[rescue] RE: Unemployment on the Rescue List?

[James Rice]

I only have A+, N+ certs.  I haven't seen a compelling reason to get any 
M$ certs.  The people  I have met who only had MCSE's didn't impress me 
too much.  Too much reading the book and no common sense.  Also they 
were very unbending.  Too much "Not the Official Microsoft Way, so we 
can't do it that way" for me.

I work for a small VAR/Intergrator (medical billing and POS systems).  
We are Wintel based, but not SQL.  Most of the customers are small 
offices, 2-50 desktops.  I wear several hats, cable rat, system admin, 
phone system admin, hardware geek, senior tech support, sales engineer, 
you name it, whatever.  Everyone fills 2-3 roles here, but we are pretty 
recession proof and slowly growing at  15-20% a year.  We hire 1 person 
a year, so there's not too much chance of a layoff.  I'm really not sure 
about pay scales, it's the only IT job, I've ever held.  I was a self 
employed electrical and control contractor who retired before I got this 
job.  There are only two techs at this point, but we will probably hire 
one more at the end of Q3-04 or early Q4.  I make considerably more 
($85k) than the other tech.   I think he probably makes around  $55k.  
My wife is a part-time sales/part-time trainer at the same company and 
she makes about $55k a year.  We share the same office, so we are 
together almost 24/7.  The company just hired a receptionist-CSR and she 
is starting out at $35k a year.

The company now employs 8 and it will do around 2.1 mil this year. We 
are scouting locations around the Dallas area  to build our own building 
next year or maybe 2005.  When I was a contractor, I ran around an even 
mil a year in sales , but had 12-14 employee's.  The margins for an 
industrial control contractor are razor thin.  I took a 50% a year pay 
cut to retire early and become an employee, but the loss of stress was 
worth every penny I don't make.

James

>So are the two of you "card carrying" Micro$Cert types, or did
>you manage to get your Wintel jobs without?
>
>(At this point I'd be more than happy with a desktop schlep-
>tech job.)
>
>=Nadine=
>

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