I know many of us may love blogging, but may not be bringing in enough money to make a full-time job out of it. I can certainly understand that and have struggled from time to time in order to pay my owns bills, but I have always picked up extra work when those slower times come. With such a need in mind, I wanted to put together a list of different tech jobs (as I’m a bit of a geek techie) and list off where the salaries are with them. The great thing about these tech positions is that they do not necessarily require a regular degree. Many can be obtained through industry certification and can include ways to go about this at your own pace – allowing you to more quickly gain accreditation and a job. Many of these jobs also occur on the best tech job list at USnews so you know they’re not going away soon.
Network Engineer:
Engineers make anywhere from $50,000 to over $100,000 per year depending upon how much experience they have and their credentials. Engineers typically design, implement and manage computer networks.
Network Administrator:
Administrators make anywhere from $45,000 per year to $75,000 per year. Administrators typically work for Network Engineers and maintain a network once it’s up and running.
Network Security Engineer:
They make $75,000 to $250,000. Do the same thing as a Network Engineer except they also understand what it takes to make a network secure. Many of these guys are certified hackers (also called certified penetration specialists) and can hack into most networks.
Application Developers:
$50,000 to $150,000 per year. These are programmers that develop custom applications for companies and for websites.
Programmers:
$50,000 to sky’s the limit. Use programming languages to build custom applications, web design and functionality, video game programming, etc…
Web Developers:
$50,000 to sky’s the limit. Use programming skills to develop interactive websites that typically link to databases and internal custom developed business applications.
There are hundreds of positions available in the Information Technology industry. These were just a few.
Most companies want to see applicants with certifications. Certification are sometimes vendor specific such as Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, Systems Engineer or specific credentials that provide evidence that you can perform a specific job function. Other companies want to see non-vendor-specific certifications like CompTIA A+ PC support (exams 220-801 & 220-802), Network+ Certified Network Administrator (exam N10-005 or N10-006), Security+ Exam SY0-401 and Linux+. While a high school diploma is a must, certifications are typically more valuable than a college degree. The great thing here is that depending upon your tech knowledge already, it’s quite possible that you can take a course that has a Network+ or Security+ practice test and between the study course and actually practicing exact test questions and categories, you may be able to gain your certification extremely quick.