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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

What is the deal with clowns? Some people are terrified of clowns, and not without reason. Look at what that clown who lives in the sewer did to those poor innocent children in that one movie. That was one freaky clown. On the other hand, that was just one clown. It’s possible that most clowns don’t actually live in sewers and terrorize children.

Historians believe that the tradition of people being clowns goes back to ancient Roman and Greek theater. (Do you kinda get the feeling sometimes that whenever a historian doesn’t want to actually research something, he or she just says, “The ancient Greeks and Romans probably invented this. Besides, who’s gonna call me on it if they didn’t?)

At any rate, today clowns are either beloved or feared, depending on whether you are a slightly dotty person who’s kind of out there, or a rational and right-thinking normal human. We jest! You don’t have to be weird to like clowns, but, ewww, gross. Take you clown approval cooties elsewhere, fruitcake.

So as you probably already have gleaned, this is one of those Salary Survey articles where we report our findings from asking something offbeat and (we hope) at least a little bit hilarious in the Not So Serious section at the end of the survey. And since a lot of people have kind of wondered about the clown thing, we decided that certified IT professionals should have a chance to make their views known.

We’re keeping it simple. We asked survey respondent to choose, which among a handful of options best describes their feelings about clowns. Here’s what we learned:

Q: I find clowns to be …

I don’t get it. What did clowns ever do to deserve all of this fear and loathing? — 34.5 percent
Delightful — 24.7 percent
Disquieting — 10.5 percent
Demonic — 6.1 percent
Distasteful — 6.6 percent
God don’t make no clowns. — 5.9 percent
Devious — 5.5 percent
Divisive — 3.8 percent
Show me a clown, and I’ll run like heck. If I don’t faint first from the sheer abject horror of it all. — 2.2 percent

Apparently, there are quite a few certified IT professionals out there who find clowns to be generally harmless and just can’t grok all of the clown jitters. And there are also quite a few who apparently find clowns to be pleasant and entertaining. Actually, between those two factions, we’ve covered nearly 60 percent of all survey respondents.

It seems quite clear what the big takeaway from all of this is: Evidently, the clowns have already gotten to almost 60 percent of certified IT professionals and are holding their children at gunpoint. It’s OK, we can use hand signals for this next part, if the clowns have hostages, tuck your hair behind your ear. If you need us to alert the authorities, tug on the front of your shirt.

If you really, truly like clowns, then go join the circus, freak show. Your talents are probably being wasted on IT anyway.