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- The ITWeb/CareerWeb ninth annual IT salary survey reveals that enterprise and systems architects, as well as CIOs, are the industry’s top earners.
- Overall salaries are up by 25% on last year’s sample.
- A severe shortage in experienced IT skills fuels job-hopping, with over 50% of respondents having looked for a new job in SA, and about 5% ready to take up an overseas offer.
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 Close to 3 400 IT professionals participated in the ITWeb/CareerWeb 2007 IT Salary Survey, ensuring a good cross-industry sample.
The survey ran online for three weeks in February and March. Specialist remuneration consultancy 21 Century Business and Pay Solutions helped compile the questionnaire and performed data cleansing and salary data analysis. Further analysis was done by the ITWeb database analysis team.
The sample statistics in this year’s survey do not differ greatly from last year, with 82% of respondents being male, 85% permanently employed and 49% under the age of 35.
There is a 2% increase of black employees among the respondents, although the overall percentage is still low, numbering 15%. While white respondents are still in the majority, the number has been steadily decreasing each year and is down to 65% compared to 75% in 2004.
 Respondent snap shot |
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As top execs in this sample remain overwhelmingly male, there is a definite gap between salaries reported by male and female respondents. However, with a monthly median salary of R28 340  earned by men and R23 913 earned by women, both figures are up on last year’s results by a significant margin – 29% and 21% respectively.
The overall medians reported at executive level are slightly up on last year’s. At staff level, however, IT people appear to be earning between 15% and 18% more than last year’s sample.
At the executive management level, the top earners are not MDs or CEOs but rather CIOs, who reported a median monthly package of R50 000. In fact, MDs also earn less than chief operations officers, chief technology officers and sales directors, which could be due to a number of business owners in the sample, who appear to be taking a sacrifice while growing the business.
Particularly well-paid specialist areas of IT, based on median salaries, are enterprise architecture, outsourcing, ERP, IT governance and project management.
The best-paid jobs in the industry are those of systems and enterprise architects.
This is reflected at both the mid management level, with a median salary of R38 000 reported by chief enterprise architects, as well as at the staff level, where software and systems architects take the top two positions.
Minor-league median pay is on offer in desktop management, server hardware, Web design, supply chain management, and surprisingly, in software testing and quality assurance as well as call centre management. Help desk operators are the lowest paid staff, reaching a median salary of under R10 000.
Job function v salary
Certified skill v salary |
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Looking at the top end of the scale, the biggest annual packages among permanent employees were reported by a CEO of a mid-sized company (R2 220 000), a project manager (R1 350 00), and asystems integrator (R 960 000). Notwithstanding the overall gender gap, the highest paid individual at staff level is a woman.
Among contractors, the top earner spot is shared by a disaster recovery specialist and a software architect, who both earn a total of R1 440 000 a year.
Specialist skills cash in
IT`s top and bottom earners |
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While some respondents’ increases are linked to inflation, most are based on performance, increased responsibility and improved skill set.
This survey reveals that the majority of organisations offer an increase of 5%, with the common range being between 5% and 8% of total package.
As with the increases, bonuses are in most cases linked to performance. Personal performance determines the bonus for 35% of the respondents, with a further 16% depending on a company’s annual performance. However, contrary to this trend, a sizeable portion of the sample (31%) is still offered a guaranteed 13th cheque as a bonus.
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More than half of the respondents (52%) have admitted to having applied for a new job within the past year. Of these, 33% believe that they should earn more or that they are undervalued in their current position. A further 29% say they feel they are stagnating, with no growth or career opportunities within their companies and no further training offered.
The top three areas of dissatisfaction within current employment environments were company culture, career, and boss, with 48%, 35% and 27% of the vote respectively. Location was an issue, with 23% of the vote, and technology with 15% of the vote.
Although remuneration is still a concern for employees, these results point to far softer issues, which companies could work on as part of their retention strategies.
Just as was the case with last year’s results, this year’s ITWeb Salary Survey sees remuneration coming in at third place in the satisfaction ratings, with job or responsibility challenge and job atmosphere taking first and second place respectively.
In fact, 57% of respondents said they believed their remuneration to be fair, with a further 11% declaring themselves “very satisfied”. In contrast, only 44% of respondents professed to love their jobs, while 44% said they were neutral and 12% not satisfied at all.
Job satisfaction |
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 Almost one fifth of this year’s respondents had sought or received job offers from outside South Africa in the past year.
What should be of greater concern for local industry is how willing the market is to seriously consider outside offers. Five percent of the total respondents – or 27% of the respondents who confirmed they had sought or received international job offers – indicated that they intended to or had accepted a foreign job offer.
The UK again tops the chart as favourite foreign destination. This year, the UK interested 26% of respondents, significantly down from 37% last year. Europe, on the other hand, is increasing its profile among local job seekers. From a 6% interest last year, Europe is now the second most popular destination, with 15% of votes. Australia continued to hold interest, with 14% of respondents favouring the country.
Brain drain
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