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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?"
You insensitive clod!
(so bored... so bored... so bored...)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The most underpaid were also too psychotically busy to answer the survey...
Or was it done on Slashdot?
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
How does your salary stack up in the post-crash economy?
Is this a trick question? How would I know how my salary stacks up if I'm not entitled to a copy of the report?
I know many people that make some decent coin but hate their jobs. I make a nice salary and love my job. I wouldn't consider leaving (maybe for a good 1/3 increase in the cash and the same freedoms I have here).
The survey should ask more than just income: the real question is: are you happy at your job and content with your income?
Trolling is a art,
Can also be downloaded from SANS here.
from highest to lowest
PHB $300,000
Executive Mgmt $150,000
Engineer (Pro) $80,000
Engineer (Hack) $60,000
Engineer (Guru) $$$ here and there + unemployment
I.T (Mgmt) $50,000
I.T (Reboot Monkey) Minimum Wage + unemployment
PR/Accounting "are you guys interested in equity" + unemployment
Legal (depends on the company $$$$(SCO))
Sales (commission only = $0) + unemployment
VC all dead apparently (mass suicide??)
bite my glorious golden ass.
I hear they're looking for a sysadmin to fine-tune their system so it doesn't happen again.
"Despite economic coldrums, the average of all the salary changes (including the negative ones) for 2002 came across full-time workers worldwide was plus 8.15% when calculated for annulized salaries. Fully 1,810 respondents (24.03%) saw no salary change or reduced their salary. Of the 54.54% who increased their salaries 0-30% the mean increase was 8.88%"
i catch my own fish and grow my own vegees... and for net access, i got wifi... and i live in a card board box rent free under a bridge
fuck salary
The very finest in unavailable information.
The damn elves took my rupees!
I wish I could make a living smashing pottery and shit. Those dudes at the beach the metal detectors are thinking like my man Link, but I hear they don't generally do so well...
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
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.
is a good site for work info in Canada, including salary and employment statistics.
Job Futures
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Metro Area || Avg. Salary || %Incr || %Resp
San Francisco/San Jose/Silicon Valley, CA Metro Area 87,238 6.2 11.4
New York Metro Area 85,010 8.3 8.1
Boston, MA, Metro Area 77,211 4.7 6.7
Washington, DC Metro Area 75,614 10.3 12.6
Philadelphia, PA, Metro Area 74,343 5.5 3.6
Dallas,TX Metro Area 73,390 7.4 4.7
Los Angeles/ Orange Co., CA Metro Area 73,285 9.4 7.7
Atlanta, GA Metro Area 70,809 7.0 4.8
Chicago, IL Metro Area 70,448 8.5 7.5
Denver, CO Metro Area 69,493 5.1 4.6
London, England Metro Area 69,486 6.5 1.3
Seattle/Redmond,WA Metro Areas 69,082 7.6 5.6
San Diego, CA Metro Area 68,969 11.0 3.5
Houston,TX Metro Area 68,194 7.7 2.7
Research Triangle, NC Metro Area 67,261 6.8 2.5
Austin,TX Metro Area 65,606 9.3 2.6
Ottawa, ON Metro Area 52,520 4.0 2.2
Toronto, ON Metro Area 50,506 9.8 2.9
Sydney, Australia Metro Area 50,503 10.6 1.2
Vancouver, BC Metro Area 44,451 6.9 2.2
Montreal, QC Metro Area 43,616 10.9 1.6
So Americans have to work 20+ years with a company to get the standard holiday allowance for a European in their first year on the job. Americans who change jobs won't on average ever reach that level. I wonder how worker happiness compares between the two continents - and no, I don't give a fig about where the businesses are more profitable, that doesn't equate to happiness.
My economy is fine, I jsut earned $12500 by suing Registar.com... ;o)
Try this one.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
but all these surveys do is give people false impressions of worth. You could glean from this thing that you should be making 70k with a bachelors degree or that being a woman with the same experience as I have you're worth 10k more than I am.
A young woman at my last job got fired because she went in to demand higher pay after she got her masters in accordance with one of these surveys. She worked for the company for the whole time and they paid for her education, but she decided to hop up the ladder and start emailing stats like this to the VP's. I mean really, what loaded sysadmin women fill these things out and do they need a developer and/or boyfriend!?!
"I'm in Italy and i found a way to start my business online for just 20 bucks a month... and now i am my own boss, and make more than i did at my previous job."
Why am I expecting the next line to be 'Herbal Viagra really works! Here are some testimonials...'
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Just read in Tuesday's Australian Financial Review that Executive salaries were still high (and growing) in the IT sector, comparable to other industry sectors, but the rest of the IT workforce was not enjoying the same percentage increase and ridiculous high salaries.
I thought he meant I'd be paid weekly, but he really meant weakly .
*Puts on Happy Helmet* I love my job, I love my job, I love my job, glad I have a job...
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.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
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
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.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Definitely quit. You're being treated completely unfairly. In fact, e-mail me the name of your company and the name of your immediate supervisor and I'll send him a stern e-mail explaining that his employees are unhappy due to his mismanagement. I'll attach my resume and cover letter so that he has an idea of how well off other workers in the world are. Yeah. That's the ticket.
El riesgo vive siempre!
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?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I'm sorry, I really am, but just because there are people getting screwed worse doesn't mean that those of us who aren't getting screwed as bad can't complain. If that were the case, then no one posting here has any right to complain about anything at all.
Put it in perspective - please don't complain when you actually have a job, a roof over your head, a computer... you have a lot more than most of the population in the world.
So please don't complain that people are complaining - while you may have more to complain about, it doesn't mean they don't have a right to complain, too.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I read the unemployment documentation yesturday. It basically said if you got fired you can still get unemployment, as long as you didnt intentionally get fired. Which ruled out my idea of breaking the boss's nose...
This may be nitpicking, I look at something like this and immediately distrust it: they quote percentages to four significant figures, yet they only had 10000 respondents. Anyone who understands sampling errors knows that 10k data points means approximately 1% error on any number you measure with them.. possibly much less.
And it's hard to read with all them number things.
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.
Ten hour days? No vacation?
Training your replacement in your company's new Bangalore office???
STOP!
How would you like to get out of that rat race? I have stumbled on a secret way to free yourself from the wage slavery and mind burn-out you are suffering at your current job. And I'm giving the secret away for FREE!
Let me tell you something, folks. I used to be a lot like you. I was working for a company that insisted on pushing their employees over the edge. What I found was, most workers not only took it, but gladly bent over and rubbed in the vaseline! These folks never understood the secret that I am about to reveal to you absolutely FREE!
So here it is! Follow this simple four step process to dislodge yourself from corporate America once and for all:
1. Quit your job!!! The most obvious step is the step that is the most inconceivable to the average American worker. Every day at your job is living hell. You dread going to your job every morning. Your job is the source of all your frustration and grief. QUIT! It's that easy. QUIT! When I realized I was working for a company that couldn't give a shit about me and was trying every day to find ways of milking more work out of me, I just up and left... It was such a breath of fresh air. Get a part-time job bartending or doing manual labor while you accomplish the rest of the steps...
2. Kill your monthly expenses!!! Pay off those high-interest credit cards! Only spend with them what you can pay off in full every month. Most of my former co-workers were so buckled under credit card debt but they were happy to keep spending more, because all they ever payed was the monthly minimum. They're going to be in for a surprise in three or four years. Sell the shit that drains your wallet! That Lexus SUV sitting there in your garage? Sell it immediately and buy a 5 year old Honda with cash. Let me tell you you won't miss that $600/mo payment! Expensive home or apartment in the city? Get out of that lease or sell it, and buy a nice humble townhouse in the suburbs. You might not be able to get rid of this "monthly" but it sure feels nice taking $500/mo or so out of it. Health club contract? Multiple cell phones/pagers? Expensive Internet connection?? You guessed it! Get them out of your life. Live SIMPLY. Not only is it cheaper, but you don't feel like such a consumer whore every month when you pay the bills!!
3. Stop buying so much shit! Al Greenspan says consumer spending is good for the economy, but who is he kidding? It's only good for the corporate execs you are currently freeing yourself from. Buy generics if you have to buy at all. Spend your money not on gadgets and trinkets but on things that fulfill your life--travel, a humble home that's yours and not the bank's, that little restarant you were always wanting to start up--whatever is your thing.
4. Do hourly contract work when you need money, and relax when you don't. Look at your new budget. Hell you can probably contract at HALF of what you were making before, and have plenty of time for what is important in your life.
Follow this four step process and rid your life of the work-consume rat race!
I can't emphasize it enough. That first step is crucial. QUIT THAT JOB NOW. QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT. Or, even better, get fired and collect unemployment! You've been paying for unemployment your whole life, so take a little for yourself! Make a promise to yourself: I will quit by next Thursday. I will quit after the next paycheck. And DO IT! Don't go updating your resume, looking for another sinking ship to jump to. JUST GET OUT OF THAT HELL HOLE OF A JOB RIGHT NOW!
Today is a lot better for me than it was two years ago, and I make LESS than what I used to! I work hourly, doing contract work for whoever needs a little programming. When I want
if you enjoy your job, and the money is competitive: DO NOT LEAVE.
even for more cash.
because you will find that more cash means that people who are making that much dough normally are not biting. big cash is indicative of a bad work atmosphere, high turnover, or terrible products/tools/requirements.
that's why the people who demand the highest prices tend to work contract. because the companies that have to pay that much for the work, you don't want to be with over the long term.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Sounds like one of the few sectors where pay is actually increasing. State and local gove worksers being cut. Must be nice to work for an organization where you can print money at will.
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.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Money I owe, money-iy-ay
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.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
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.
Your anecdote is well received, but you must grant us that you receive more paid leave than the average American. Consider the findings a 2002 Center for Economic Policy Research study:
CEPR Study
Minimum MANDATED (by law) annual paid vacation days:
Austria 30
Denmark 30
Finland 30
France 30
Spain 30
Luxembourg 25
Sweden 25
Germany 24
Belgium 4 (weeks)
Greece 4 (weeks)
Ireland 4 (weeks)
Netherlands 4 (weeks)
United Kingdom 4 (weeks)
Portugal 22
European Union 4 (weeks)
Canada 2 (weeks)
United States 0
Of course, the above are just the minimum legal requirements, in practice, the contrast is even more stark:
AVERAGE Annual Paid Vacation Days and Holidays
(vacation/total vacation+holiday)
Italy 37/45
Finland 37.5/44.5
Netherlands 31/38.1
Germany 30/38
Luxembourg 28/38
Austria 26.5/36
Portugal 22/36
Spain 22/36
Denmark 27/34
France 25/34
Sweden 25/34
United Kingdom 25/34
Switzerland 24.3/33
Belgium 20/31
Greece 22/31
Japan 18/31
Ireland 21/30
Norway 21/28
United States 12/23