Windows Admin/Consultant contracts ?

[dax81]

Hi all,

I hope this is correct place to post my question: Now I am working on 2 level Wintel

MS OS (NT, 2000, 2003), MS Exchange (5.5, 2000, 2003), clusters support and troubleshooting
VmWare : Provisioning Virtual Machines on VMware ESX 2.5, 3
Monitor performance of physical servers and virtual machines
SQL server (7, 2000, 2005) – installing and administrating

I am Mcse, and I have 7 years working experience, I am not in UK and I never worked there, can somebody tell me how the market is going now for Microsoft contracts ?

Thanks in advance,

[ruth11]

I'm doing fine thanks!

[TykeMerc]

MCSE carries a lot less weight in the UK than it used to do, there are an awful lot of "paper" MCSE's these days and so it's lost a huge amount of credibility.

Support work doesn't pay particularly well here any more due to the number of people competing for the roles, the fact that most of the people competing are completely useless in practical terms doesn't hold the rates up.

[ruth11]

MCSE carries a lot less weight in the UK than it used to do, there are an awful lot of "paper" MCSE's these days and so it's lost a huge amount of credibility.

Support work doesn't pay particularly well here any more due to the number of people competing for the roles, the fact that most of the people competing are completely useless in practical terms doesn't hold the rates up.

In all seriousness, I've got to agree with the above. Although not about the MCSE part - a lot of agencies won't even put you forward for interview if you're not MCSE qualified because of the sheer number of applicants for each role. They've got to use something as a filter.

Most companies don't pay well for support, especially 2nd line. To get decent money you have to work for one of the large outsourcing companies. 3rd line also not great, but you can get more as long as you can do project work as well.

[TykeMerc]

Yup, MCSE used to be a sign of an exceptional candidate, these days it's just a basic tick in the box.

There are an awful lot of people who've taken hothouse/bootcamp Microsoft qualifications or fallen for the "average salary in IT is £37k" rubbish and taken those courses and as a result there are loads of applicants.

The rates a friend of mine gets who insists on staying in support are less than half what I could get over a decade ago.

[dax81]

mcse

I mentioned mcse because of this reason, agencies will not even look in CV if you don’t have it, sadly but true I know a dozen of people with ms cert. and they don’t know have a clue about the job, worst example was one guy who didn’t knew where/what is boot.ini and the list goes on,
Even if I am working (and I mean like a employee not like other “experienced” XP home users guys) for the last 8 years I can say that I am lucky if I know 70-80 % from all related issues and problems which are related with MS servers, currently I am working for a corporate and I had enough of procedures and idiots around me, slowly I realized that I am not progressing anymore, in fact I start became a robot so I am thinking to change it asap.

[Pete Cullen]

Most definitely. A number of agency and also permie positions now state the candidate must be an MCSE. That was one of the contributory factors for me finishing mine earlier this week and updating to the 2008 stuff as well.

The Wintel support market really does seem to be a stagnant area, my last two gigs have been through personal contacts rather than agencies and the rates are far from stellar. Of course still better than permie positions but I'm looking at other areas to try and bolster the income when I leave my current role.