Job Characteristics
A MANAGER IN WEB DEVELOPMENT earns $11,689 more than other respondents, and upper management earns $15,094 more. (We put a number of self-defined job categories into “upper management:” CEO, president, owner, head of engineering, VP, etc.) The next best career step is to ascend to the rank of an architect, where you can earn $9,760 more. Job titles and company sizes interact in our survey. In small firms, we get responses from a relatively large number of people whose jobs are in “upper management,” but salaries in small companies are generally lower than those in large ones. Correspondingly, people whose job titles say “architect” tend to work for large firms, and benefit from that position.
Other bonuses and penalties added up as follows:
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Senior engineer/developer: $4,311 better than average
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Principal/lead: $1,896 better than average
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System administrator: $2,636 worse than average
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Engineer/developer/programmer: $3,243 worse than average
And among these job descriptions, consultants again come out the big losers: $6,547 worse than average.
Hours Worked
On the web, workaholics rule. You get an enormous advantage over other employees for working more than 60 hours a week. In general, the more hours you work, the better your salary, but the 60+ bonus of $14,199 stood out. (We did not calculate what people earn by the hour.)
Activities
Writing code for collaborative projects proved to be a good investment. Respondents who reported “minor involvement” in collaborative projects saw a bonus $3,485, while “major involvement” reaped a bonus of $5,093.
We tried to measure the effects of different tasks. Attending meetings is correlated with significant salary increases. This doesn’t mean you should arrange to attend arbitrary meetings. The statistics are probably associated with playing a role of team leader or manager. Interestingly, more meetings are not necessarily better—there’s a limit to the benefit. Here are the correlations:
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4 to 8 hours of meetings per week: $3,873 better
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9 to 20 hours of meetings per week: $6,961 better
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More than 20 hours of meetings per week: $2,309 better
Teaching or training others also has a positive effect. All other things being equal, you earn $2,300 more by being involved in teaching.
Performance is a good field to enter: you earn $1,434 more than average for minor involvement in performance and $2,258 more than average for major involvement.
The tasks you do want to avoid are project management and content management systems. Major involvement in project management, oddly enough, brings with it a $3,476 decrease in salary, although minor involvement has no effect. Similarly, you are penalized $1,476 if you have major involvement in communicating with less technical or non-technical departments (but no penalty for minor involvement).
Minor involvement with CMSs costs you $4,647, and major involvement costs you only $3,824. We don’t know why major involvement should be better than minor involvement. The reason may be that CMSs are associated with less technically sophisticated jobs.
Designers get less money than average; they do not measure up to programmers in salary. Minor involvement in design work earns $1,244 less than average, and major involvement earns $1,094 less than average.
