Slashdot Mirror
SAGE 2003 Salary Survey Announced
MrRules writes "The 2003 SAGE Salary Survey is now open for business. Last year's survey (results here,
slashdot articles here
and here)
was quite an interesting read. Last year saw over 10,000 participants, making it the largest global participation sysadmin salary survey ever.
This year there is a separate survey for those who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks, so we should be able to see some real information on what has been happening in the "jobless recovery", and what effect outsourcing has been having on this sector.
The survey is conducted annually by SAGE, the professional association for practising system administrators." As a general rule, I *hate* linking to surveys, but SAGE's is one that's definitely worthwhile..
Could linking this to all slashdot readers possibly skew the results of the survey??
While not immune, it would seem to me that the sysadmin community is much less susceptible to outsourcing than other IT job fields, ie programming. Unless you include telephone support as part of the sysadmin field, it's difficult to do a sysadmin's job remotely. Certainly, you can telnet in or conect remotely and do some routine tasks, but that's slightly more difficult if the network goes down.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I think we are all underpaid, overworked, and undersexed.
In software, companies are often dismayed by the fact that they get exactly what they ask for and have to pay for it even if it doesn't meet their expectations. So, many companies have had to hire a project manager and design specification developer team for any major project, and the extra salary from these jobs, along with the communications delays that goes with it has often been a break-even situation.
For outsourced IT, those who need 'immediate help' will bother the few tech-savvy (a/k/a knows enough to be dangerous) co-workers instead of being berated for putting in an Outsourced IT ticket. This leads to a cut in those worker's productivity, and often leads to other problems when these folks make symptoms disappear instead of fixing the issue (Pop-Up blockers?).
Some departments of larger companies have hired 'receptionists' that are actually IT people who answer the phone, so that immediate help can be had without being budget dinged by corporate for over-use of outsourced IT.
Of course, the hidden bleed of paying $30k or more for someone who's official job is to answer the phone - just because a department is trying to get around the rules... well, it makes outsourcing a bit expensive all of a sudden.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
...to me how a voluntary survey is in any way scientific?
If you can code a network aware application, then you probably have at least the fundamentals of networking down, and if you are a capable network admin, then you probably can sling a mean scripting language, which means you have the fundamentals of coding like encapsulation, OOP, data structures, etc. down.
Assuming that all us OSI Layer 4 and below people have to be on-site (which is far from a given), we're still vulnerable to outsourcing. When all those programmers are unemployed, guess whose job they can retool for fastest and be best qualified for?
Now guess what happens when the supply of sysadmins far outstrips the available jobs (even worse than it does now)?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Taking surveys on the web like this can't be a good method, especially if they're slashdotted. There's no guarantee you're getting any kind of representative cross-section, and if it's slashdotted, you're pretty certain to get an unrepresentative cross-section (e.g.: who has more time to read slashdot, employed or unemployed people?).
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
OK, so do they mean employed as an admin? I haven't done that in about 1 1/2 years, but I am employed at Target. So do I take the employed version, or the unemployed version? And yes, I'm trying to find an admin job.
I sure hope no one draws any conclusions from this survay, or if they do, they are damned careful about it. A good survay always tries to randomize who is asked within a certain selection of qualified people. In this case, the results will without a doubt be skewed. I wouldn't believe a single number produced about this survay, and I would not draw any conculsions about the 'jobless recovery' from it either.
The argument might be put forward that slashdotting the place is the perfect way to make sure the right people answer the survay. I would utterly disagree though. I would bet my eye teeth that slashdot's demographics are horribly skewed.
The average slashdotter is more likely to be out of work simply because people who are out of work have more time to read slashdot. It might also be that slashdotters are more likely to be working because they are generally more interested in their field of work and hence more dedicated. I couldn't tell you how it is skewed, but I can tell you that it WILL be skewed. I would take the survay results with a grain of salt. I would call them interesting, and perhaps even an interesting in relation to the employment of people visit slashdot and other sites that link to the survay, but the utterly meaningless in terms of the population as a whole.
So, enjoy the survay, but I wouldn't get upset if you see that your job prospects suck or that everyone else is making more/less money then you.