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Microsoft's 5th Annual Salary Survey

5th Annual Salary Survey
By Linda L. Briggs, Editor-in-Chief

Not surprisingly in today’s job market, salaries are up, up, up for just about everyone. You can move ever higher in the compensation pile with these tickets: job experience, developer talent, or Windows 2000 skills.

In MCP Magazine's U.S. Salary Survey, everyone's a winner this year—except perhaps the hiring managers who must deal with a rising tide of IT salaries. Despite a doubling in the number of MCSEs in the past year and a huge increase in the numbers of MCPs overall, our fifth annual salary survey shows compensation holding strong for all Microsoft Certified Professionals. In line with general increases in the IT industry driven by strong demand, salaries for MCSEs, for example, are up four percent, from a base salary last year of $65,100, to this year’s $67,800. (Chart 1 shows base salaries by title; Chart 2 shows additional compensation such as bonuses.)

The compensation picture is considerably different, though, for someone just entering the IT field. Those with a year or less of experience, as 23 percent of our respondents reported, and who have passed a single Microsoft exam and thus hold the entry-level Microsoft Certified Professional title, reported an average base salary of $45,800. Experience, as always, is the key differentiator in salary, followed by area of the country and job function. Charts 3-3d show how rapidly salary rises with experience, and charts. Other factors, including age and gender, also play into the salary equation. (Charts for age and gender are shown later in this survey.)

As Chart 1 shows, certification appears to boost salary approximately four percent from a non-certified IT worker to one holding the entry-level Microsoft title of MCP. (For comparison purposes, we included in the survey a group of non-certified technical professionals working toward their first Microsoft certification.)

The Windows 2000 Price Tag

Our hot spot for salaries this year is Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers working with Windows 2000. When we collected our survey results in April, Win2K had only recently shipped. We asked MCSEs to indicate whether they had started working with the new OS or not, and whether they planned to get certified on it this year. (All MCSEs must re-certify on Windows 2000 by the end of 2001. We wanted to measure the early adopters.) Those already focusing on Win2K and planning to certify early are earning somewhat more than MCSEs working with NT 4.0. But it’s too soon to conclude that Win2K work pays more than expertise with NT 4.0. In another year, given the same pattern, we might be able to conclude that; but for now, the reason is probably this: More experienced (and thus higher paid) MCSEs are assigned the choicest and most difficult projects. High on the list is working with any new OS or software, hence the salary difference.

The Value of Experience

As always, our survey emphasizes the tight relationship between pay and time on the job. It also highlights how quickly the certification program has grown. Respondents, who represent a statistical sampling of all MCPs in the U.S., have an average of 5.5 years of experience—down from 6.6 years in 1999. In particular, average experience among those holding the MCSE title has dropped almost a full year, from 6.8 to 5.9. Last year, notably, we saw a surprising rise in average experience among MCSEs and speculated that the program might be attracting more experienced IT workers expanding on Novell and Unix-centered skill sets. This year it appears that the huge influx of newcomers into the certification program is pulling down the average. For example, MCSEs have grown from around 140,000 worldwide when we conducted our survey last spring, to over 260,000 today. Microsoft’s program overall includes at least 800,000 certified individuals worldwide, up from about 500,000 a year ago.

Footing the Bill

We observed a drop again this year in the number of companies paying for certification (Chart 5). In 1998, 58 percent of respondents said their companies paid for certification entirely; in 1999, that had dropped to 50 percent; this year, just 39 percent of companies pick up the certification bill completely.

Given the increasing prevalence of certification in IT, we find this surprising. Apparently, in a red-hot job market, employers are reluctant to pay for skills that they think may increase an employee’s worth or attractiveness elsewhere. Interestingly, salaries for those whose companies paid for certification were much higher (averaging $71,400) than those who paid for certification themselves ($58,500). Perhaps the more valued and highly compensated the employee, the more negotiating power that individual has in convincing an employer to pick up the tab.

Developers Top the Charts

If you’re wondering what skills will move you up the pay scale quickly, consider this: Microsoft Certified Solution Developers tend to top the charts in many of our comparisons (There are not enough Microsoft Certified Database Administrators yet for us to calculate accurate salaries). Taking a lead or management position makes a big difference in salary here, perhaps because of a gap in talent and responsibility between those who write programming code vs. more experienced programmers, who analyze systems and design programs.

Chart 6 shows IT workers with titles like Programmer/Analyst averaging $68,700, but jumping to $103,300 when the title “project lead” is added. Corresponding developer certifications like the MCSD and MCP+Site Building also tend to top the charts.