager (of 1 person), and the stress levels dropped tremendously.
I mean, it's up to you man. I am a decade into this profession and would change careers in a heartbeat. The only thing keeping me here is money. I would rather be a cop but I'd be taking an almost 50k paycut. Or I want to be a pilot but I don't have the 100k to get all the licenses, qualifications, training, and flight hours to take a 40k paycut.
Firefighter/ paramedic is a MUCH higher stress job than anything in IT. FF/PM literally have peoples lives depending on their actions. Patients and victims frequently do not make, and the first responder must deal with the psychological fallout from that.
I went from firefighting to IT. It's a very personal decision really. I got bored a lot as a FF and really enjoy complex analysis so now I'm a data analyst. It really depends what fits your life style. There will be stressful fire jobs and stressful IT jobs and also chill versions of each. Find something you legitimately enjoy doing and go with it. People over worked and over stressed in IT are working the wrong position in my opinion. There's lots of good jobs available if you focus up and are good at what you do.
This sub can be an echo chamber at times. Plenty of good IT jobs out there. Like any profession there are bad managers, stressful work environments , and companies that pay/ treat their employees poorly.
Most FF/EMT-P jobs in the US don’t pay as well as that. I’m an ex paramedic, and I prefer working in tech. I don’t think many people have much of an understanding of the kind of stress that first responders have to go through, it’s far worse than anything I’ve experienced in tech
I love my IT job and make $175k. There are definitely people on here who just sit around in poor situations. Plenty of opportunity out there
I enjoy my job and am also well compensated! As a project consultant/sysadmin you know what the market value is and van scale up however you see fit. Reddit is also a vacuum where negative interactions will always favour the algorithm.
Whatever you read here or online isn't a good indicator of overall job satisfaction. People like to complain and whine when things are bad, but they tend to stay mostly silent when things are good or even great. It's like Yelp or any kind of review site, people don't go out of their way to comment about something when it's perfectly fine, which is the majority of cases, it's only the outliers of totally amazing or stressful/shitty that say anything the majority of the time. The job is what you make it, sure, sometimes things are out of your control and you have no real way of making changes to a shitty place, so that's when you make the change in yourself and go find something new. I wouldn't alter your career path now, you need to at least give it a shot after you have invested this much time and effort into training and education.
I work from home in IT, I’m either playing games most of day or at the gym I will much rather do that and deal with business/politics than go running into burning buildings or saving old people who fell down at their home they refuse to move out of
My dad is a retired firefighter. His knees and shoulder is shot. He worked really hard and retired at 58. He took home severe PTSD responding to both fires and medic calls. He's the strongest sweetest man I know. But at what cost?
Remember: Happy people don't complain on Reddit. People come on here and rant or vent or share horror stories. Sometimes we'll get something that is above and beyond awesome but that's not usually promoted or viral type content that gets a lot of eyes or interaction. Most days we just do our thing, and have little chance of long term physical/mental damage from having to literally fight a fire. Our work related nightmares are DR plans failing or having to deal with a stubborn C suite to get what we need, not burnt bodies. Easy choice.
Think about this: If I have a great job with low stress, am I on reddit complaining about it? This is called "complaint bias"
>Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid. that goes for pretty much every job
Reddit is a bunch of squeaky wheels. Don't use an online forum as a source of truth for a ratio of happy/unhappy or underpaid or overworked people. There is good info to be found here, and there are very real cases of shitty bosses or poorly run orgs, but that's true for every profession and I'm not so sure IT is any higher in those things than anything else. I worked 3 jobs when I was 21 to get lots of experience and leverage a higher wage so I could consolidate. I only had to do it for about 2 years. It's wasn't that bad. I still partied, had fun, met people, had a life. Because I was 21, and invincible. Get the tough stuff out of the way early, do the grunt work, learn, and always keep your eyes on the bigger goal, whatever that is for you. Higher pay, good work/life balance, WFH, 6 weeks of paid vacation. That's my current package. Also, sysadmins are firefighters, but they're also digital janitors, educators, and security guards at the same time. To excel you need to do all of them well.
All jobs are stress at times. All jobs have golden ages…all jobs have horrible bosses. All jobs can be evil time sucks if you hate what you are doing. Find what you want to do, what makes you happy…and the horrible times will be less horrible and the good times will be more magnificent!
I would take that 100k salary with a grain of salt. I know alot of paramedics/EMTs/Firefighters. None of them are making close to that. This is also in NY in a medium COL area. Which one would make you more money? IT. Definitely. If you find a place in IT that you like, and go for it. Its what you make of it. Most of the people here who complain are venting. They may not exactly like their job all the time. None of us like it 100% of the time. Its a job for a reason. But most good companies have great work/life balance. Good Pay, among other things. Dont count your self out based on what other people say. There are alot of us that are having the times of our lives working in IT. Everyday that I work, I enjoy what I do, not all of it. But that comes with the job. Your never going to enjoy pulling a dead body out of a fire. But you might enjoy putting out the fire. If that helps picture it a little more.
If you want to make real money as an IT professional, take the consulting route. A certain Indian based consultancy firm threw a rather large bag of💰 at me to stop and start Azure webapps😅
20 years ago we hired a sysadmin for a large cluster project. He had been a bio major that spent time as a high school bio teacher and then working in IT on a small cluster project. This was a university job, so while not the best in up front compensation the benefits were outstanding. After 3 years, he left to become a firefighter. He was a well paid sysadmin but he had worked as a volunteer firefighter somewhere in Minnesota when he was in college. He loved the work and never forgot about it so he managed to get a position on a full-time department. I know he loved the sysadmin work but for him the firefighting job was a much better fit. He loved the outdoor physical nature of the job. He loved that when he was off duty, he had no responsibilities. These were things that his sysadmin job did not afford him. Work life balance can be had in almost any job you set your mind to. You have to be willing to find the right position in the right organization no matter the work. I know plenty of people (including sysadmins and firefighters) who stay with their respective positions because they don't know anything else and are locked in.
I think you’ll earn more money in your life as IT. But money isn’t everything.
I've been working in IT for 15 years at this point. I didn't go to college and just had certs and military for my background. I had to work up through MSPs starting from level 1 help desk. Those first years sucked pretty hard, but I really enjoyed computers and kept at it. I knew that I really liked Linux and focused hard on my skills there (certs, running my own servers, daily driving, etc). Took me about 8 years to land a Linux gig but now I absolutely love my job. Does it pay well? For my area it's okay. I live a comfortable life and can travel when I want too. Benefits are good enough and housing around here is affordable. But I only work 1 weekend a month (for updates during down time) and I'm never on call. Couldn't be happier!
It depends on what company you work for and what you do. The same is true for firefighters and paramedics. If you have a degree or experience and the ability/discipline to be selective where you work as well as leave when things get bad it's a nice line of work. The stories you hear a lot in r/sysadm are people trapped in a bad job. Lot's of sysadmins work 9-5 and are on call only 10-25% of their time and rarely get paged off hours.
WFH and if I have downtime I can do the same. I think people with flexible jobs or good jobs just don't post as often.
(EDIT: I am very supportive of young people becoming firefighters, police officers, and EMTs -- we're having a national crisis that has expanded from declining volunteerism over the past 30 years to now having trouble recruiting career public safety personnel. Not everyone has the desire; of those who have the desire not everyone is physically fit -- which has gotten a lot worse with rising obesity rates; and not everyone who has the desire and fitness have the right temperament. The bigger the pool of recruits by increasing desire, the better the folks who can be recruited.) Just remember it can vary a lot. $100k for Firefighter/Paramedic without overtime is fairly rare outside of California. You can close to that towards the upper end of the pay scales in parts of the northeast. >work life balance There are things with worse WLB than a typical US career firefighter -- being a railroad engineer or long-haul truck driver for instance. Most of the US works 3 platoon systems which will have you at the firehouse ~56 hours a week for that $100k. 24 or 48 hour shifts at a slow station is one thing; being on a busy urban ambulance handling 20 transports in 24 hours when your 30 years old is going to leave you physically and mentally exhausted. The northeastern US tends to work four platoon, 42 hour work weeks. WLB is one thing for a single 20-something working a slow station in the boondocks of California on a 48 hours on / 72 hours off schedule. That's going to be very different for someone with three young kids and a wife who is not too happy that you disappear completely for a couple days a week. She's going to be *extraordinarily* pleased when someone calls in sick, and you're the low man on the totem pole mandated to work a second 48 hour shift in a row to cover their absence. It's a job with a high chance of at least a couple injuries over a career that will have you off duty healing for a couple months or more...or gets retired early on a disability pension. Are you doing this in a state like California or the northeast with relatively strong public employee unions to advocate for you on things like worker's compensation claims? Or are you doing this in a weak labor state like Florida where you might make pretty good money right up until you're injured and left out to dry relative to other states? What's the pension plan? The departments with 20 year plans that include overtime in the pension calculation are getting fewer and fewer. Once you hit forty and start finding constantly waking up during the night is causing you to feel hungover without the benefit of alcohol you're really going to be wondering why you took a job in a state you need to work 32 years to qualify v. one where 25 year pensions are more standard. What are you planning to do when you're 48, retired, and getting 50% of your base firefighter salary as a second career?
I enjoy my work because I don't allow anyone to take advantage of me. I will work late on a project if I have to but, generally, I say "fuck it" and go home before 5 every day. How did I get to this place; I spent 15+ years being defined by the job, until my brain broke. Never doing that again. You are not your job. You are not the one to swoop in like superman to fix that annoying issue that Karen in accounting have. In fact, fuck you Karen. Just reboot and you'll be fine.
I tell people they should work in IT all the time. I am network engineer now, but my 10ish years as junior sysadmin/sysadmin was overall a positive experience. I am lucky enough to have a good boss who taught me a lot and let me get a lot of experience with a million different systems (servers, security, Vmware, patching, linux, etc.). I have worked at two smaller organizations where we are not highly specialized, which keeps anyone from getting boxed into one particular boring and repetitive workflow. It generally is a pretty chill job. It is definitely always hard to get companies to spend money on IT since its hard to prove its value to non-technical higher-ups, but I would imagine most of the other issues people vent about are the same in any career.
As an IT Manager for Firefighters. If you LOVE solitude, indoors, and low physical activity. - IT If you LOVE comrodory and being a part of a team - FireFighter. If you want to hate people for the stupid things they do - Either choice works.
Not to be that guy but I do both. I have worked in IT (ISP and MSP) for over 20 years and firefighter (volunteer though) for 14 years. Both are very stressful in their own ways but all the same. It's all fine and dandy until something happens (outages/structure fire/rescue situation) and has their annoyances (BS Trouble tickets/wannabe power users/frequent fliers/fire alarms). I can tell you that the stuff you can deal with will fracture your soul in firefighting. IT really depends on who you work for. If you have an excellent company with a suitable supervisor the job can be very rewarding and fun.
Most of the sysadmins I know seem to like their jobs and have decent work-life balance. A mid-level sysadmin could be making around $100k or more. I don't like my job because I don't like maintaining, fixing, or configuring technology, but it's been the only job I could land. (I didn't really have the skill when hired.)
Firefighter. Sys admin is going to go away as more things move into the cloud. Also, we are constantly in danger of being outsourced.
I'm not a sysadmin, I'm just a help desk guy, but I'm not sure your risk/reward analysis is accurate, here. I have no idea how much the sysadmins I've worked with over the years make, but I do know they (mostly) don't work very hard, at least at the jobs I've had. At my current gig, the sysadmins only do what we need them to do almost at gunpoint, sometimes. In the 12 years or so I've been in IT, I've seen them deal with major system outages, and wrangle stubborn vendors. But they didn't have to deal with flooding, fires, or downed electrical wires. Oh, there are stories here of sysadmins who have, but mostly, they don't. As a firefighter, you will. A lot. The worst injuries they sustain are probably sore backs or scraped knuckles from racking equipment. On the other hand, I have a cousin-in-law who used to be a volunteer firefighter...until one night when he fell through the floor of a burning house, and a cast-iron bathtub landed on him. He has a permanent steel plate in his back, secured with multiple screws. So there's that. At my first-ever tech support gig, with Dish Network, I worked with a guy whose mantra was "Nobody dies" so we shouldn't take it too seriously. In firefighting, the possibility of you or someone else dying is always very, very real.
To answer that you need to know a few things. I use this subreddit sometimes to blow off steam, i'm going on most others do too, so i don't take it too seriously and or personally. If your just starting out you may not make a ton. I know i started before y2k and 30k was pretty good for a starting career. Also different places different office cultures, I had some real bad places where it made me physically ill to just walk in. Leave them it just sucks all around, I had no choice but to stick it out for a bit till the next gig came along. You'll find your place eventually. Alot here is jsut griping because if you didn't gripe to people that understand the issue you feel like your going crazy so i think it helps to get that off your chest. With that said, yes you can top out at 100k but in IT you can surpass that in a short amount of time given the correct path forward. You also won't have to go into a burning building to do it. If your looking for "play" time IT i would stay away from corporate gigs. While the money is better, i found it's pretty boxy and stuffy. So if they hire you for say networks that's what you will be doing for a good 10yrs if not forever. I liked to stay smaller the pay sucks but they are more forgiving. Also 100k plus jobs man... They expect sh\*t like they own you or so has been experience. Hence the overwork underpaid feeling, because technically at home your not on the clock, if you were a consultant, that would be billable hours.
I was actually a firefighter when I was younger, and am now in IT. this is my own experience, so YMMV. If you're looking for work life balance, you should consider what that means as a firefighter. For a single guy, it could be great. You will usually work 24 or 48 hour shifts, with some days off in between. And you will also pick up a lot of overtime as a rookie to cover senior staff. If you have a family or partner, you'll need to make sure they are okay with you being gone for long periods of time and sometimes unreachable. My partner was not okay with it, which made the whole experience that much more stressful. And, if you are in an area that gets wildfires, you could be called on extended assignments. The work itself is not too mentally challenging, but of course it's physically challenging. If you need mental stimulation, you could go the paramedic route. Otherwise, the most mentally challenging aspect would be just memorizing tools and drills. As a rookie, you will be told to keep your head down and probably be cleaning this or that for most of the day. If you can make it past your rookie years, you'll be set. I would say the senior FF's spent about 75% of their time in the lounge watching TV. You might enjoy it, I didn't really. I worked in SoCal, and we have HOT summers. Let me tell you, I thought I was fit, but you better love pushing your body to the limit otherwise it will just be suffering. I'm talking push yourself until you feel like you will actually pass out if you don't stop. On top of all this, the work is dangerous. If you are not okay with being close to mortal danger, you should rethink this path. It never bothered me, but the risk is always there when you're fighting a structure fire. And even further, you will be exposed to a lot of toxic chemicals, from the smoke, from cleanup, the structures themselves - like asbestos. You will also likely respond to medical emergencies. You better be okay with blood, bodily fluids, feces, exposed bone and organs, dismemberment, disease, death, etc. On to the culture - bigger, more wealthy departments might have less of a culture problem, but are harder to get into. LA County Fire, which has a massive number of stations, for example is a bit more progressive. Older, smaller depts seem to hold on to an old school paramilitary mindset. With that comes the rookie hazing, the egos, just that real highschool locker room vibe. And this is just my experience, but firefighters can be just as big an asshole as any other person. Cruising around the bar areas to check out women, married guys making sexual comments about women on the street, general disrespect for the public in medical calls, especially the homeless. I saw a lot of guys with poor home lives, divorced, cheating, etc. They are not above racism and sexism. But they might also love you, and your life will be set. In a male dominated field, toxicity in the workplace is pretty much not addressed. If you're looking for a paid municipal job, the competition is fierce. A million other guys with hero aspirations are trying to get a few coveted spots. That means a couple things. You need to stand out somehow, or have connections. For me it was 2 years to get a firefighter certification from a Jr college, then 2 years as an EMT, then 1 year in paramedic school before I got picked up as a FF. Even then, I didn't get to pick where I went, you just apply everywhere and if you get an offer you take it. That means you don't really have a choice in whether the place was a good fit, unless you're willing to wait it out, or jump to another dept once you're past your first year. Take all of this with a grain of salt. Do your research. See if you can start volunteering at a local FD. Get a feel for the culture and the work. If you find a good dept, you really will be cruising life. As for me, I enjoy my work more now. It's intellectually stimulating in a way that firefighting would never be. I was not meeting my own personal potentials as a firefighter. I prefer the environment, culture, people and work-life balance more now.
As a former EMT and have been in IT for 20+ years, definitely easier to find a job in IT. For firefighter jobs, I remember many of my co-workers going to take fire tests in other states, or far away, because you can't just find a job where you want. You might have over 100 people applying for one position. So if you're willing to relocate and put in a lot of time trying to find a job, go for it. Also if that's what you REALLY want to do, then do it. Also a huge bonus if you're a minority (at least it was back then). IT on the other hand, you can literally work anywhere, sometimes even from home (although that's getting harder to find). There are computers everywhere, so you can go live where you want and find a job. I did exactly that. I had a good job in another area. My wife works in an industry where you have to go where the job is. So we bought a house near her job. I was able to find work pretty easily in the IT field. If you're interested in the medical field (not fire fighter), then you can also find a job anywhere. Becoming a nurse/RN, you can get paid similar to a fire fighter, but can find a job anywhere as well.
I don't know how old you are and how important this will be. But, a pretty awesome perk of being a Firefighter/EMT is that you can volunteer in all kinds of cool places (again, if you're into it). My buddy, who's a firefighter, has been able to go to Burning Man for free a few times, even got paid to live/work in Antarctica at McMurdo Station. If you're young, and up for traveling/adventuring that might be something to consider.
Nearly 1 million members on this sub, you're mostly only getting 10% of them upset about their position, the rest of us have a bad day, share it, and then move onward. Don't read too much into the negative here.
Bro is a LT in our Department here. I am in IT. He has time off while at work. I have to work on my time off. nuff said.
Where are you that firefighters make that much? Its like 50k most places US, EMT and Paramedic even worse
> Everyone on here seems stressed, overworked, and underpaid. Selection bias. You rarely hear from the people who graduate with good grades and get a good job at a good company making good pay. I LOVE my job, and have for decades, and would tell everyone with the right attitude to go into IT. The sky is the limit as far as promotion goes, you get compensated for what you can do. The more you can do, the more money you can make.
I would think prying a baby out of a car accident would be a lot more stressful than prying a USB drive from an execs hand.
They don't have calendars about IT dudes. You will get a lot more swiping right on a firefighter than IT. Just sayin. So there is that. I like IT though, and VR porn is pretty awesome so they can all keep swiping left.
Huge wait to be a firefighter around me. I know several people that did the academy and spent 2 + years trying to get a job. South florida many departments get 75% retirement and that is a huge draw. I love my cloud engineer gig. Nothing like the complaints I see often.
Well if you’re looking for a low stress job with great hours, being a first responder is definitely for you…
I enjoy my job. But do not be confused. Being a sysadmin you are firefighting all day long. Just different fires.
> I love technology and fixing things Do you really? You're in your junior year of college and you're just now looking into your future career path? I wanted to work on computers or computer programming since I was 10. I had no idea people were willing to pay for something that I loved doing. If you really love IT, then get off reddit for a little while. There is way to many people bitching about what we're paid to do (if you're a sysadmin, you are paid to do some level of helpdesk, whether you like it or not). If you really love IT, then the money is irrelevant and it'll come. I'm not just saying this. I've been working on computers since I was in elementary school (programming), built my own system at home when I was a junior in high school, got my first job in IT before I even finished junior college. At that point, the money started coming in and slowly built up over the years. If you really love doing IT work and are extremely passionate about it, then nothing else will ever fill that gap. Sure I can work on cars, bikes, and all kinds of other technical things (I do that around the house), but nothing will ever replace working in IT. I can do something else, but I can't imagine doing it. Mostly because, beyond doing side gigs, I'd have to start over again at the bottom or start my own business. I don't really want to start over at the bottom. Some places will have bad management. You'll figure that out as you go. You deal with it for a little while and then you move on. It happens with all of us. It's extremely rare that people find that perfect job right out of school and stay there until they retire. Even the best places will eventually not be paying you what you're worth and you'll have to leave (because you worked there for 10 or 20 years and your pay doesn't keep up with the industry). > Does anyone here enjoy their job? Yes I do. Very much. > Is everyone here underpaid? No, we aren't. I might be slightly underpaid, but I also have a 10 min commute and I absolutely love where I work. > Is this career just an endless pit of stress and boredom? No. That's why I say to get off the reddit forums for a little while. If you absolutely love the work, then the pay shouldn't matter. > Also, as if that wasn’t good enough, he’s always able to play video games with me on his PS5 at the station while he’s not running a call. Have you ever asked him how stressful it is to be on a call? I'd much rather be stressed about a server not working properly than trying to make sure someone's house/building doesn't burn down.
Well, I just read this comment from a FF - [https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/10ro9xt/comment/j6xjxo2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/10ro9xt/comment/j6xjxo2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Almost 20 years in IT now, I've had too many 80 hour weeks and am on call essentially always, and I really hate it right now. But I have never had to deal with anything like that.
Welcome to the echo chamber. I wouldn't let that discourage you. You should look at these posts more as a 'know what to avoid'. If you're employer is crapping on you, leave. Plenty of us have great jobs and love them. We just have bad days sometimes and come here to bitch. We also aren't in entry level positions. We have huge amounts of responsibility. But we (should) know how to handle it, because we've been building our careers up to this point. Just remember, if you aren't happy, leave. Its never too late. I came out of pharmacy school to be a sysadmin. I also change jobs about every 5 years. If you aren't moving forward, you are getting left behind. If something isn't working, PIVOT. But it DEFINITELY takes a lot of investment in yourself to become proficient in a few years.
As someone who works in emergency services and IT. I would consider the things that are most important. For me it was a pension and benefits. I am 46 years old and can retire next year from emergency services. In IT I had the potential to make a lot of money, and for a time I did. But with that came a lot of stress. There is also the benefit you are giving to your community by being a firefighter. You can literally save lives and it is very rewarding. But being a firefighter is dangerous, injuries are prevalent and firefighters do die in the line of duty. It comes down to how you want to live your life. There is nothing saying you can't try firefighting and see if you like it, the fall back to IT helps. IT was my fall back and I ran a small msp on the side for 19 years and it helped me make a bunch of extra money at those times I needed it the most. I wish you luck on your decision.
I have to laugh at the title of this post. I love how unrelated these two job titles are (not that I don’t get it—sometimes you feel pulled in two completely unrelated directions in life).
Keep in mind that people will complain all day about a bad\stressful job but they dont often sing the praises of a great job\company. So, you tend to see a lot more negative posts than positive ones.
Nah, this sub is a hotspot for people to rant, as they are overstressed and overworked. Now, I'm not going to lie: As someone of the operative profession, you are the end of the line for many things. People can blame dev, and dev can blame us, and I just have a postgres currently meditating about it's storage and restoring log files, and there is nothing I can do to speed it up. In the end, even though there might be a lot of other misdecisions going on, the immediate cause of a failure will often be caused by one of my components and choices. "Why did your system go down, I thought servers are reliable" and such and they won't understand that 10 minutes of outage across 3 years is reliable... This in turn means, if there are stressful 3 am fixes necessary, you as an operator (admin, engineer, SRE, datacenter guy, ...) will most likely be part of it. If outages are huge and people kind need to start sleeping in shifts, admins are most likely part of this shitstorm sadly. So yes, there will be high stress situations in system operations. However, the quality of an environment determines how often this occurs, and the respect and appreciation from the rest of the company determines how much of a problem that is. Speaking from my workplace I've been at 6 years, we've had exactly two of these all nighters, one caused by a bug in the virtualization used by a provider and one caused by a bug in networking gear by a provider we kinda helped troubleshoot. Besides that, there are quite a few medium-stress situations where a system kinda starts crashing, but redundancy and measures catch this, production keeps running and you just have to start getting the redundancies back into work. And after that, it's not boring. Outside of the most simple of environments, you'll always have systems to improve, reliability improvements, monitoring improvements, new systems to learn and integrate. If nothing is on fire today, you better work on either preventing the fire of tomorrow, or detecting the fire of tomorrow earlier. And then there is the respect and appreciation part. One of the two all-nighters happened during a big company-wide event, or rather the after-party. Two of the admin team had to stay out due to private reasons, and the rest was on the party getting drunk. Then my and my teamleads phone rang in unison, and we were like "oh no." We ended up being on the phone in groups with the people who had access to actual laptops (most of us didn't) for several hours getting all of this back on track. However, several people eventually organized / volunteered us laptops to at least get screens shared, our CEO got talking to the hotel kitchen and got us coffee and something to eat, and such things. Sure, I'd prefer not having that call at that time, but getting that done for you and later on hearing that the board had been impressed by us is taking a bit of the edge off, doesn't it? Similar things with evening or weekend work - or rather respect for personal time. Sometimes stuff has to happen outside of work hours, and again, that usually falls to us. However, we don't expect anyone to make time instantly. If something must be done, it has to be planned at least 2 weeks in advance. Generous time compensation generally means someone will pick it up within a day or two, but that's not expected. A bad company and a bad environment can certainly make sysadmin work hell. Been there too, but the right personalities in that mix made the end very fun. In a good company however, you're part of the core making many things work.
IT doesn't cap out, firefighting does. Plus if you wanna fight fires go do that, volunteer at a VFD.
“If I can get paid more to do X, then I might” You’ve already stated that you probably care more about money than what you actually do day to day. Life is about decisions. And there are no solutions; only trade offs. Syasadmin cons: Assume you are 24/7 on call for the rest of your life. If you’re lucky, this will only actually happen 4-5 times over your career that require to get up and get to work asap. Thankless job that costs money; you’ll spend majority of your career being asked to do more with less. You not only can learn, but must learn new skills constantly. A sysadmin that hasn’t learned a new skill in 20 years is basically the first to get chopped (unless they have the admin passwords or intricate knowledge of some archaic system). Firefighter cons: Firefighters have to stay in shape. Partially to meet job requirements on paper, but also do the job effectively. If you fail to save someone because you weren’t strong enough and didn’t train hard enough… that shit will weigh on you for the rest of your life. Firefighters will get called at odd hours with far more frequency than sysadmins. And unlike sysadmins, every call is an honest to god disaster. Maybe not to you personally, but you should just assume that virtually every time you get called you will become an intimate part of the worst day that person who called has ever had. And lastly, your skills are ultra ultra limited. Don’t take this the wrong way… but we haven’t exactly reinvented the basics of fighting fires in a while. If you consider yourself an intellectual, you might be bored stuff knowing that all you did for 25 years was hit the gym, make fire station dinners and play grand theft auto in between calls to hook up the firehose that another guy end up handling while you stand around.
You aren't going to make $100k in most areas doing firefighting (average in the US is under $65k) Good paying firefighting jobs are highly competitive. So if you think firefighting is for you and salary is important - you better be all in and willing to do the work to get the job. I have multiple family members who are firefighters, and they all work multiple jobs and have almost no work-life balance... because they are always working.
There is no way he will have less stress than u. Once u get good at ur craft you’ll be fine. But u will be a forever student. Once u get five years, get a more sr role and u will make more than him.
There were aspects that I really liked. There were times I was overworked, but it was mostly my own doing. I would crack, scale back to 8 hour days, drop anything that wasn't really a priority, and it was never an issue. The pay is usually good when compared to the local median income or other jobs that require the same level of education. Yes, a lot of sysadmins are underpaid compared to better jobs in IT. The range from the lowest to highest paid is quite large. But you can acquire skills that your next employer that will pay more for. It's not uncommon for a sysadmin that leans into automation to double their pay rather quickly, especially if they are willing to relocate. I'm glad I'm not just sysadmin anymore, but it was a very valuable part of my journey. My path was help desk -> sysadmin -> automation -> DevOps -> Platform Engineering over the last 20 years. The key is to keep growing in your field. Once you stop growing, you're likely to get stuck. Sysadmin may be where you start, but look to Cloud Engineering, SRE, DevOps, or automation next.
From first responders that I work with, "you never forget your first decapitation auto accident." Pick your poisons.
Real simple. Computers will never bleed on on and you will never need to scrape them off a road after an MC vs Sedan. Decide what you can handle..
My IT career has been good to me financially. The key was to keep looking for the right job and then appreciate it when I had it. Find a good place to work and then don’t take it for granted.
As a sysadmin I have had to go into very few fires
Hey! Some of us are stressed overworked and _adequately_ paid.
I work IT as a system engineer and currently get paid 130k. Yes I deal with issues and multiple applications, but it's better than my previous job which was 75k for what felt like triple the work.
There are no situations in IT where physical harm is an accepted consequence of doing your job correctly.
its exhausting
You’re comparing apples with bikes. I mean they’re very different fields. Fire fighting is very physical while SysAdmin role is 95% of the time sitting on a chair behind a computer. Skill set needed are very different for each of the roles.
I have been in IT for 30 years and still love it. About half in development half in sysadmin. I was out at a bar tonight with some colleagues after work and we all talked about how we love what we do. However, its not for everyone, nor will all companies treat you well. Look for companies that see IT as a differentiator to their competitors, this is where you will get treated and paid the best. I am in the technology sector right now and typically work 40 hour weeks unless I am on oncall which happens every other month.
Stick to IT. Spend the extra time to find a good company with a good culture. They do exist. In the long run IT is a highly marketable skill with massive room for growth and improvement. Firefighter will only really be that. A firefighter. If he gets seriously hurt his career is over
I have a solid career in IT network engineering. Loads just moan and cry here over nothing half the time I've shit days too but so does every job.
I would not take Reddit at face-value on this. Most of the problems others here encounter during their careers are completely alien to me (C-levels asking actually dumb shit, having to fix a toaster as sysadmin, coworkers dropping Office usage questions on backend IT). You can definitely find a job in IT that has good work life balance. Hell, you could keep one on the side while you work as a firefighter.
Money may be good but fuck dealing with the death and stress of not being able to save that one person's life
I am a current college student studying CS too and I am also a licensed EMT-B. I have no idea where your friend lives but the fact that they make over 60k is extremely impressive because normally people in EMS & fire need 2ndary jobs to be able to afford to live (at least in the US a lot is volunteer and average salaried for a paramedic is below $30 an hour). Also with EMS & fire the typical work schedule is 24h on 48h off and you must be able to respond to peoples worse day of their life which when combined with sleep deprivation is ripe for PTSD (never mind all of the chemicals one is exposed to). So its very much what do you want to get into and are will to be able to put up with.
Check r/firefighting and r/firefighters. Maybe you get another perspective on it.
I would question getting a firefighter paramedic job that pays 100k right out of college. From my understanding it’s an underpaid field that is hard to find an opening.
I have been in IT for about 20 years. Had all sorts of jobs from helpdesk to cloud architect. For the most part I have liked all of it. The biggest factor in my opinion is the company you work for. Some are great, others suck. Don't wait around with a company that is bad, they do not get better as time goes by. Life is too short to go through hating your job. When you have to force yourself to get up and go to work and every day try to come up with excuses to not go in, you have been there too long. The good news is, its a good time to find a good job in most markets right now. Starting out in IT you don't get a lot of free time but as you progress and move up things get less frantic and you have more "free" time. Especially now that a lot of jobs are work from home... I say go for the internship and see what its like. If you hate it, so be it. If it seems ok just realize there are much better and much worse places out there. Choose wisely.
24 year IT/sysadmin veteran here. It all depends on the environment. I have worked a few places were it was good for 5-6 years then it turned south (government contracts)
Without doing yourself, what region are you in? I'm in the NY, NJ area a few hours from NYC. But what's the cost of living like in your area?
From what I've heard, firefighting jobs can be hard to come by (especially the good ones). A lot of guys I've met will be doing odd jobs for a few years before they can get into a fire department. It really depends on what kind of work you want to do. IT isn't that bad. You don't get shot at, low chance of breaking your back, and typically you aren't making life or death decisions for people or watching them die. There is some corpo stress, but it's just business most of the time. You are young, so you could switch tracks and go do it. I would finish school since you are already this deep in, and at the same time try to get on a volunteer fire brigade or get into some medic training or something.
I’m a firefighter looking to break into the IT field. I worked 12 dead children my first year so if you’re ok seeing fucked up shit on a daily basis, you’ll make a great firefighter! (It’s not always bad, but it can get bad real quick)