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> Firstly, if you are big enough, you can manage/architect your data centre better than a cloud provider. You can afford to hire staff to do it, and they can bu

> Firstly, if you are big enough, you can manage/architect your data centre better than a cloud provider. You can afford to hire staff to do it, and they can build something specific to your needs. Companies like this should be on-prem. It's interesting that competent engineers is only a question about cost to you. Where I am at (north of Europe) it's really hard to find good engineers. Even though it doesn't mean much about competence it's not mandatory for people in the IT industry to have a CS degree even if they're managing infrastructure in the cloud for millions every year. I've been working in the industry at different companies for a bit over 10 years and I would say that a huge majority is just an average person who knows basic concepts about infrastructure but wouldn't be able to design and implement any of it by their own. This includes network infrastructure for the biggest ISPs in the country. I work as a system engineer and the teams I've been working with the last 5 years, independent of company, have been looking for engineers constantly. The pay well and have great benefits but it's just not enough people out there to take these jobs and manage a full on-prem infrastructure. So a part of the money you're talking about that should be used to hire all these really competent people are instead used to pay for cloud services where we know that professional people with far more hardware (and software) knowledge is managing the infrastructure. And this is really convenient for a lot of companies.

tonyarkles 6y ago
> The pay well and have great benefits but it's just not enough people out there to take these jobs and manage a full on-prem infrastructure. I’m from a small province in Canada and we have similar problems here sometimes. One of the questions I sometimes have to ask clients when they make a statement like that is: “do you pay well for the area? Or do you pay well enough to attract talent from out-of-province?” This often leads to them arguing that “but the cost of living is low here!” And inevitably I have to mention my friends who left the province to go to the Bay Area for 10 years and came back with $500k USD in stocks they collected, on top of what they had left over after paying their high cost-of-living rent. I feel your pain. Companies running in less desirable areas have to somehow pay a premium for top tier talent. One way, as you mention, is to outsource, whether to cloud providers or part time contractors. This isn’t meant as a brag at all, but I do the independent contractor thing here and make “pretty darned good for the area” money. Inevitably clients will ask me to come work full-time for them, and we have a painful conversation where I tell them what my taxable income was the year before, as well as the investments I made into equipment and licenses I use to provide the services I provide. The result so far has always been to continue being happy with me as a part-time contractor! Edit: sorry for the typos, written on mobile with the swipe text thing
- tamiral 6y ago
  if it's ok to poke, can I ask what type of equipment and licenses? Is it like a home tech stack to test new infra setups on? p.s hope you're staying safe from COVID
cmendel 6y ago
How much do you think a competent System engineer should be paid?
- PreciousCarrot 6y ago
  I think that's way too hard to answer since it depends on so many factors. But again, my experience isn't that the pay is too low. It's not like there are 10 people coming to the interview with no one taking the offer because of the salary. It's more like no one have applied for the job in three months and the external recruiters sniping LinkedIn didn't find anyone. But to give some kind of estimate just so you know what page I'm at when I say they pay well I would say somewhere between $60-75k.
  - metalforever 6y ago
    too low.
  - cmendel 6y ago
    So I checked on glassdoor, which is known to lowball tech wages, for Washington D.C. So It isn't NY or Silicon Valley/Forest. The Median wage for a System engineer is 182K USD. At the current conversion rate that is 167.7K Euro. Unfortunately, that's your problem.

tonyarkles 6y ago

> The pay well and have great benefits but it's just not enough people out there to take these jobs and manage a full on-prem infrastructure. I’m from a small province in Canada and we have similar problems here sometimes. One of the questions I sometimes have to ask clients when they make a statement like that is: “do you pay well for the area? Or do you pay well enough to attract talent from out-of-province?” This often leads to them arguing that “but the cost of living is low here!” And inevitably I have to mention my friends who left the province to go to the Bay Area for 10 years and came back with $500k USD in stocks they collected, on top of what they had left over after paying their high cost-of-living rent. I feel your pain. Companies running in less desirable areas have to somehow pay a premium for top tier talent. One way, as you mention, is to outsource, whether to cloud providers or part time contractors. This isn’t meant as a brag at all, but I do the independent contractor thing here and make “pretty darned good for the area” money. Inevitably clients will ask me to come work full-time for them, and we have a painful conversation where I tell them what my taxable income was the year before, as well as the investments I made into equipment and licenses I use to provide the services I provide. The result so far has always been to continue being happy with me as a part-time contractor! Edit: sorry for the typos, written on mobile with the swipe text thing

tamiral 6y ago
if it's ok to poke, can I ask what type of equipment and licenses? Is it like a home tech stack to test new infra setups on? p.s hope you're staying safe from COVID

cmendel 6y ago

How much do you think a competent System engineer should be paid?

PreciousCarrot 6y ago
I think that's way too hard to answer since it depends on so many factors. But again, my experience isn't that the pay is too low. It's not like there are 10 people coming to the interview with no one taking the offer because of the salary. It's more like no one have applied for the job in three months and the external recruiters sniping LinkedIn didn't find anyone. But to give some kind of estimate just so you know what page I'm at when I say they pay well I would say somewhere between $60-75k.
- metalforever 6y ago
  too low.
- cmendel 6y ago
  So I checked on glassdoor, which is known to lowball tech wages, for Washington D.C. So It isn't NY or Silicon Valley/Forest. The Median wage for a System engineer is 182K USD. At the current conversion rate that is 167.7K Euro. Unfortunately, that's your problem.