Salary compass: What's IT worth to you?

Applying for an IT job is like any other search for gainful employment. You worry about your next career move, how much you?re going to earn and where you?re going to earn it? Is it worth moving out of the City or should you be moving into it?

Then, after you?ve made your decision, you find out that a friend of yours is doing exactly the same job but for much larger salary.

How do you stop this happening? Research is the answer, and Computingnet is giving you a chance to look before you get in too deep. The Salary Compass may help you get your money?s worth.

The Salary Compass is an online guide around the world of IT employment. Using the National Computer Centre?s (NCC) annual salary survey, the compass helps you find out average salaries of fellow professionals by location, job title and industry sector. Figures vary according to your search criteria and configurations.

We applied the Salary Compass to the profiles of some real IT professionals. The figures produced give an indication of the salary they should expect, based on where they live, their job description and the industry they work in. The interviewees? real salaries are not included.

After seeing what they should be earning, go to our Salary Compass and see if you are paid the market rate for what you do.

Matt Stevens

Expected salary: #35,200

Search criteria: IT manager, Midlands, manufacturing

Stevens, 29, is group IT manager for MIP, a plastics company based in the Midlands. His employer is a supplier to the automotive industry. Stevens began his computing career when he used to skip school to sort out other people?s networks. After university, he took a job as a programmer and ended up doing contract work.

?Programming and computers in general are pretty boring if you ask me,? says Stevens. ?It became apparent to me after I left university that programming was definitely not the way I wanted to go, so I got a job as a network consultant,? he adds.

Stevens ended up doing several large implementations for organisations such as Aston University and major suppliers in the food industry.

?Then I got away from networking into business and business process engineering, which is where my interests really lie. Computers are inherently dull, it?s what you do with them in a business environment which is absolutely fascinating?, says Stevens.

Stevens believes that one of the systems he administers has made huge cost savings for his company?s customers. The IT department is comparatively small ? only four strong ? but the company turns over in excess of #50 million per annum. Stevens? next planned career move is to carry on working in the manufacturing industry but make the leap from IT manager to IT director.

Moving into another industry sector would not make much difference to his salary, if he remains below board level. According to NCC figures, the national average for an IT manager in any sector, is #35,705.

If Stevens achieves his goal of promotion, he will be looking for a marked pay increase. The national average for a management position is #50,795 ? the same job in his region averages at #48,185.

Peter Bain

Expected salary: #37,200

Search criteria: Project manager, finance sector

Bain works in the finance sector, where the national average for project managers in all sectors is a reasonably generous #32,018.

As a project manager, Bain holds a senior position in a company called Eurobase Systems. His main task is to help the project quality director with the implementation of software and its improvement, especially in line with the ISO 9000 quality control standard.

The company supplies software systems to the insurance sector.

Bain is based in Chelmsford, although the company has offices in the City. His career started with a maths degree, after which he joined GEC-Marconi, then known as Marconi Wireless. There he headed a number of high-level projects before moving to his present position.

?What I?m doing now is applying the software engineering disciplines and technologies that were developed for the defence industry to commercial systems? says Bain. ?After this I?ll be looking for the next challenge.?

Nick Locke

Expected salary: #36,900

Search criteria: Operations manager, Greater London, IT supplier

Locke, aged 39, is currently a project director with CMG, responsible for the insurance arm of the group?s Manchester office.

He left school half-way through his A-levels and took a job with Midland Bank. There he progressed through the ranks of branch office banking, from cashier to the various grades of clerks. Six years later, the bank gave him the opportunity to get into IT. He began by programming in Cobol and progressed to team leader.

Locke moved to the bank?s London office thanks to the Digital VAX knowledge he had accumulated. He was employed on a joint initiative with tool supplier Information Builders, on at least two separate projects.

He later joined CMG?s banking division in 1989 and put his Cobol skills to work ? this time on IBM?s AS/400 platform.

He worked on customer service systems for one of the major clearing banks? credit card operations before going on to support the finished system.

Locke then looked after seven maintenance projects for another of the big clearing banks, accumulating expertise in call centres, and more importantly helping CMG design and write its Phoneday product for when telephone code numbers were changed.

After that, Locke moved to CMG?s insurance division, where he is now responsible for all the consultants based in CMG?s Manchester office.

Kevin Steele

Expected salary: #29,500

Search criteria: Technical support manager, South East, IT

These figures don?t necessarily reflect a true salary for Steele, however, as a search under IT systems development manager reveals a regional average of #33,382.

A network controller/administrator in the same sector and region earns #23,458 on average, according to the NCC?s official figures.

Steele began his IT career at 17 as a computer operator. Now aged 30, he is a network management specialist/consultant with Siemens Business Services, based in Southampton.

He progressed from computer operator to information analyst, working in PC support and database development, before joining Siemens around 18 months ago. His first job with Siemens? was to assist with rollouts of several Windows NT 4 projects with Siemens? clients.

Six months ago, he switched to the network management team, run by himself and two colleagues. They administer both wide and local networks in what he describes as both a reactive and pro-active system.

?We reactively monitor the environment every day,? he says, ?and look for problems that arise. Pro-actively, by capturing this information, we can look for trends, exceptions, and start to baseline it. So we can start to tune the network to its optimum performance.?

Steele is particularly ambitious to capitalise on his client-facing skills, and perhaps to progress to client services manager. Right now he is planning to start a masters? degree in IT through the Open University.

Matthew Neal

Expected salary: #21,300

Search criteria: Systems developer in the IT sector

Neal, 25, is a programmer working for CMG. University was the catalyst which spurred him on to a career in IT.

?Before that I?d never been involved in it, but it was always a hobby,? he says.

If Neal classed himself as a senior systems developer, his salary would compare with the national average of #22,205 for the IT sector and #24,249 across all sectors.

His interest led him to go professional ? this is his first job and he has been with CMG for three-and-a-half years. Although everyone in this organisation goes under the title of consultants, Neal spends most of his time programming. Right now he works mainly in C and UNIX but wants to move into Windows and C++.

Despite the slog that is a programmer?s lot, Neal says he is still enjoying his work.

David Olivey

Expected salary: #42,500

Search criteria: Head of management services, IT sector, any region

Because Olivey is a managing director, the Salary Compass does not necessarily reflect all the realms of his job responsibilities, but a salary as head of management services demonstrates the excellent leap he will have made since his programming days, when he would have been earning 40-50% less.

Programmer turned managing director, Olivey oversees computer company Ultracomp. He says his job is to decide the company?s strategy for the next five years. It?s a private company, and his job is autonomous.

?I have two fellow directors, but basically the buck stops here in most issues,? Olivey says.

He started his working life as a programmer after studying computer science at university. After graduating he travelled the classic route of team leader, project leader, and project manager for ICL-related companies.

?But, during the technical time I spotted a lot of people who were technically strong and better than me?, he explains. ?There was more scope in the project management side. That was the route where there were more opportunities?.

Taking the plunge, Olivey joined Ultracomp while it was still a relatively young company ? some 12 years ago.

?I?m happy with the business role. In the end it?s the one that I do better. We all like to do something we are good at,? he says.

Stuart Hamilton

Expected salary: #36,000

Search criteria: Systems development manager, Greater London, IT sector

The national average for a systems development manager in any sector is #36,066. A person doing the same job as Hamilton but without management responsibility would earn between #20,000 (technician/engineer) and #25,000 (senior systems developer), based on national averages.

Hamilton is technology director at specialist SAP consultancy Axon, based in West London. He joined Axon in 1996 with specific responsibilities for both technology and new business.

Hamilton?s career began after studying engineering at Imperial College London. His first job was in the US, where he was involved in the design and construction of a 54-mile-long particle accelerator under the Texas desert.

After completing a doctorate, he joined a three-man company developing and selling business applications for a 3D image-capturing product.

His big project right now with Axon is so-called ?processware? ? a way of linking business application software from multiple vendors.