The annual ComputerWorld IT Salary Survey for 2017 was recently published and it contains a great wealth of interesting data. So, as I’ve done in the past, this post will summarize its findings and report on what is going on with the data-related positions mentioned in the survey. Of course, please click on the link above to go to ComputerWorld for the nitty-gritty details on other positions, as well as a lot of additional salary and professional information.
Overall, the survey reports a 3 percent growth in IT pay with 50% of respondents indicating that they are satisfied or very satisfied with their current compensation. That is down from last year when the number was 54%. Clearly, though, IT as a profession seems to be a sound choice. 43% expect their organization’s IT headcount to increase and 49 percent expect it to remain the same, while only 7 percent expect a decrease in their company’s headcount.
But all is not rosy. When looking at the amount of work that needs to be done 56 percent expect IT workload to increase over the next year. But if headcount is not rising commensurate with the amount of additional workload then that means organizations will expect more work from their IT staff than they did last year.
Nevertheless, 85 percent say they are satisfied or very satisfied with their career in IT.
Now let’s get to the interesting part for data professional… and that is the salary outlook for specific data jobs.
If you are the manager of a database or data warehousing group, your total compensation increased greater than the norm last year at 4.1 percent. Average compensation grew from $110,173 to $114,635.
DBAs compensation grew 2.9 percent, which was just about the average. Average compensation for DBAs was $104,860, growing from $101,907 in 2016.
Database developer/modeler, which is an interesting grouping, grew 2.5 percent from $96,771 in 2016 to $99,235 in 2017.
So things are looking OK, but not stellar for data professionals. Which IT positions grew their salary at the highest percentage? Well, the top of the heap, somewhat surprisingly, was Web Developer which grew at 6.7 percent (to an average total compensation of $76,446). The next highest growth makes a lot of sense, Chief Security Officer, which grew 6.4 percent year over year.
The common career worries looked familiar with keeping skills up-to-date being the most worrisome, followed by flat salaries and matching skills to a good position. And the biggest workplace woe? Not surprisingly, increased IT workload. But stress levels are about the same with 61 percent of respondents indicating that their level of job stress was the same as last year.
What can you do to help grow your salary this year? Well, you might consider aligning your career with one of the hot specialties called out in the survey. The top three tech functions with the highest average compensation in 2017 are cloud computing, ERP and security.
Overall, though, it looks like an IT career is a good thing to pursue… and working with data in some capacity still makes a lot of sense!
Data and Technology Today 