Network/IS Managers Salary Survey By Patricia Schnaidt   Does this sound like you? You're a 41-year-old male earning $57,690 a year, you're overworked and stressed out, but find the challenge of your work so compelling and your labor so satisfying that you go back for more. In fact, you've toiled at your present job for five years and sweated in this business for 11. If these statistics describe you, then you are a network/IS manager, according to Network Computing's second annual network/IS managers' salary and job satisfaction survey. The mean salary is up 5 percent from 1995 to 1996: In Network Computing's survey of 1995 salaries, the average wage for network/IS managers was $54,810 (note, however, that last year's survey had a different group of respondents). A slightly different number emerges if you ask this year's respondents their salaries in 1995 and 1996; 1996 salaries for this group are up 6.8 percent from 1995 wages. It's hardly surprising that job function and job skill relates directly to salary. Management is compensated higher than staff, and specialists earn more than those who define their skills as a jack-of-all-trades. Those in centralized IS, departmental or division IS, application development, data/telecom, executive or Web management earn above the mean. Harried and Happy? Network managers are a satisfied lot, which is surprising considering they say their jobs are stressful and challenging. Eighty-eight percent of the network/IS managers surveyed rate their jobs as very or moderately challenging, and only 12 percent rate their jobs as not very challenging or not at all challenging. In the survey, 85 percent say they were satisfied with their jobs, leaving only 15 percent dissatisfied with their work. The top-rated reason for liking one's work is, quite simply, the challenge of it. The top cause of j ob dissatisfaction is a difficult relationship with management. The most challengin g aspects of a network/IS manager's job center on keeping current. Keeping up with the changing technology and industry trends rates as the No. 1 challenge of network/IS managers, with 35 percent of the responses. Right behind is keeping up with the demands for IS projects and deployment, with 34 percent; 29 percent cite keeping skills current as their biggest challenge. No Slackers Here A whopping 61 percent say they are consistently overworked, while only 35 percent say that they have the right amount of work. A scant 4 percent say that they don't have enough work to keep them busy. Despite the ravages of the Web and building intranets, network/IS managers' rating of their workload didn't change significantly from last year's survey, in which 60 percent said they were consistently overworked and 36 percent said they had the right amount of work. How many dinners of cold pizza is too many? Network/IS managers work an average of 50.7 hours a week. Twenty-six percent clock out after 40 to 44 hours per week, 27 percent toil for 45 to 49 hours, and 19 work an average of 50 to 54 hours a week. One percent work 75 hours or more a week. That they all report being moderately or very satisfied with their jobs is less surprising when you know their average income is $95,000. Network/IS managers are understandably divided on whether they think they're fairly paid. Forty-four percent think they are fairly compensated, 42 percent think they're not, and 14 percent aren't sure. Interestingly, the mean salary for the group who thinks they're fairly paid is $64,400, which is considerably higher than the $57,690 mean. And the mean salary for those who think they're not fairly compensated is $50,980, which is considerably below the mean. And the group that is unsure lands pennies above the mean--their mean salary is $57,860. Patricia Schnaidt can be reached at pschnaidt@nwc.com.

FreeWire by Bill Frezza Coporate View by Robert Moskowitz On The Wire by Bill Alderson and J. Scott Haugdahl In the Middle by Bruce Robertson Updated January 24, 1997