A close look at the numbers will reveal why your salary may differ slightly.
Law of Averages
A close look at the numbers will reveal why your salary may differ slightly.
- By Linda Briggs
- August 01, 2000
Perhaps compensation isn’t the only reason you accepted
your current position, nor what motivates you to stay
late installing new software, put in that occasional Saturday
getting the server back online, or work through lunch
to get a user’s computer up and running again. Still,
salary is important, and the secrecy factor only adds
to that. Since we’re not privy to knowing the pay of anyone
but our own and those we directly manage, at least at
any company I’ve ever worked for or heard of, we naturally
hunger to know how our compensation compares to others.
In IT, salary survey results are easy to predict lately—good,
highly experienced IT workers have become as rare as profitable
dot-coms, and are thus commanding big bucks. But for those
who haven’t been in the industry very long, who don’t
hold one or more premium skills, or who just haven’t negotiated
well, the picture may be slightly different.
If you have four to six years of experience in IT, hold
an MCSE, you’re male, and you live in a major metropolitan
area, like our average reader, our survey says that your
peers are earning somewhere around $67,800—the magic number
on our cover. Some of you make more, some make less. As
“Professionally Speaking” columnist Steve Crandall remarks
this month, “that’s why it’s called an average.”
But even if you fit the typical profile to some degree,
don’t email your manager for a salary review just yet.
Let’s examine the average a bit more closely. Your individual
circumstances will affect that average hugely. Here are
some examples. If you’re just entering IT—and some of
you reading this magazine are—you can expect something
closer to $48,000. If you’re female, unfortunately, our
numbers show that you can subtract as much as 15 percent
from almost any average salary. If you’re in a major metropolitan
area, add roughly eight to 10 percent, perhaps as much
as 20 percent if you’re in a technology hotbed like the
Bay Area. Do you supply services internally to other employees,
rather than externally in a consultant function? Companies
seem to pay a bit less for internal IT professionals,
so subtract a few points. And are you a good negotiator?
Add another few points. And so forth.
All of this is just to remind you that many variables
affect compensation. We try to slice and dice the data
from a wide variety of angles to give you as clear a picture
as we can of IT compensation in the U.S. among those holding
or pursuing a Microsoft certification. But make sure you’re
weighing all the factors before you come to a salary conclusion.
Based on your suggestions each year, we tweak our survey
questionnaire and our reporting on it. Tell us what you
think of the numbers, and what you’d like to see us measure,
at [email protected]
About the Author
Linda Briggs is the founding editor of MCP Magazine and the former senior editorial director of 101communications. In between world travels, she's a freelance technology writer based in San Diego, Calif.