It was the ancient Greek playwright Euripides who wrote that, “Among mankind money is far more persuasive than logical argument.” Euripides’ venerable insight is believed to be the root of the far pithier aphorism, “Money talks,” which has been championed by everyone from Angus Young and Neil Diamond to Han Solo (certainly behaviorally, if not in strict point of dialogic fact).

We don’t mean to suggest that talking about money is the only way to capture people’s attention, but it’s certainly one highly effective method of achieving that goal. The annual Salary Survey issue of Certification Magazine is our most talked-about print output, and the Salary Survey 75 list produced for that issue is easily the most heavily trafficked item of content to be posted here each year.

That makes now an ideal time for a good pot-stirring conversation about money, right? Now that the Winter Edition of Certification Magazine is spread across the laps of faithful subscribers (or about to pop through on their personal media device of choice), it’s time to start unpacking the results of the annual Salary Survey itself.

But first, how about a round of applause for the more than 4,100 certified IT professionals who pitched in over the course of roughly nine weeks at the end of 2017 to get us here? Each of those hardy souls contributed some 15 or 20 minutes of their time and 70-ish questions’ worth of their personal data to help us create a picture of the IT salary landscape in the United States and elsewhere (91 other nations) around the globe.

Some of the more notable data points have already been reported in the aforementioned Winter Edition. (If you aren’t already a print or digital subscriber, then you can go here to subscribe, or just grab a digital copy, or an ink-and-paper single.) We’ll be bringing you all of that and more as 2018 marches forward: Over the next few months, articles with new survey data will be featured each week here at CertMag.com.

Our first dramatic reveal, however, is the Big Cheese of the Salary Survey, a survey output that first appeared in 2015 and has quickly become one of our most popular annual disclosures: the Salary Survey 75. People are competitive by nature, and this is a relatively harmless way to compare yourself to the Other Guy and see whose certification is at least potentially more valuable.

(No, we aren’t implying that everyone who has Certification A can expect to make Salary B from Employer C straight out of the testing center. There are many factors that determine salary, and the presence or absence of a particular credential on your résumé is only one of them. It sure is a fun one to talk about, though, right?)

We hope you enjoy looking the numbers over, and we hope that you’ll come back for more. This here is merely the tip of the iceberg. Stick around and you’ll find out a whole lot more in the coming weeks and months. For now, feast your eyes on this:

‍