How Does Your Salary Stack Up?

Although male respondents typically will make more money than female respondents this year, women will outearn men in six job-title categories: desktop deployment pro, application developer, systems administrator, network administrator, trainer, and application architect. Four of these categories (desktop deployment pro, application developer, trainer, and application architect) had few female respondents, which might account for the women's average salary being higher than the men's. (With only a few respondents, unusually high or unusually low responses aren't balanced by more-average responses.) However, the other two job-title categories (systems administrator and network administrator) had the most female respondents. Nearly 20 percent (the highest percentage) of the female respondents are systems administrators. These female systems administrators reported that they'll earn $52,115; their male counterparts will earn a slightly lower average salary of $51,435. This slight wage difference could be because female systems administrators are typically older than their male counterparts: About 19 percent of female systems administrators are 50 or older, whereas only 8.4 percent of male systems administrators fall into this age category. The second highest number of female respondents—12.6 percent—categorized themselves as network administrators. Female network administrators earn $4295 more than their male counterparts, probably due in part to the females' higher education: 54.5 percent of the female network administrators hold bachelor degrees, master's degrees, or doctorates, compared with 42.3 percent of males.

In general, being older is paying off for survey respondents. The older IT pros are better compensated than their younger counterparts. Respondents who are 60 years of age or older will earn the largest average salary this year, at $66,625, whereas IT pros under the age of 20 will bring home the lowest average annual salary, at $36,750. It's important to note that these age categories had the least number of respondents: Only 1 percent of respondents were 60 or older and only 0.2 percent of respondents were under 20.

The majority of survey respondents are between 30 and 44. Almost 22 percent were 30 to 34, making this group the age category with the largest number of respondents. IT pros in this group bring in an average salary of $54,786. With 19.6 percent of the respondents, the 35 to 39 age category was the second largest age group. These post—baby boomers will make $58,571 in 2004. About 17 percent of respondents fell into the 40 to 44 age group, making it the third largest age category. Respondents in this age group plan on earnings of $61,670 this year.

With age comes experience—and greater financial rewards. As you might expect, the survey shows that, in general, the more IT experience you have, the better your pay. Respondents with 35 to 39 years of IT work under their belt are the high earners at an average salary of $91,000 per year. IT professionals with 40 years or more of experience earn substantially less than their slightly younger counterparts but still more than other IT workers with less experience. Only 0.2 percent of respondents were in the 40 years or more category and only 0.4 percent were in the 35 to 39 years category, so making broad generalizations based on their responses probably isn't a good idea. However, a possible explanation for the unusually high salary number for those with 35 to 39 years of experience might be that these folks, probably in their late 50s and early 60s, are in their peak earning years before retirement. The folks with 40 years or more might be winding down their careers in jobs with fewer responsibilities or in part-time work.

The bulk of respondents (93.6 percent) have been working in IT for 1 to 24 years, with the biggest groups working in IT 5 to 9 years (37.7 percent) and 10 to 14 years (21.6 percent). These IT professionals in the beginning to middle years of their careers show earnings rising at a fairly steady rate.

Education and training are other factors that directly affect salary levels. Respondents who have an associate degree, bachelor degree, master's degree, or doctorate, or those who have a bachelor's plus some graduate work, earn more than those who don't—and the more education, the better. Those with doctorates are by far the best paid, at an average salary of $91,690.

Technical/professional training is also typically a good way to earn more money. A large percentage of respondents have undergone training in the past or are currently enrolled in a training/professional program. In nearly every job-type category, those who've done some professional training make more than those who haven't. In some job-title categories, such as Web administrator and security administrator, the disparity between the average salaries of the trained and the untrained is well over $10,000.

Company Factors
The company or organization you choose to work for can also affect your salary. Factors such as company size, location, and type of business are determiners and indicators of what IT professionals can hope to earn.

Company size can be measured in several ways. Let's look at size by using a couple of metrics that are especially pertinent to IT pros: number of end users and number of servers. Generally speaking, the more end users or servers a respondent's company has, the higher the respondent's salary is. You can see the impact end users have in the "How End Users Affect IT Pros' Salaries" graph. In the case of servers, respondents who work for companies that have 50,000 or more servers earn an average salary of $75,172. Respondents in companies with 100 to 49,999 servers make salaries between $60,000 and $70,000, and respondents in companies with 1 to 99 servers make $50,000 to $60,000. If you're curious, fewer than 5 percent of respondents work for companies that have 10,000 or more servers. Nearly 42 percent of respondents' companies have 24 servers or fewer.

Almost two-thirds of the surveyed IT professionals indicated that they work in the United States. These IT professionals are spread throughout the country, with slightly higher concentrations in the usual regions: South Atlantic (18.6 percent of the US-based respondents work here), East North Central (16.3 percent), and Pacific (15.8 percent). The areas in which the fewest IT professionals work are the East South Central (3.8 percent) and New England (5.6 percent) regions.

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