2002 SAGE Salary Survey Finally Released

Ted Cabeen writes "The 2002 Salary Survey run by SAGE, SANS, and Sun's BigAdmin Group profiled in a March Slashdot Article has finally been released. Everybody who participated in the survey is entitled to a copy, as well as current members of those groups. How does your salary stack up in the post-crash economy?"

Comments

Survey is /.'d, but I need to post anyway.

[jeaster]

I work for a rather large unicolor octo-barred-logo company. Our salary reviews come once a year, in April, with little chance of a raise in between them. This year they handed down a new policy. Part 1: All employee's below a certain band, err, salary range, and who are performing at at least the "I have no reason to fire you" performance rating, get a raise. A 3% raise, but a raise none the less. Part 2: The "variable" bonus which is counted as part of our salary, is now cut in half. This "variable" bonus by the way, has gone down each and every year I have been with this company. Now instead of top performers getting somewhere between 12.5% and 16%, I believe 6.5% is going to be the best you can do. Part 3: To save money this year, all pay increases, which normally take effect May 1, will not take effect until July. I was one of the 'lucky' ones. I got a Band, err, salary range increase, which usually guarantees a better raise. Not this time. All told, if I am a top performer (not handed out too often) with my variable bonus, I will be making slightly less than the bottom figure on my new pay scale. Great. Makes the frequent 80 hour weeks (no overtime pay) Sooooooo worth it. I do however, understand that I am in fact lucky to have a job to bitch about. I am lucky I am not one of my contracter coworkers whose pay has been cut multiple times over the last year, and get two weeks off, without pay. I also understand that what makes some of this possible is also the same reason I can't spell the name of any internal help desk agent I have to call, or understand half of what they are saying. I truly dread seeing this Salary Survey.....I am afraid once I see the numbers, my Red Swingline(tm) and I will have to take action. Good Luck to us all, thanks for the forum to get this out. J.

Re:Survey is /.'d, but I need to post anyway.

[rarose]

As a twice-former employee of said horizontally shredded firm (I quit once and later got laid off) I feel your pain. I quit when I was passed over for a band change for 2 years in a row. After 2.5 years with "Steven & the Interns"'s company I returned to Company-of-the-Acronym-that-must-not-be-named maxing out a position 2 bands higher. 4 months later, review time. My new boss managed to give me a 5% raise. Whoo! The following year I got another 5% raise and talk of my future promotion to Senior. Whoo^2! Then 2 months later everyone in Beaverton got laid off.

At least my severance package was based on that awesome salary I was making for 2 months!

Re:Survey is /.'d, but I need to post anyway.

[arnie_apesacrappin]

The Bush Administration is trying to make changes to the law to stop OT pay all together for most workers and instead let the employer "repay" you by giving you time off at THEIR conveinience. Interesting

I just went through a re-org where my functionality fell under a department at a different, larger location within the company. At this location, no one gets overtime. If they put in more than 40 hours, they get the time off you speak of. My new boss sat down with me to talk about it.

I simply pointed out that if we started this policy Jan 1 2004 and I worked about the same amount of hours that I did this year, he would have to give me October through December off. He quickly decided that paying for OT would be fine.

Re:Vacation days

[ojQj]

I'm an American working in Germany. I've been at the company 3 years. I get 29 days of vacation a year, but my after tax, after health insurance net is about half of what I figure it would be in the States. Clothes, cars, and apartments are also all more expensive in Germany. Food is less expensive. My health care is more expensive and of a lower quality here than it would be in the states. On the other hand I get access to good public transportation, the streets are clean and in good condition. Violent crime rates are also low.

Worker happiness doesn't vary in response to one variable alone.

That being said, I really do enjoy my 29 days of vacation, and I can live reasonably comfortably on my pay.

Amen

[InterruptDescriptorT]

I would, right now without hesitation, take a 15% pay cut for five weeks' vacation a year.

What is so funny to me is the huge emphasis that the government and pressure groups put on the notion of 'family' here in the US, and yet at the same time don't want to give workers the rights to rear their children (in opposing the Family Leave Act), nor want to give them enough time off to actually spend time with them.

The average American worker works an obscene amount of hours. I am 100% positive this does not stem from any sort of American 'work ethic', but rather from the fact that you have to be seen as working more than your co-worker in order not only to get ahead, but to simply keep your job. The high levels of stress that follows are what lead to domestic problems like drug abuse, alcoholism and violence.

The idea of four weeks' vacation would never fly here, because greedy CEOs and stockholders don't want to see their all-precious profits possibly drop. But imagine the long-term benefits: Lower health care costs (rested workers are less stressed; less stressed workers are healthier), more motivated employees, and a happier populace with spare time to spend money vacationing.

It's a win-win situation, but I'll never see it in my lifetime. I'm a Canadian living in the US, and I've been thinking about using my right of return privileges (my grandfather was a UK citizen) to go to the UK and work for a few years. Sounds like, as usual, the Europeans don't have their heads up their asses like in this country.

My all time favourite salary survey conclusion

[mccalli]

At the first job I had, the technical department had a number of issues with the management there, not least of these was salary.

Eventually, management's answer was presented to us in a meeting. They explained that, after surveying the market, they were paying us correctly. The said that the reason we could see the higher figures elsewhere was because everyone else in the world was paying too highly...

Oh, and they also claimed that we couldn't actually get these figures we read. My response was "empirical studies suggest otherwise", which got a bit of a look. I resigned within two weeks, and another guy I was at the meeting with resigned the next day.

Cheers,
Ian

Work Ethics

[clickety6]

Americans Live To Work
Europeans Work To Live

How else do you explain American vacation allowances? I recall seeing figures that showed productivity in American companies wasn't marekedly higher than their European equivalents, despite their longer hours. have to see if I cna track it down on Google.

Re:Work Ethics

[gfxguy]

The problem is the perspective you take on it. The employee/employer relationship should be considered a private contract between the two, the government ought not stick their nose where it doesn't belong.

Someone mentioned they'd take a 15% pay cut to get more vacation time - that should be something negotiated with your employer, not a government mandate.

As for me, after 5 years I was getting 23 days of paid time off per year. Next year will mark my 10th anniversary and I will get an additional 5. That was a private deal between my company and myself (it is company policy, but some people have negotiated other deals). If the government were to come in and FORCE companies to give 4 weeks (20 days) and X number of sick days, I would be much worse off - sick days are scrutinzed when bumped up against holidays and vacation days. I'd rather have 23 days I can use whenever I want then 27 with restrictions (and pretty soon I'll have 28 anyway).

This would be as bad as the government sticking their noses in W.R.T. overtime. It's simply none of their business.

Re:Summary

[TopShelf]

The article you link to only project Saudi's IT growth at 8,000 jobs annually - hardly a threat to the American IT worker. Quit your whining and compete for your job just like most manufacturing workers have had to over the last several decades.

Repeat after me: international trade is not a zero-sum game, and the growth in international trade has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last two decades, while providing rich countries with cheap, high quality imports. If you can't handle change, what are you doing in IT?

Is it just me? or do these numbers seem odd

[Kevin Stevens]

Maybe I am just getting F'ed... but I am in the 1-2 years experience range, and I know hardly anyone (programmers included) in the IT field who are making 50k a year (the average reported in the survey is (50,558 for 0-1 year guys w/ a bachelor), and certainly not any sysadmins at all- and thats in the NY metro area, where the costs of living (and thus salaries) are quite high. The fact that those in the 2 year range see a 5k drop in average salaries really makes me wonder if they had enough of a random sample, and a large enough sample altogether. Similarly, when I see average raises in certain metro areas being 87.5%, I think there is something significantly flawed in this survey to actually use it for anything meaningful. I get the feeling this survey attracted types who wanted to show off their earnings, or raises. I mean how can the group of 5-9 years guys get 6.8% average raises, while guys w/ 10-14 years experiene recieved a whopping 22.6% increase, yet their elder 15-19 group also only recieved 6.9% raises. I just cant see how this could happen to the actual group overall. Another glaring hole- guys with 1-2 years experience falling into the ambiguously defined 'level 4' (4 being highest) group. That many people came out of school and rose to CTO in a year? It is interesting, but to use this as a basis for actual salary comparison doesnt seem right. It seems even less scientific than a slashdot poll to me.

is it worth it

[Anonymous Coward]

i recently lost my job and when i found a new one they decided to pay me 8% more then i was making at my old company. however my father is also is in a tech firm got a 10% pay cut possibly more pay cuts and 60% of the staff was let go.

go figure

is it really worth it though if your not doing something you like. i like to code but how can i really compete against a whole country willing to take $.05 on the dollar for my salary. hopefully i'll run into an employeer that will return revenues to the country (s)he lives in.

bottom line IMO the economy will increase when the government decides to punish those that hire out of country firms to do work and help those companies willing to hire americans first. ok GW how can we give the 87 billion to iraq if there is no tax revenues cause all work is exported.

Work Ethics-The equation of work.

[Anonymous Coward]

" The problem is the perspective you take on it. The employee/employer relationship should be considered a private contract between the two, the government ought not stick their nose where it doesn't belong."

Unfortunately what you seem to forget is that this contract isn't being forged between equals.

The government if applied properly helps balance the equation.

Re:Post the text

[molarmass192]

The salary levels makes sense to me but the increases are way out of whack from anything I've heard. I haven't heard of any salary decreases but I know of VERY few companies in the valley that do not have salary freezes in place. I've heard of a few targeted (ie. not across the board) raises and even those are only in the sub 5% range. So, if somebody would please post the names of those companies in the valley that are offering the 20% increases needed to pull the average up to 6% it would be much appreciated.

not too complain

[Anonymous Coward]

But I've taken a 40K hit in the last 12 months. This after 16 years in the industry, always working so much as to loose some of my vacation time each year while staying on top of the curve for my chosen specialization, networking & security. My last employer loved me, the one before that keeps trying to contract me for small jobs, my current employer says great things and in return for my low salary, gives me a bit of extra time off. But, I can't use it as I always pay the catch up price when I return from ANY time off.

The Euro time off sounds intriguing. I could care less about corporate needs at this point. I'm watching others make good coin from my time all the while I'm facing a depricated salary. At this point, I just want a higher quality of life. And with the state of medical insurance, vacation benefits and workers rights in the US, it's not happening.

The Man with the Plan is smiling.

Funny, yes, but...

[autechre]

If you poorly manage your money, then your salary can be nearly irrelevant.

One interesting concept is the "true wage", as described in the book Your Money Or Your Life. In order to figure out what you really make, you have to factor in all time spent, including travelling to and from work. You then have to count your work-related expenses, including eating lunch out, business clothes, car maintenance, etc. You're also supposed to figure out the "life energy cost" (i.e., if your job is hellish, the rest of your life will not be great), but even leaving that aside, jobs might compare much differently than they look on the surface.

Additionally, it's easy to waste money and so create a "need" for more money. Living on frozen pizzas/TV dinners is expensive, and will probably lead to more health-related expenses. There's a lot to be said for having a lower salary, whether by working less or taking a lower-paying job that's more fulfilling, and lowering your cost of living by driving a good used car, not buying ridiculously overpriced "designer" clothes, etc.

Then you get into wisely investing your money, etc., and you start to see how people who don't look so great on paper are better off after everything has been added up. It really is how you use it rather than the size. Of course, if you take this to an extreme, you start expending more effort than is worth the money you might save, but as with everything else, balance is key.

Re:Working Too Hard?

[Watts Martin]

I'm tempted to say something flippant, like "but I don't want to stop consuming, dammit." And there's some truth to that. But your point is well-taken... there are just caveats. If you're good enough at both the actual work you want to do and at selling yourself, you can cut your ties to the working life. And if you're in the right area. Those are bigger "ifs" than you're making them out to be.

Through an odd chain of events, I ended up moving to Silicon Valley in November of last year; I'm employed in large part because of a friend who kept throwing positions his company was opening up at me until one of them stuck. Even so, I'm a "fulltime contractor," which equates to all the work and no benefits other than pay. In fact, I'm actually making less money than I was in Tampa. (My expenses are also slightly lower.)

Fortunately, I like the company I'm at and I like the people I work with, and this is keeping the negatives (no benefits, wonky hours, long commute) in a fragile balance. But the reality is that right now I don't have the money saved up to just cut my ties and hope. (Well, technically, I do, but that money's to pay taxes next year--and given that this is my first time doing the 1099 thing, I have a strong suspicion I'm not setting aside enough and that I'm going to face penalties for not having done estimated taxes.) If I did, let's face it: I'm in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash and my last few jobs were web development on FreeBSD, Solaris and OS X using PHP. The fact that I actually know good typography and layout and can apply it to web pages (using XHTML, CSS and all those other buzzwords) does me very little good--by resume I look like every other Java-less web monkey. My work now, in fact, is doing data analysis with Microsoft Excel. Someone in this part of the country just cutting loose as you suggest better expect to move out of IT entirely, or better have the resources to move--even if it's just an hour or two away where the streets aren't filled with desperate contractors holding signs reading "Will hack Linux for food."

I doubt I'll ever move into a field that's unrelated to computers, but I'm starting to seriously look at fields that involve just using computers as tools for other things--pushing into fine typography and book design, for instance. I don't think I.T. is a bad general field to be in (there's always going to be a demand, let's face it), but it's a field I sort of blundered into, and I'm having to face the fact that I don't have the breadth of experience employers are increasingly looking for nor, if I'm honest with myself, the interest to develop that breadth. (I've tried to learn Java for years. I'm farther along in learning Cocoa programming.)

So as enchanting as the "free yourself from that slave job you have" mantra may be, people need to ask themselves if they're really able to do that, and if the answer is "no," how they can get to that point if it's really their goal. Going over Niagara Falls in a barrel and surviving uninjured requires either sheer dumb luck or some planning--and one probably shouldn't count on the dumb luck.

More changes

[r_j_prahad]

I used to be a Unix sysadmin and took a five year hiatus, it being necessary to my mental health. So last month I decided to get looking and went to two interviews. What a disappointment they were, the duties were more for senior operator. Point and click, simple, repetetive tasks. The managers at both businesses were very rude, elitist, maybe even racist. I was reminded of mainframe positions we used to derisively call "tape apes" in the olden days.

So even though I miss the money, I won't be going back to sysadminning. I will stay where I am and enjoy my pagerless weekends.

Re:Vacation days

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"In the 'States with HMOs"

Yes, HMOs are awful, but remember, "health insurance" doesn't necessarily mean "HMO". With my plan (PacifiCare), I can visit any doctor who takes my insurance (most) and get diagnosed and treated in about 20 minutes. It's a $10 fee to visit any doctor, which isn't bad a all.

"I don't know a single German who worked in 'Mericka who was happier with the so-called 'healthcare system' when it was compared to their native Deutschland."

Despite your slang, I must disagree. I have a German coworker who is thrilled by the US healthcare system. Case in point: he was held up two hours at the hospital just to see a doctor (this was around 1:00 and he had a stomach bug). In the US, he got the same bug (around 2:00). He simply went to the nearest doctor's office (5 minutes from his house), got diagnosed in about 20 minutes, and walked next door to the 24 hour pharmacy to get his prescription. YMMV, but healthcare in the US can range from awful to excellent (depending on your health insurance).

Is it a perfect system? Absolutely not. It leaves far too many people without adequete healthcare.

"Food was more expensive, but that's because most of it is organically grown, and because German consumers are by-and-large willing to pay fair trade prices for their groceries, unlike most of their brethren in the 'States."

We have stores in the US that sell nothing but fair trade organic products. "Wild Oats Market" built their business on this. But we also have Super Wal-Mart. Super Wal-Mart makes the other food stores look expensive.

"effective police[2]"
The police are surprisingly effective in the US. The problem is not enforcement of the law, it's that 18,000 people a year are willing to kill others. When you have such a violent society, it's nearly impossible to prevent crime. It's not the cops that are the problem, it's the people.

"eighteen months[1] unemployment"

Many corporations in the US give 12 to 18 months severence pay. Plus there is governmental unemployment aid, so long as you are "looking" for a job.

"good transportation"

Transportation in major US cities is surprisingly good. In DC, the Metro is efficent and fast. The NY MTA system is older, but it works fine. The major thing we lack is inter-city transportaion by rail. You can travel by rail, especially in the east, but the trains only go about 80 miles/hour. Far from the high-speed trains in Europe. However, people forget the sheer size of the US. Even at 160 miles per hour, with no stops, it would take 18+ hours to travel from New York to Los Angeles. Airplanes can do it faster and cheaper.