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The 2011 IT Salary Guide

itmanagement.earthweb.com

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Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#11

Post by sangaya »

brown9-2 wrote: post #7
sethg wrote: post #5

When comparing offers or negotiating a raise, how do people translate between a salary and a salary-plus-bonus? When my company got acquired, my base salary didn’t go up, but now I get a performance-based bonus; both my individual performance and the company’s overall hitting-its-numbers are used to compute the bonus figure. If my “normal” bonus (i.e., when everyone hits but does not exceed performance targets) is 10…

I would think it only really makes sense to compare total compensation (salary + bonus + benefits) when comparing jobs.

I recently left a job that paid lower salaries and tried to focus on total compensation through bonus + benefits. The thing is, salary is steady and something I can budget my family off of. We can make decisions such as mortgage's, car payments, savings goals, investment goals, etc off of a salary. I can't do the same with a bonus. In fact, 08/09 made a lot of employees realize that the bonus can't be relied on in any way.

Is it possible to make more through total compensation of lower salary + bonus than high salary + little to no bonus? Sure. But I'm happier with the salary, and my hunch is that many other employees would feel the same.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#12

Post by mcknz »

sethg wrote: post #5

When comparing offers or negotiating a raise, how do people translate between a salary and a salary-plus-bonus? When my company got acquired, my base salary didn’t go up, but now I get a performance-based bonus; both my individual performance and the company’s overall hitting-its-numbers are used to compute the bonus figure. If my “normal” bonus (i.e., when everyone hits but does not exceed performance targets) is 10…

Probably somewhere between the lottery tickets and 5%. Both the individual performance and "hitting the numbers" scenarios are extremely subjective, and allow the company to justify cuts pretty much whenever they want. Bonuses make the offer sound better, and it's much easier for the company to say they are "cutting bonuses" rather than "cutting pay," which really amounts to the same thing. I would try to get as much in salary as possible, even if that means the total package is less.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#13

Post by mcknz »

cagenut wrote: post #3

• New York, NY: 41% higher • San Francisco: 35% higher as skype/telecommuting evolve there's an incredible arbitrage opportunity here without even going offshore.

On the other side, NYC companies will look for remote workers in the midwest to save money. Consulting companies can charge NYC rates with an Indiana overhead. Midwest is the new offshore.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#14

Post by SandB0x »

(It's not loading on my phone, but)

What makes it very difficult to compare jobs is the actual hours worked. My last job had great hours, but I had friends who earned maybe 1.4x my salary, but often worked double the hours. I'm not talking about the effective hourly wage here, rather money per unit leisure time. If you offered me an extra few grand per year, but every week night I'd get home completely exhausted at 9pm, forget it. Not for an office job for someone else.

Note leisure time includes time to learn and work on things that interest you.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#16

Post by mcknz »

I was interested to see that as a Lead Application Developer, you can add:

  10% for Microsoft SharePoint skills
  11% for SharePoint skills
There's gotta be some arbitrage opportunity in there somewhere.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#18

Post by gaius »

golgo13 wrote: post #6
Malic wrote: post #2

In a time when infographics are all the rage, you'd think the information here would be presented in a more absorbable format.

No kidding. Just paste into excel and take a screen shot. I guess they need the page views...

Wow, even the print version isn't single-page

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#19

Post by PonyGumbo »

After seeing the variance by region, it makes me very curious about the % adjustment for telecommuting-only jobs. I'm at the low end of the scale (and about $30k underpaid if you adjust for location and skills), but I work from home on the opposite side of the country from my employer.

Re: The 2011 IT Salary Guide

#20

Post by iamdave »

joshwa wrote: post #17

What the hell is the difference between: Developer/Programmer Analyst Software Engineer (Lead) Applications Developer (Senior) Web Developer

The way I see it (would be good to hear other opinions):

Developer/Programmer Analyst = looks for bugs. Software Engineer = Integrates the code into live environments Lead Applications Developer = Primarily focused on developing the relevant code Senior Web Developer = "I've been here the longest"

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