Interestingly, 62 percent of those of you who have some sort of Microsoft certification don't think it's helped your career very much, and only 10 percent think certification has been a key factor. Our survey results bear this out: On average, the MCDBAs among you aren't making a whole lot more than those who don't hold that certification.The same is true of the Microsoft Certified Solution Designers (MCSDs), MCPs, MCSAs, MCSEs, and Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs). In fact, in a surprisingly high number of cases—as you can see in Table 4—those of you without any certification can even boast a higher paycheck than those who have taken the time to get certified.
To delve further into this concern, we specifically compared salary results with Microsoft certification status and came away with little variance, save for a minor blip in favor of the certified in the $80,000-to-$99,999 range. In fact, if you lack a Microsoft certification, you're more likely than your certified brethren to boast a salary above $100,000!
Are you in the right industry? If you're seeking a higher income, you might want to take a look at banking and finance, computer-related manufacturing, and consulting. These three fields are where the big money is—35, 36.4, and 37 percent of people in these fields, respectively, reap salaries of $100,000 or more. On the other side of the spectrum, if you're in education, agriculture, government, wholesale trade, or entertainment, you're among the lowest-paid employees in our survey, coming in on average toward the under-$60,000 end of the salary range. For a complete breakdown of pay by industry, see Table 2, page 18.
In tune with our findings last year, job roles also make a difference in pay. As Diana May reports in "Change in the Air?", most of you are DBAs. Sure, some application developers, programmers, and architects are among you, as well as a number of IT generalists, but DBA is the predominant role among SQL Server Magazine's readership.
The salary range of DBAs is all over the map—naturally influenced by such factors as years of experience and certification—but this year we're seeing a general concentration in the $90,000-to-$124,999 range. Not bad at all. Your salaries don't come close to the levels of CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs, of course, but DBAs are faring better than most other SQL Server professionals. IT generalists are doing a bit better in the coveted $125,000-to-$199,999 range, but DBAs see more consistently respectable wages at the higher end.
Business intelligence (BI) specialists, data warehouse architects, and consultants are among the highest-paid, and network architects, database developers, application programmers,and particularly trainers (66 percent of whom earn less than $30,000) rank among the lowest paid. For a breakdown of salary by job title, see Table 3, page 18.
Is It Worth It?
Quite a few SQL Server professionals can boast healthy wages, but are you overworked? According to the survey, 55 percent of you are working up to 50 hours per week, 16 percent are putting in as many as 60 hours per week, and a bleary-eyed 4 percent are grinding out more than 60 hours. You're also likely to spend quite a bit of time working from home, with 55 percent devoting as many as 10 at-home hours to work each week and 14 percent toiling as many as 20 hours. So as you're bringing in the big bucks—or even the midsized-to-small bucks—be sure not to burn yourselves out! You're very important to the industry—and to us.
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