FAQ: Being a network admin in Iraq

http://packetlife.net/papers/network-admin-in-iraq/

by vecter • 18 years ago

23 11 18 years ago

I looked up the salary and came up with 25,000 a month, which fits with "impressive salary for a guy my age" (paraphrase). 300K a year?

Also: "A contract employee working overseas generally makes better money than they could in the U.S. (that was Ms. Khan's motivation -- a base salary of $48,000 a year and the chance to make as much as $80,000 with overtime, much of it tax-free)"

http://enterpriseresilienceblog.typepad.com/enterprise_resil...

quickpost• 18 years ago

Where did you see the 25k / month figure? I'm intrigued...

helveticaman3• 18 years ago

http://www.alliraqjobs.com/job-9377.html

jonny_noog• 18 years ago

300k sounds a little high to me. I've read reports of mercenaries in Iraq earning around 250k - 300k in a year (and being happy to do so).

You'd have to expect that a guy whose job is to take a bullet for some foreign dignitary would get paid better than some guy who sits in a bunker and taps on a keyboard.

I'm just going by stuff I've read though, nothing really concrete.

Ezra2• 18 years ago

Where'd you get 25K?

I did similar work out there in 2006 (I was at Abu Ghraib) in a similar role, and I didn't make 25K a month.

I made four, with no OT, and I got a pretty nice contract-ending bonus. For the record, I considered $4K a month to be an impressive salary for someone my age... I was 19.

When I was out there, we had to wear our body-armour at all times, except when in the DEFAC (cafeteria), or asleep.

The note that they only have to wear it in transit makes me think that he's at Camp Victory aka "Camp Cupcake". Or, for the uninitiated, where Saddam used to live. It's probably (a lot) nicer than your hometown.

If it's honestly 25K, the dude must be Cheney's nephew, or that figure is in Rupees. Or I want to go back more than I thought I did.

And (from what I understand) most of the mercenaries get paid (relatively) shit money, because they're wackos from shit countries. Sure, there are some Blackwater execs, and ex-SEALs that make nice money, but most of them are there because they need somebody who's willing to be shot at, and whose almost inevitable death won't contribute much to what's already a shitstorm on the home front.

rms• 18 years ago

Salaries for government jobs: http://www.careers.state.gov/iraq-jobs/compensation.html

helveticaman3• 18 years ago

EDIT: for the record, I found the 25K a month figure by googling iraq sysadmin salary. (link: http://www.alliraqjobs.com/job-9377.html)

It sounded a little crazy to me, too. But I know very little about this stuff and was taking a wild stab.

cellis• 18 years ago

I applied for the same job and was told after all it would come out to 115k , something like 80k tax free.

jonursenbach• 18 years ago

Honestly, this was a pretty pointless article.

josefresco• 18 years ago

"...I honestly feel safer out here than I did in Vegas... I also never work outside of the camp's secured perimeter. "

In one line he skewers CNN for portraying Iraq as dangerous, and then another he talks about working within a US military secured perimeter. So which is it?

Ezra2• 18 years ago

It's safer on the bases than "over the wire", obviously.

If you're hanging out in the slums of Baghdad by yourself, that's another story.

According to http://www.icasualties.org/oif/Details.aspx 3 of the last 500 American deaths in Iraq have been on a base. None of them were classified as hostile. Those deaths go back over a year, to Aug/07.

Compare that to your hometown (be it Vegas, Silicon Valley, Cambridge, or Boise), and it probably stacks up favourably.

3 deaths per year is a mortality rate of 2 per 100 000. The rate for the US total is ~900 per 100K, for 15-24 year olds is ~90, and for 24-45 year olds it's about 200.

...I'm just saying, is all.

FAQ: Being a network admin in Iraq

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