The ever-changing nature of the ICT industry makes it extremely difficult to pin down what is the most in-demand or best-paying job. This is dependent on current demand and very often this is based on a product still in development, predicted to be the next big thing to hit the market. With this in mind, CompTIA shares some statistics gathered by the ITWeb team as published in the ITWeb Annual Salary Survey 2011.

Sample snapshot

The 2011 ITWeb Annual Salary Survey was compiled from data provided by 3226 permanently employed workers. These included IT professionals, IT business managers and business owners from across SA, from small to large companies. The vast majority of respondents live in Gauteng, followed by the Western Cape. The largest area of work was software development and programming, followed by network infrastructure and processes. Over 80% of respondents are male, 52% are white and more than half are between 25 and 35 years old.
Executive summary

• On average women are still earning less than men across all levels: strategic, operational and staff.
•  Results indicate that Gauteng pays the best, salaries in Limpopo are the lowest.
• More experience means a higher salary in most cases.
• According to the survey, the top-paid niche areas of IT are document management and imaging, enterprise architecture and SOA, ERP and project management, e-billing, and supply chain management.
• Support/helpdesk respondents report earning the least, followed by desktop management/services, web design, web services and call centre management.
• Just under three quarters of respondents received a salary increase in the last year. The majority of these increases were between 4% and 10%.
• The survey analysed salaries within three job levels: strategic, operational and staff. At the strategic level, the three top-paid job types were CEO/MD/President, then CFO/FD and then CIO.
  At the operational management level, the three top-paid jobs were enterprise architect/chief architect, business development manager and database/data warehouse manager.
  At the staff level, architects top the best-paid chart: the three top-paid jobs were enterprise architect/chief architect, software architect and systems architect.

Education vs. salary

In general, the higher the level of education, the higher the salary. There is a marked difference in the salaries of those who have undergraduate degrees vs. those who attended technical college or technikon.

Job satisfaction

The results of the survey show that the majority of respondents feel either happy with or neutral about their jobs. While only 16% admit to being unhappy, most respondents are on the hunt for new positions. 35% of respondents love their jobs, but 58% are keeping a lookout for something new.

This may be due in part to the fact that 41% of respondents feel their salaries are not competitive. Just over half the respondents believe their salaries to be competitive or very competitive – a 9% drop since last year. 30% of respondents cited “Want to earn more money,” as their primary reason for leaving a company, followed by “Want to work on new/more challenging technology.”

In terms of what makes respondents happy in their jobs, remuneration is an important factor, but it is not the most important, however. It falls under quality of management, career prospects and, the factor deemed most important, the challenge of the job.

For more information on the survey please vist bit.ly/itwebsurvey.