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1997 IS/Network Manager Salary Survey

Sizing Up the Organization and People on the Network
The average network/IS professional works for a company with annual revenues of $388 million, spending $7 million on IT products and services annually. They manage an average of 6.2 people, and works on a network with 797 users that spans 6.5 locations. After skill and job title, what fires up your earning power is organization's size and type of business as well as a the size of the staff you manage, rather than the sheer quantity of locations managed, users or dollars spent on IT.

The type of business your company conducts most definitely influences your earning power (see Figure 10). Earning well above the mean are IS professionals in entertainment, computer resale, finance and banking, and computer and communications services. Those working in nonprofit, advertising and marketing, education, and legal, real estate and insurance number among the lower paid.

Approximately half of the survey audience works in organizations with revenues of $100 million or less; the other half works in organizations with revenues of $100 million or greater. Does company size matter for pay? It certainly does, as Figure 11 shows. Starting at revenues above $500 million, salaries are generally above the mean. Plotting salary versus organization size creates a near inverse bell curve, with 24 percent of the respondents working in companies with less than $10 million and 25.8 percent working in organizations with more than $1 billion in revenue.

Nearly two-thirds of network/IS professionals have staff working for them-the days of the LAN support person working solo are waning. In our survey, 46.5 percent manage between one and nine people; 7.1 percent manage 10 to 29 people; 2.3 percent manage 30 to 39 people; 1.3 percent manage 50 to 69 peopl e; and 2 percent manage more than 110 people. 42.3 percent don't manage anyone but themselves. IS professionals with personne l responsibility earn above the mean salary without exception, although the relationship is not linear (see Figure 12).

Nearly two-thirds of the IS professionals surveyed are responsible for more than one location in the organization, reflecting the industry trend toward centralized IS departments. On average, a network/IS manager is responsible for 6.5 locations, which is up from an average of 4.2 locations in last year's survey. However, neither an increasing number of locations nor additional users corresponds to increased take home pay. According to our research, 38.5 percent of network managers are responsible for a network that exists in a single location only; 28.2 percent are responsible for two to four locations, 14.6 are responsible for five to nine locations; 3.9 percent are responsible fo r 10 to 19 locations; and 14.9 percent are responsible for 20 or more locations.

Network/IS professionals have great spending power when it comes to aligning business and technology mandates. Twenty percent of the survey audience spends more than $20 million on IT each year. Six percent spend $10 million to $19 million; 7 percent spend $5 million to $10 million; 19 percent spend $1 million to $4 million; 21 percent spend $250,000 to $1 million; 19 percent spend $50,000 to $250,000 and 8 percent spend less than $50,000.