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 These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

A poster on the wall — possibly containing a sunrise, or perhaps showing a cat in the middle of yawning—once observed that, "Satisfaction is the difference between having a job and having a career." It's not entirely clear, scientifically speaking, whether this means that you work at a mere job, as opposed to pursuing a career, if you aren't completely satisfied with the amount of money that you earn.

IT workers as a whole, of course, probably have good reason to be satisfied with their salaries, and many of them are. As noted in our January issue, 70 percent of certified IT pros who participated in our most recent Salary Survey are either completely satisfied with their compensation (9.2 percent), very satisfied (20.7 percent), or at least satisfied (40.4 percent). The rest were either not very satisfied (23.5 percent of those surveyed) or not at all satisfied (6.1 percent).

If we look beyond the black-or-white breakdown—70 percent = some level of yea vs. 30 percent = some level of nay — however, there are some interesting ways to further dissect salary satisfaction. For example:

All U.S. Respondents
Completely Satisfied —11.7 percent
Very Satisfied — 26 percent
Satisfied —40.5 percent
Not very satisfied —18.1 percent
Not At All Satisfied —3.7 percent

All Non-U.S. Respondents
Completely Satisfied — 6.3 percent
Very Satisfied — 14.7 percent
Satisfied — 40.6 percent
Not very satisfied — 29.7 percent
Not At All Satisfied — 8.7 percent

Whether you live and work in the United States or find yourself somewhere else in the world, there's a fair-to-decent chance that you're happy with what you earn, but maybe not thrilled. On the other hand, U.S. workers are more likely to be excessively satisfied, while those outside the United States are more likely to see themselves as being paid less than they deserve.

You might also argue that certified IT professionals who are nearing the end of their working years are likely to have larger salaries than younger workers and therefore be more satisfied. We can look at that as well:

All U.S. Respondents‍

So there are a couple of small zigs where zags might be expected. The percentage of survey participants who are not at all satisfied with their salaries, for example, gets an odd spike among workers between the ages of�45 and 54. On the whole, however, the basic supposition that people tend to be more satisfied with their earning power as they get older (and hence more experienced) is borne out among U.S. tech workers.

All Non-U.S. Respondents
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When it comes to being Not Very Satisfied and Not At All Satisfied, the younger workers here are much more frustrated than their U.S. counterparts. And actually, there's a strong core of Not Very Satisfied workers at every age level here. High levels of satisfaction, where they do exist, are generally most prominent among the oldest workers, just as in the United States. Youth and beauty, it would seem, still hasn't cracked the code on how to defeat old age and treachery.

There are a handful of other ways the would be interesting to slice things up here, so we'll probably have more to say about this topic in at least one future Salary Survey Extra. Stay tuned.