Salary Survey Extra: IT salaries by job hierarchy

Salary Survey Extra is a series of occasional dispatches that give added insight into the findings of our most recent Salary Survey. These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

There are a lot of different factors in IT compensation. When we do the annual Certification Magazine salary survey, we like to focus on certification, but that’s far from the only factor in the equation. Generally speaking, where you stand in your employer’s job hierarchy also impacts your total salary figure. And that’s something we also ask about in our survey.

We’re not going to be blowing anyone’s socks off by revealing that, for example, executives tend to reside at the top of the salary pyramid. On the other hand, you may not be as far removed from the people who have a key to the executive washroom as you think you are. And there are indications that even certified IT professionals at the bottom of their organization’s job hierarchy can expect to do reasonably well.

These numbers don’t provide a 1-to-1 correlation that explains your salary, any more than getting (name of certification) ensures that you will earn the precise average income listed in our Salary Survey 75. On the other hand, there are some valuable general indicators. The average salary in the United States of a senior specialist, for example, is quite close to that of a manager. You don’t necessarily need to be the boss, to get the big money. (Although, sure, it probably helps.)

We also learned some interesting things about the composition of our survey population. For instance, most of the people in that population are a few rungs up the corporate ladder, but still reside below the level of management. Let’s look at that first. The following table lists the percentage of salary survey respondents at each job hierarchy level, both inside the United States, and in all other countries:

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By far, the largest group of survey respondents are at the senior specialist level. Which is probably decent indication of where most certified IT professionals end up. There’s certainly room to continue rising up the ranks, and there are jobs available at lower echelons as well. If you’re at the senior specialist level already, however, and you find yourself highly contented, then you certainly aren’t alone in the world.

The following picture of average salaries is probably murkiest at the top. Our mechanism doesn’t do a particularly good job of accounting for seven-figure salaries and above, and there are plenty of tech millionaires in the world. (Although it’s arguable whether very many of those guys spend their time completing online employment surveys.) At any rate, here are the numbers:

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We’re going to go out on a limb and say that “Director” probably has a more elevated connotation than “Executive” outside the United States. Beyond that, what’s revealed here is probably what most people would expect to find. Generally speaking, the further up the job hierarchy you are, the more you can expect to earn.

 ONE PHONE TO RULE THEM ALL  What is the smartphone of choice for Salary Survey respondents? We can’t tell you that precisely, because it’s not precisely what we asked. We only considered the Big Two. When it comes to BYOD, do you roll into work with a byte of the latest Apple iTech, or are you dazzled by all the stars in Samsung’s Galaxy? There are no other choices, right?

OK, so we did include a few other choices. Here’s what we found out:

iPhone — 43 percent
Galaxy — 26.7 percent
Some Android-powered knockoff that didn’t cast me $800 — 19.9 percent
That thing they sell at Walmart with the minutes preloaded — 1.6 percent
Aren’t Option 2 and Option 3 the same thing? — 8.8 percent