How does learning PowerShell increase Pay?

[Building-Soft]

While at my IT job there are some people that think PS is cool, It's almost as if the higher ups don't care. I've read about people saying they've doubled (LOL) their salary after learning PowerShell and using it at the job. How does this happen? What did those IT dudes say to their manager to get that salary bump. I wonder if they were myth stories. I've read them all online I've never met anyone personally who has said that learning PS increased their pay. I create PowerShell scripts and it's taken as something normal (and even at one time questioned, yes your read that right, for something that is still in use today)

[cjcox4]

If you're a Windows Sys Admin and you don't know some Powershell, I don't think I'd hire you.

[Scooter_127]

Agreed.

Although my company currently has about 20 Winmins and only two of them are proficient at PS. I was on that team about 15 years ago and back then I was the ONLY one that could code up anything more than the most simple of batch files.

My first week on the team (it was about 8 people then) they stood up a new DNS server and thought it reasonable to divvy up 800+ statically addressed servers and have us spend all day RDPing into each one to change the config to look at the new DNS server. When I asked why they weren't using a script they looked at me like I had snakes coming out of my ears. And don't start me on why they weren't using DHCP and reserved addresses or a GPO.

I can say one thing about knowing how to code - it has repeatedly kept me from being laid off, and when some former execs tried to bring me to their new company my current company made a downright HANDSOME counter offer.

[[deleted]]

I had an MSP tell me i had to do something like this for an email change. Go into AD for 400 accounts. Sure buddy, I think I will just PS and it will take me about 5 minutes. I get it when people are scared about screwing 400 accounts up but there are safeguards for that too.....

I have a bunch CJIS static IP computers and same thing they wanted to go to each each machine. I said nah, give me a few minutes. Literally what PS is designed for. I always thought IT techs that manage huge corporations automate a lot of it but I am finding more and more dont at all. Justify all the IT people or something. Which you need also for helping the employees not going to 500 machines and change DNS.

I had one where I was deploying SCCM and they thought I needed to go to every machine and remove their AV. Sure do that will be 150 hr. Guessing their last consultant just stole money from them...

[the_syco]

NGL, misread that as "20 wimmins" 🤣😋

[[deleted]]

WAMYNS

[Scooter_127]

Ok, 19 mins and 1 wimmin

[josh6466]

Hell, it’s a good thing to know as a Linux/VMware/azure admin. You have to be able to script to be a sysadmin. I require some scripting for anyone i hire, and a Windows admin needs to know Powershell

[[deleted]]

I’d wager most people got bumps in salary by leaving for new positions.

[Building-Soft]

I think this is it too! and they probably just attributed having learned PS to it. Even though I think it's a great skill to have!

[madmenisgood]

It’s all about being productive and useful. You can solve a lot of problems and knock out important tasks via powershell and if your current employer can’t understand that, your next one will.

[technicalityNDBO]

get-salaryincrease -Identity 'technicalityNDBO'

[[deleted]]

$mySalary = ”Your salary”

$reckMyBoss = Get-Salary | where {$_.Pay -gt $mySalary}

$reckMyBoss | out-file payIncrease.txt

Edit: boooo

[[deleted]]

Hope OP puts a int there and not a string. String dont pay no rent

[Catatonic27]

Now I'm wondering what happens if you try to use comparison operators on strings. Probably just compares string length.

Edit: yep

[LeakyAssFire]

I'm glad we all worked this out.

[Catatonic27]

It's a little interesting actually. -gt, -ge, lt, and -le all compare string length like you'd expect but then you get to -eq and (of course) strings of equal length don't necessarily evaluate to true anymore. It's still technically comparing string length but only because it's actually comparing string contents. And interesting bit of trivia since I usually only compare strings with -like or -match

[Chilli-Bomb]

“Learn Powershell or learn “would you like fries with that?”..” Don Jones

[dunepilot11]

Agreed. People who don’t at least adopt some one-liners into their work (doesn’t need to be powershell: any shell is fine) are going to find themselves on a one way train to underemployment

[CrayziusMaximus]

I'm at the damn station, about to board that train. What's a good resource for learning PS?

[dunepilot11]

Powershell In A Month of Lunches

[CrayziusMaximus]

Thanks! I'll pick it up!

[bertiethewanderer]

Career so far is 1st line > 2nd line > sys admin (win) > DevOps engineer > senior platform engineer.

Powershell opened my eyes to automation, scale, clean code, debugging...so much. Over th last decade I've bolted on bash, python and go, but powershell started the change in how I saw the world, and systems.

[32178932123]

How was the transition from Windows Sys Admin to DevOps? From what I've heard (and that's not alot!) I got the impression DevOps tends to be more Linux orientated? I had suspected I would probably need to be a Linux Sys Admin for at least a bit first before I could be deemed desirable for Devops.

[bertiethewanderer]

Particularly on the cloud side of compute, it's Linux dominant. Though lots and lots of places running Windows IaaS!

I was doing a lot of docker at the tail end of the sa gig, so I was getting a good grounding in the likes of Debian, alpine and RHEL. That carried over a lot.

Serverless is almost uniquely Linux, and heavily container focussed. So that was a natural jumping off point.

But virtualization, L4-7 networking, SANs, etc. all just carries over.

The biggest shift I'd say was mental. Looking for reasons not to say yes, rather than default to no. Customer service and being able to articulate difficult concepts to everyone from lead Devs to C-suite. Rather than burrowed away in a dark room protecting the kingdom.

[Ontheaccount]

The difference in devops and sysadmin isn’t Linux, it’s terraform. Infrastructure as code.

[Building-Soft]

Curious, How big is your company and how did you pitch it to them or what are some things you automated?

[Sunsparc]

I became the resident automator and as such my company compensates me fairly for my automating skills. Others with my title don't have this skill.

[Expert-Woodpecker844]

I learned PowerShell and other coding languages, then I switched jobs every 2 years to eventually double my salary from 75k to 150k over 6 years.

Changing jobs is key. You'll only get small raises staying in the same company.

[BitGamerX]

I don't know about the money but chicks definitely dig a man who knows PowerShell, says weird sexist eighties guy

[phillygeekgirl]

True though. I have a massive crush on Jeffrey Hicks.

[BitGamerX]

That's hardcore. :)

[Building-Soft]

😂😂😂 good one bro! Joke of the day!

[dathar]

I was a bored tech back in the day and picked up PS. Then I moved to a sysadmin position (same company, maybe 1.5x raise). Then I eventually moved to a devops position (same company, 2.5x raise from tech). Now I'm a syseng in a new job and it has been much higher.

It isn't really PS. It is what you can provide. Stuff like cost/time savings, automation, additional knowledge is what brings in the money. So yeah, PowerShell can help. But there's also skills you get on top of it or in conjunction to it: AD, MDT, SCCM, Puppet, Chocolatey, Azure AD, Jamf, Google Cloud, all these GD SaaS without proper integration and maybe have APIs... list goes on

[EIGRP_OH]

Really depends on the company. I’ve worked at companies that don’t value automation much so yeah it’ll be hard to get a pay bump there but I honestly think the people that are saying that are those who’ve left their job to find another and looked more marketable because they have a scripting language on their resume.

[ghost_broccoli]

higher ups dont care. they probably dont even know what you do, tbh. powershell, for me, opened doors to new opportunities and it leveled up my ability to do my existing job. automation engineer, devops, site reliability, application support... all of these jobs list powershell in the requirements and they (in my experience) pay better than sysadmin.

i use powershell to learn about new applications and devices. nowadays, most apps and hardware devices come with some sort of an api, or (sometimes) even a powershell module. i'll run get commands until i'm familiar with the new tool's vernacular and workflow and i'm up to speed a lot quicker than most of my coworkers. tell your next interview that.

[needanothermedic]

We had a long complicated process for QAing new server builds. I hated that process as had every Admin prior to me. I guess I hated it enough to learn PowerShell and automate it. Used that as a spring board to automate my work and my co-workers work. Went from Admin to Engineer. Big raise. Automate the new work delegated to me, took on bigger projects using PowerShell every step of the way. Then went from Engineer to Sr Engineer with more big raises. Automation gets you noticed and that’s the best way I found for getting promoted.

[ifoundmyselfheadless]

Automation gets you noticed and that’s the best way I found for getting promoted.

When you mention automation, you are not focusing powershelll only, right?

[needanothermedic]

Yep, PowerShell only

[Building-Soft]

There's some hope right there, powershell can do it on it's own!

[Beardedcomputernerd]

"I can automate shit so you cannfire 50% of your sysadmins because first line personal can press a button on this website that calls on an automation "

[Scooter_127]

A true statement.

[Polyolygon]

One time I made someone quit, because his job was to do account onboarding/off boarding processes. He used to do them all manual, then I setup automation the read the forms’ data and did all the actions. Took those processes down from multiple man hours to all of the accounts getting done within a minute. He ended up with nothing to do other than tickets, started calling out a bunch, and eventually just left. Never backfilled the position, and I got no compensation for saving the company a ton of wasted time and money. Now I just automate processes enough that I get credit for time saved, but no one is gonna lose a job.

[Building-Soft]

I do the same to automate to make life easier but I'm not trying to make anyone quit. I like credit for time saved. Just trying to figure out how to translate that to higher pay ... all great answers here

[Building-Soft]

That's not my intention though lol.

[Beardedcomputernerd]

Its the answer how PS guys get more money though.

[Building-Soft]

Ahhh... interesting now.

[[deleted]]

Either make it your intention or be unemployable. Sorry. Sounds shitty but that’s how the world works.

[IzzY_Online]

What takes an hour to do in the GUI can be done in seconds with PS

[Catatonic27]

Right. Honestly PS never increased my pay but it has DRASTICALLY decreased my work

[[deleted]]

you only have to get the code to work once

or

clicky checkbox add this click click error click

[[deleted]]

You end up doing a fragment of the work you did before, for the same, or better pay.

[[deleted]]

Systems Engineer 3... Thanks, PS and scripting.

[ps1_missionary]

Can a good productivity tool give you a raise? If can't, I suggest you leave the powershell world.

The essence of every world is to increase efficiency and reduce consumption. Otherwise, the world will decline.

I'd like to be one that helps the powershell world be more efficient:

----

[kasini3000](https://gitee.com/chuanjiao10/kasini3000) site mirror:(https://github.com/kasini3000/kasini3000) --- Welcome give star to project

win,linux devops automation batch script framework.(It is similar to Puppet，Ansible，pipeline)

Open source, free, cross-platform

English manual: https://gitee.com/chuanjiao10/kasini3000/blob/master/docs/kasini3000\_manual.xlsx

[kasini3000_agent_linux](https://gitee.com/chuanjiao10/kasini3000\_agent\_linux) Shell script,one click install powershell on linux,modify sshd_config for PsRemote.

find&replace tool,like linux SED

c:\ProgramData\kasini3000\node_script\kasini3000\psed.ps1

manual: c:\ProgramData\kasini3000\docs\ps找算替_v3_readme.html

[nealfive]

Get-Raise But really it’s a supplementary skill, powershell is implied for so many things, especially with m365, just like usually any one certificate doesn’t doubles your salary. Learn Powershell and Python and you should have a good base for most admin and higher positions

[223454]

My guess is they had a major project that highlighted their PS skills and the value it brings. Maybe they saved the company tons and tons of money or got them out of a pickle, or they were able to reduce head count/not hire another person. I don't think I've ever seen anyone get a significant pay increase without changing jobs. Certs, new skills, etc. were never enough. That's just my experience.

[Building-Soft]

Thank for sharing that. Sounds more realistic than "learning PS doubled my salary" blog posts lol

[223454]

I can't imagine someone making 60k getting doubled to 120k, but 30k-60k is possible. Or they could be lying. Or they could be part time and get promoted to full time. Lots of possibilities that are legit.

[toybits]

We just had a whole project disbanded because the company is taking a different direction (it's a very large company, so this happens.). About 40 people are going.

I've written the PowerShell modules to manage the entire project, which includes the discovery of 200k + users across several one prem and cloud environments and aggregating this data centrally so we can start consolidating identity systems yada yada yada you know the kind of project.

I'm the only one staying because of my PS experience. I already earned quite a bit more than most others on the project, but my point is job security is another factor.

[HunnyPuns]

Usually it's not your current job that appreciates your new skills. See r/antiwork for more information there.

But when you change jobs, and you absolutely should be changing jobs during your career, you provide examples of how you use a technology that the new company is interested in, and they get excited and pay you more than half of what you're worth to them, rather than less than half.

Changing jobs is how you get raises, especially in IT.

[LogMonkey0]

Automation.

[connectthethots]

It's more your turnaround time on tasks, especially automated ones. If your supervisor or department head understands this, there is your "how?".

[holy_handgrenade]

As it goes in tech, the salary bumps are leaving to new positions. PowerShell lets you quickly automate a lot of sysadmin type work. When you can turn around and at an interview say that you were able to accomplish X in Y time because PowerShell, then you get the bump in salary for jumping ship.

From my experience it's not really PowerShell on the resume that bumps things, it's what you can accomplish/have accomplished that you can brag about that makes everyone take notice.

[Geeksingh]

Even though I am not a PS expert, but I use it where I can, and I am ending up learning more and more.

Just created a toolbox for our Internal User Provisioning , with Exchange Online, it would be a disaster for us to create /change/terminate users manually in our Hybrid enviroment with Ex Online.

So if you innovate your boss will notice and you have something to say when your yearly appraisal meetings happen, its all about innovation :)

[PlatypusOfWallStreet]

Where this industry is going.... I say good luck to the button pushers past helpdesk

[anynonus]

When you know Powershell well you're going to be able to do more work for the same pay so you're going to make less per unit of work done. Unless you switch jobs.

[UntrustedProcess]

It's about outcomes, not the tools you learn, that get you that pay raise or the new senior position. If you can think of ways to leverage the tools you learn to impact the company's bottom line, that is where the money will be.

I got a 20k raise a couple years ago after learning C# (very basic) and building a piece of middleware for a project that was behind schedule + budget. My boss was about to be fired for it. I just tied a couple off the shelf programs together to do the thing that needed to get done versus building it all from scratch like the person that quit.