$50,000 a year starter. That's a complete joke! You would be lucky to be earning £13,000 a year after years of experience and a degree. There is no money in this business and it is constant hassle and stress from annoying stupid idiots!
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Um, whoever said there is no money in the business my dad is a computer repair technician making over $62,000 a year with 12 years of experience on top of that he is a Realtor, business broker, teacher and an accountant also owning his own small business for computers at PCCIA.
If you only making $13,000 a year then you must suck at computer repair and must not know any kind of repair. So yes you can make $50,000 a year but you start making usually $30,000 a year. If you charge prices for service around $100 per fix, $150 to virus clean, and so on and so forth. If this helped you then leave a comment on my youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/TheHelpfulGuy and visit www.pccia.com if you need computer help and need it fixed. Just say Corleone sent you.
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Guys.... honestly I live in a small town and the people in my town make about $80-90 an hour ... they make about $208,000 a year. And that's with just the degree, so you could be 21 and make the same amount of money as that.
How the hell would you make $208,000 a year fixing computer? what a complete and utter wanker? - who knows nothing about taxes etc... So your dad works 54 hours days in order to manage all these businesses - what a joker!
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This would be determine greatly by your location, and where you are working at I started at $28,000 a year with no experience and a two years degree (most job offer that I've received was lower) Friends of mine started at computer repair shops making much less (but gaining more experience)
With experience you can expect (depending on how much and what degrees you have) $35,000- $45,000 a year.
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Hi there, I've been in this field for years. I've worked for multiple companies in many different capacities.
I worked for Gateway Computers via a third party call center that they had outsourced in 2000 and my starting rate was USD 7.50 and I ended three years later at the same rate of pay with MANY more responsibilities. The company lost the contract however and we moved to supporting home electronics manufactured by Samsung. The pay was the same but the satisfaction was just not there.
I moved into a specialty field as an on-site technician for a company that manufactured computerized bingo systems making $27,000 salary with paid travel and ended four years later at $38,000 but again the work was not satisfying and the hours were terrible. I walked away from that and took a job as a depot tech in a small computer store just down the hill from a Best Buy.
The computer store I was in managed to compete with BB and a few other local stores for around 3 years and I loved my job. It was the only time I felt as if I were accomplishing anything and actually helping people. Our pricing schedule was fair and we tried our best to offer top notch service. I was eventually promoted to senior technician and was given the responsibility of on-site tech and I made $24,000 a year starting out and ended with around $28,000 when the shop owner closed the location because he felt we weren't making enough money. Although I enjoyed my job, I could barely pay my bills.
I managed to get back into the electronic gaming industry at around $38,000 a year plus travel and commissions but the work isn't as fulfilling to me as the time I spent at the computer shop. My current job has its ups and downs, for example... I'm salary but there are weeks that I may work 11 hours total. I'm still paid and I enjoy my freedom. I wouldn't do it otherwise. However, there are also weeks where I've worked nearly 80 hours just to get a project completed. It pays the bills though and I get to travel to some nice places.
Oh, I also freelance in my spare time but it's never amounted to a livable income and I'd love to know how the father of the poster above has managed to make so much. I'd gladly give up my job if I could make a steady income instead of $1000 one week and nil the next.
As an added bonus: My ex-wife worked as a GeekSquad agent and still does. She has been with GeekSquad for around six years and worked with me as a tech for Gateway before that. She started at around $8/hr and when we split around two or three years ago she was topped out at $9.50 but they only gave her around 20 hours a week. In my opinion, it's not worth it for the stress.
Hopefully the answer to your question is in there somewhere. Honestly, I'd say that if you were contemplating a career as a repair tech... consider manager of a fast food chain location instead... unless it's just your
raison d'
être. Cheers.
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I wanted to add my 2 cents to this, as "computer repair technician'' is very vague and is assuming you wish to repair PCs. There isn't any money in this line of work in the UK, and you *could* make more money working on a line in a factory. Fact. However, IT is incredibly diverse, and if you were to become highly accredited (no, I don't mean get a degree, complete and utter waste of time) in a popular platform - say, VMWare - you could very quickly earn salaries of 40, 50, 60k or upwards.
I'm now an architect, but as a system admin I was earning in the region of 45k plus car, benefits etc. I've now gone into pre-sales and am earning in the region of 70k plus benefits.
I'll just re-iterate about the qualifications; a degree is mostly, entirely, non-essential. You would be far, far better off studying a platform off your own back, or working in an environment as a junior where you can get access to enterprise class systems. From there you can decide, do you want to become a server guy, OS guy, storage guy, networking guy etc etc. Following on from that, take the necessary courses/certifications to become proficient. From there, you will earn the money.
If you get a degree, most likely you'll be stuck in a low paying job unless you leverage your degree and add to it with experience.