I bailed out years ago.... (Score 1)

There was a time that I was an MS-certified network admin. And then the "tech bubble" burst, and layoffs were rampant. And suddendly there basically was no IT job market unless you lived in one of the big cities like Chicago or NYC. And I have never in my life met somebody making $80,000+ in an IT position unless it was something like a district VP of IT for a large corporation... where they get these "averages" from continues to astound me. I didn't even make half of that when I was an admin. Add to that how the market has gotten to be such an employer's market that they basically try to hire IT Gods and pay them $12/hr to do it, while at the same time expecting them to invest huge amounts of time and money into training... Sorry, it's not worth it. If you managed to get one of the very, very few IT jobs that still pays well without running you ragged, consider yourself very lucky.