Findings in a nutshell

• The salary increases have been steady but not sensational.
• The days of guaranteed bonuses and pay rises are gone.
• The common increase range was between 5% and 10% of the total package.
• Highest-paying fields are enterprise architecture, ERP, storage, infrastructure and project management.
• Helpdesk, Web design and desktop management are the lowest-paid fields.
• In addition to architects and project managers, in highest demand are C#, .Net, Java, SharePoint and PHP developers.
• Money is not at the top of the satisfaction indicators list, but it is the primary reason for seeking new employment.
  
• 6% of the respondents have firm plans to leave South Africa.

The ITWeb/CareerWeb IT Salary Survey in an online opt-in survey so its sample is not controlled, but it remains the only survey that captures data directly from SA IT professionals.

This year the survey ran for three weeks on ITWeb and CareerWeb in February and March. A total of 3 317 usable responses were received for the remuneration analysis, down on the previous year’s number by 11 records. Participants include employees at various levels, including business owners.

The survey sample population remains predominantly male, white and permanently employed.

However, the number of black respondents has increased by 6% to 21%, and the number of women have increased by 1% since last year to 19%. Although the ratio of contractors stayed the same, permanently employed respondents are down to 78% from 85%, because of the addition of the self-employed option. Five percent of respondents say they are self-employed and 3% are not employed at all.

Ten percent of the respondents have up to matric behind them, with 23% having obtained a tertiary diploma and 22% a degree.

The sample population remains young, with 69% under the age of 35. Most respondents live in Gauteng and work in the ICT, services and consulting, or finance sectors.

The gender gap is one of the constants in a decade of doing this survey – this is particularly the case at the highest paying executive level positions. However, median salaries for female respondents are 13% higher than last year’s, compared to male respondents whose median is 9% higher.

Most respondents manage small teams. Over a half have less than ten people reporting to them and earn a median salary of R31 000. Nearly a quarter have no one reporting to them at all, and they earn a monthly median of R25 000. Only a handful of the respondents manage more than 100 employees, with salaries ranging from a median of R53 200 to R73 000.

The hottest areas to be are enterprise architecture, ERP and storage management across the whole sample. Other areas claiming top spots depending on company size are wireless networking at small companies, disaster recovery at mid-sized companies, and knowledge and project management at the largest companies.

And what’s the profile of the industry’s crème de la crème? As always, just for interest’s sake, we single out the top individual earners at each level. This year they include, of course, a systems architect, a business development manager, a CEO and an ERP consultant:

• The highest earner of the contractors is a 36-40 year old coloured male, working at a medium sized company, with further education. This ERP consultants reportedly earns R1 400 000 annually.
• The highest salary of the IT staff respondents is earned by a white female systems architect, aged between 41 and 45, with a masters degree, working for a large company. She earns R960 000 per annum.
• In operational management, the top earner is a white male between 41 and 45, with a university degree employed in a large company. He works as a business development manager and earns R1 400 000 a year.
• The highest paid respondent in executive management is a white male between 46 and 50, who is the CEO of a special division in a large JSE-listed company. He has a master’s degree and his yearly salary is R1 760 000.

Executive managers at large companies earn a median of R65 000 per month, compared to R40 000 earned by small company execs.

But according to Susan Rousseau it doesn’t automatically follow that career prospects are better in larger organisations. “In an era where IT people look beyond money when assessing opportunities, smaller organisations are increasingly able to offer the location, the flexibility and job atmosphere that candidates seek.”

Other high-paying areas of expertise among permanently employed respondents include ERP, storage management, infrastructure management and project management.

In smaller companies (those with less than 100 staff), the wireless network arena is the best paid area du jour.

The lowest-paid job fields are helpdesk, Web design and desktop management.

Among contractors, enterprise architecture comes tops, closely followed by project management, business development management, financial systems and ERP.

Only three respondents are Cisco Certified Internet Engineers, but they boast the highest median salary of R46 350 per month. SAP-certified occupy only 2% of the sample and report median earnings of R40 000. Project managers, making up 4% of the certified sample, command a median of R34 000.

Most respondents – nearly 30% – have a CompTIA certification. Also among the most popular are the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and the Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) certifications. MCP holders have between six and 13 years experience in the IT industry, and their salaries range from R21 000 to R34 000. Those with an MCSE reported eight to twelve years experience and median earnings of R25 000.

Year after year, the trend of tying annual increases to individual performance grows. And this year’s ITWeb/CareerWeb IT Salary Survey results back up that trend.

Forty-one percent of respondents at staff level cited performance-based increases as the primary reason for a raise, which is up from 32% last year. A combination of several factors determining an increase is also high on the list, as it was last year.

Most respondents have received an increase of 5%, with the common range being between 5% and 10% of total package, including the performance component.

How do recruiters and skills development specialists see the current ICT job market and which skills are hardest to find or hardest to place?

The most commonly mentioned hot skill is project management. According to Madelise Grobler, MD of Bytes People Solutions, project managers can earn up to R1 million a year.

According to Susan Rousseau, client development manager at Insource.ICT, the skills most in demand are C# and Java developers, application and systems architects, infrastructure engineers and project managers, commanding salaries “higher than the norm”.

Software and enterprise architects are also wanted, therefore earning large salaries. According to Madelise Grobler, MD of Bytes People Solutions, they can earn between R450 000 and R800 000 annually.

Sharon Waddington, specialist recruitment consultant at IT and General, lists several consultants that are also in demand, namely Oracle, SAP and IT security.

Demand is down for Delphi, Cobol and Visual Basic skills, according to Lindy Sollinger, director of Datafin.

The economy is having quite an impact on recruiting. Rousseau says there is more of a focus on skills retention and Grobler notes that contractors are increasingly seeking permanent jobs or longer contracts.

This year, there are slightly fewer respondents happy with their jobs than last year: 38% say they love their jobs, compared to last year’s 44%. While the neutral camp grew by 2% to 46%, there is a 3% increase in unhappy employees, making it 15%.

Not surprisingly, happy employees earn more than dissatisfied ones.

More than half of the respondents think their salary is competitive. The group that rated their salaries as “very competitive” earned by far the highest median of R38 000.

Money is only in third place on the ‘job satisfaction’ indicator, while challenge and responsibility are rated as the most important factors, irrespective of the size of the company.

The ICT skills market is in a state of flux, and our survey confirms this.

This year, a smaller percentage of respondents received an overseas job offer - 17% compared to 19% last year, but more people have firm plans to leave. Six percent of the total respondents  - or 36% of those who have received an overseas job offer - are planning to accept it. This is up from 5% of last year’s respondents who had secured jobs abroad.

Surprisingly, almost a quarter of overseas job offers came from the US. Only slightly less, at 23%, came from the UK, the most popular destination in the previous years. A further 15% of leavers opted for Australia and 13% for Europe.

The biggest motivator for leaving SA? Predictably, it’s crime. This time more respondents listed crime and violence as the top reason for leaving – 45%, compared to 29% last year.

While some are looking overseas for greener pastures, most are content to find another job closer to home. More than half of the respondents (51%) have applied for a new job in South Africa during the past year.

Money is not the biggest job satisfaction factor when it comes to the current job, but it is the biggest motivator for seeking new employment. Those looking for new jobs earn on average several thousand less than those happy with their current jobs.

The next biggest motivator to leave is the lack of growth opportunities (25%), followed by the desire to work with new or more challenging technologies.