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The 2011 IT Salary Guide
- Malic 16y agoIn a time when infographics are all the rage, you'd think the information here would be presented in a more absorbable format.
- bretthopper 16y agoForget infographics, how about a simple table?
- golgo13 16y agoNo kidding. Just paste into excel and take a screen shot. I guess they need the page views...
- gaius 16y agoWow, even the print version isn't single-page
- cagenut 16y ago• New York, NY: 41% higher • San Francisco: 35% higher as skype/telecommuting evolve there's an incredible arbitrage opportunity here without even going offshore.
- krosaen 16y agoanecdotally, you can pull this off if you have worked somewhere for a while on location and then go remote, but going for the full salary from a remote location from the get go, not sure.
- smackfu 16y agoYeah, I've seen this where someone goes from in-office to work-at-home locally to work-at-home distant, and there was no salary cut at any point. OTOH, the multiplier for our company for NYC is not 40%.
- mcknz 16y agoOn the other side, NYC companies will look for remote workers in the midwest to save money. Consulting companies can charge NYC rates with an Indiana overhead. Midwest is the new offshore.
- sethg 16y agoWhen comparing offers or negotiating a raise, how do people translate between a salary and a salary-plus-bonus? When my company got acquired, my base salary didn’t go up, but now I get a performance-based bonus; both my individual performance and the company’s overall hitting-its-numbers are used to compute the bonus figure. If my “normal” bonus (i.e., when everyone hits but does not exceed performance targets) is 10%, should I consider this equivalent to having received a 10% raise? 5%? 0% plus a fistful of lottery tickets?
- brown9-2 16y agoI would think it only really makes sense to compare total compensation (salary + bonus + benefits) when comparing jobs.
- frobozz 16y agoYes, but how do you value a bonus, if you don't know how much it is, or whether you'll get it? A salary of 50K is a salary of 50K, you get 50K over a year. How does that compare to a salary of 45K + bonus? Is it more, less, or the same?
- bbarthel 16y agoMy basic formula runs like this - when I'm negotiating, I cite my previous salary as everything I earned - salary + all bonuses plus any other perks I can cite. When I'm comparing, I use only money I'm guaranteed: salary plus any guaranteed or performance bonuses I am confident I can hit (with targets in writing as part of my job agreement). Bonuses that are based on nomination or any other "approval" type process are really just too risky for me to consider as part of my overall compensation package. They will only factor if all else is basically equal.
- sangaya 16y agoI recently left a job that paid lower salaries and tried to focus on total compensation through bonus + benefits. The thing is, salary is steady and something I can budget my family off of. We can make decisions such as mortgage's, car payments, savings goals, investment goals, etc off of a salary. I can't do the same with a bonus. In fact, 08/09 made a lot of employees realize that the bonus can't be relied on in any way. Is it possible to make more through total compensation of lower salary + bonus than high salary + little to no bonus? Sure. But I'm happier with the salary, and my hunch is that many other employees would feel the same.
- SandB0x 16y ago(It's not loading on my phone, but) What makes it very difficult to compare jobs is the actual hours worked. My last job had great hours, but I had friends who earned maybe 1.4x my salary, but often worked double the hours. I'm not talking about the effective hourly wage here, rather money per unit leisure time. If you offered me an extra few grand per year, but every week night I'd get home completely exhausted at 9pm, forget it. Not for an office job for someone else. Note leisure time includes time to learn and work on things that interest you.
- kevinelliott 16y agoI've learned that lesson the hard way too. I will from now own find it very difficult to work for anyone again, but when I do, it sure won't be more than 40-50 hours per week. In fact, I would actually get a real kick out of a 30 hour a week job. That retains time for the family, friends, personal development, and business/hacker projects. Most employers are still too concerned with how much time you spend in their office, and not enough on output. Given the right kind of work, I can output a typical 50 hour week in 30 hours. In fact, given that opportunity, the motivation is built in.
- SandB0x 16y agoNoticed that "money per unit leisure time" isn't what I want here, as it tends to infinity as you work longer hours! Maybe you should seek to maximise (money x leisure time) instead. Anyway I hope the sentiment was clear.
- f1gm3nt 16y agoThis just reminds me of how underpaid I am and that the closest city pays an average of 10% higher the average. I'm thinking it's time to move ;p
- ohyes 16y agoRemember that cities are more expensive to live in than suburbs. That extra 10% might just be cost of living adjustment. You have to figure out what your expenses are currently, as well as what your estimated expenses will be in the new location, before you really know that you will be getting an extra 10% salary or whatever.
- weeksie 16y agoYeah, but if you live in a real city with good public transport and a thriving commercial/residential core you can get by without a car and all of the associated costs. I live in Manhattan and though it is more expensive than elsewhere the pay differential and the money saved on cars makes it a pretty good proposition. (For me, anyway; degustibus non est disputantum and so forth.)
- f1gm3nt 16y agoCity I live in pays an average of 34 to 40K as a programmer. I'm sure that moving 2 hours away and getting paid market average plus 10% is worth it. It would be nice to see the outliers. What cities have the highest pay and cities with lowest pay. I'm positive that the city I'm in would be an outlier for lowest paid.
- mcknz 16y agoI was interested to see that as a Lead Application Developer, you can add: 10% for Microsoft SharePoint skills 11% for SharePoint skills There's gotta be some arbitrage opportunity in there somewhere.
- jbooth 16y agoNo, it's just an artifact of the text in the job descriptions, jobs that happened to phrase it without "Microsoft" happened to pay 1% more -- surprising they're that close, really. It's not like you can buy Microsoft Sharepoint developers and relabel them as Sharepoint developers for a profit.
- joshwa 16y agoWhat the hell is the difference between: Developer/Programmer Analyst Software Engineer (Lead) Applications Developer (Senior) Web Developer
- iamdave 16y agoThe way I see it (would be good to hear other opinions): Developer/Programmer Analyst = looks for bugs. Software Engineer = Integrates the code into live environments Lead Applications Developer = Primarily focused on developing the relevant code Senior Web Developer = "I've been here the longest"
- Xurinos 16y agoDeveloper/Programmer Analyst = looks for bugs. Around here, it means "Integrates the code into live environments, does some statistical work, does some DB work"
- kno 16y agoThe difference: Money
- rdmlx 16y agoIn my company: 1) Works with business analysts to design and code applications according to business requirements. Intermediary between engineering and business. 2) Engineering responsible for architecture and heavy lifting. ie; build a framework for the developers to use. 3) Same as 1 with more responsibility. 4) Same as 1 except more experience/skill set is specifically web related.
- WildUtah 16y agoThe difference: 1 -completely arbitrary 2 -randomly assigned 3 -words to fill space on expense reports and business cards 4 -another made-up title
- rdtsc 16y agoFancy mumbo jumbo words to differentiate somebody from somebody else.
- PonyGumbo 16y agoAfter seeing the variance by region, it makes me very curious about the % adjustment for telecommuting-only jobs. I'm at the low end of the scale (and about $30k underpaid if you adjust for location and skills), but I work from home on the opposite side of the country from my employer.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago30k underpaid for your location or the location of the employer? If it is for the location of the employer, then you are "right-sourced" and being paid "fairly". Honestly, i think telecommuting-only jobs make such a minority of jobs that gathering real data on their pay would be difficult.
- matwood 16y agoI telecommute and put my own $ figure out what it's worth to me. When I first started I thought the salary was fair for what I thought telecommuting was worth. Recently I've been talking to my supervisor about a raise because now I feel I'm underpaid (and the article just proves along with my other research). The company also cut my bonus to a why bother number and raised my insurance costs. I love working at home, but there comes a point where I can't justify leaving so much money on the table in prime earning years.
- PonyGumbo 16y agoThey're about equal (Boston vs. LA).
- robin_reala 16y agoThis is US-only data; bit of a shame when the domain is earthweb.com.
- wazoox 16y agoA quick back-of-the-envelope calculation convinces me that it should be roughly applicable to western Europe. Example : US$100000 convert to 72000 € Depending upon the country, divide by 1.0 (GB) to 1.4 (France) or maybe 1.5 (Denmark) for charges, you get a somewhat realistic value.
- joshwa 16y agoThe actual source for this article is a document by Robert Half Technology (a staffing firm): http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/FreeResources?rfmCandidate_5.dmreq=true&rfmCandidate_5.Z=0&rfmCandidate_5.A=RHTsgd11CO&rfmCandidate_5.B=1349 http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/FreeResources?rfmCandida... Registration required. Would post to scribd, but the PDF is password protected. Reg-free download here: http://drop.io/2011salaryguide/asset/rht-sg-2011-pdf http://drop.io/2011salaryguide/asset/rht-sg-2011-pdf
- thwarted 16y agoI wonder if Robert Half finally removed me from their list of people who live in Chicago and are looking for a job in Chicago. I had to email them like 30 times telling them that I live in SF now and if they would like to find me a job in SF, that would be great, but I have no interest in a Chicago position.
- hugh3 16y agoAs a postdoc, I'm not going to look at this. It would only depress me.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoI was a postdoc during the NYC transit strike, I read how much various unskilled MTA job categories (e.g., garbage collector, token booth cashier [1]) made and how much of a pay increase they hoped for. That was depressing. [1] For those outside NYC, we have a human in many subway stations selling metrocards. Often the human refuses to sell metrocards and just points people to the vending machine.
- metageek 16y agoPut them on commission.
- omarish 16y agoIt would be great to see this visualized in a scalable fashion.
- alexgartrell 16y agoThis is tangentially related, but what should a new college grad expect to make his first year out?
- krschultz 16y agoI graduated in my May. My friends who were CS and went to work for "normal" software companies (i.e. exclude startups, wall street, and the big guns like Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft etc) are making $50k-$65k. Those salaries were mostly in Philadelphia and Washington DC.
- chrisa 16y agoMany schools publish public salary statistics for the graduates of last year. Some reports are better than others, but I’ve generally found good information that way. Just google "[school] salary statistics". For example, here's a pdf for Carnegie Mellon School of Computer science, which says last year there was a mean salary of $75k (which happens to be high compared to other universities I've seen): http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/students_alumni/post-grad-survey/pdf/scs.pdf http://www.studentaffairs.cmu.edu/career/students_alumni/pos...
- iworkforthem 16y agoGoing through the salary guide, I know .NET, Java, PHP and SharePoint, help desk pros, virtualization, cloud computing, Saas. And with my Project management certifications (Prince2)... it's time to ask for a raise! Er.. next step, how to approach my boss? Any suggestions?
- bconway 16y agoIf you search, I believe there's been a couple discussions on this recently. It comes down to being able to justify it, either by a.) increased roles and responsibilities or b.) value/scope of work completed.
- murmax 16y agowe work 7 hours a day (20-30 minutes break for food and tea). coding is very intense work, hard work (as you know), better code 6:40 hours effectivly. Plus in free time after the office hours we ussually code again but for fun or our project.
- fourk 16y agoHow much less should someone make if 'Junior' is prepended to their title?
- varjag 16y agoA junior programmer does not make less because of his title.
- smackfu 16y agoIs the base number for the programming jobs even meaningful, since it seems like every language adds a modifier? Or, to put it another way, the modifiers are 4-8%. So that 4% baseline could be subtracted out to give a better base.
- Omnipresent 16y agoit's surprising that java is mentioned to be "in demand", however, no Java certifications seem to be in demand. Being a enterprise j2ee developer for about 5 years now, I was thinking about finally getting my certification....but now..maybe not.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoHopefully employers have gotten wise by now that certification does not necessarily guarantee skill.
- kevinelliott 16y agoI have always found these salary guides to be hit or miss. Depending on where you live, these numbers can be wildly different. Also, once you do take location into account, you have to remember that the cost of living in that area is likely much different. Supply and demand for the region also plays a big key. In many cases, employers use these guides to gauge what they will tell you what "market rate" is, and a lot of shady employers will stiff everyone in the company. They might even tell you that you are at the high end of the pay scale at the company, which might be true since they're stiffing everyone. Just don't use this as true self worth indicators, as chances are your category is likely lowballed.
- RicRoberts 16y agoI'm the technical lead at a small digital agency in the UK. I don't earn anywhere near what this says I should. sad face