Surveying the BI Salary Surveys

Ever wonder if you are compensated appropriately for your work as a BI professional? Below is some salary information I've gleaned from various sites and consolidated for your convenience.

Computerworld's Smart Salary Tool 2006 shows Data Warehousing Managers at $116,452 in 2006, a 4.17% increase of 2005. Be wary, since the job description was a bit general: "Develops and implements information management strategies. Coordinates and manages information management solutions. Manages all aspects of the warehouses such as data sourcing, migration, quality, design and implementation." Another reason to be suspicious: the sample size is quite low (i.e., approximately 37.)

A few other outputs from this tool (salary + bonus):

• Data Warehousing Managers: $116,452
• Business intelligence analyst: $76,045
• Database analyst*: $66,917
• Database architect*: $105,088
• Database developer/modeler*: $72,788

See this site for a summary table.

Certification Magazine also published a survey with 2006 salary information. Craig Mullens did a good job of summarizing the results in this post. Of note, certified DBA's came in with an average salary of $83,790. This ranged widely depending on the type of RDMS. For more information refer to Craig's post, the original article, or the summary jpg with results.

Of course, The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) does a very exhaustive annual salary survey for BI called "2006 TDWI Salary, Roles, AND Responsibility Report." Membership is required to view this. A few of the highlights (for year 2005):

• BI director: $117,260 + average bonus of $20,104 received by 75%
• Lead architect: $107,239 + average bonus of $12,517 received by 53%
• BI tools manager/developer: $86,757 + average bonus of $9,059 received by 64%
• ETL manager/developer: $79,937 + average bonus of $8,397 received by 55%
• Data analyst/modeler: $80,130 + average bonus of $8,653 received by 57%
• Technical architect/systems analyst: $80,984 + average bonus of 9,683 received by 52%

I highly recommend the TDWI report. It'd almost be worth the membership. It has a lot of detail, job descriptions, etc behind the numbers.

Monster.com Salary Center also does salary surveys. An analysis of the DW/BI-related provided the following (salary + bonus):

• Data Warehousing Specialist: $78,005
• Data Warehousing Manager: $111,109
• Top Data Warehousing Executive: $207,320

Thoughts? Any surveys or positions I missed?

* Indicates that these figures are not necessary related specifically to BI.

Articles/Blogs of the Week: 01/05/2007

Every week, we try to outline the best articles and blogs from the past week. Below are the articles/blogs for this week:

• CDC without triggers, timestamps, or other source table modifications. This is a post by Milind Zodge that I think provides a unique approach to dealing with Change Data Capture (CDC).
• 2007 Vital Signs Flat budgets and slow hiring are on tap for 2007, according to our quarterly survey of IT executives. Most interesting in this article is the impact of all things data throughout the statistics. Two of three "top priorities" were data related, as well as the #1 item listed under "Quick Hits. (Data management/business analytics)
• Aetna to offer patients access to online data. If you're not in healthcare, don't read this article. I'll quote the most interesting / BI related item for your convenience: "An analytic engine developed by Aetna subsidiary ActiveHealth Management Inc. will analyze daily the information in [a database with patient data in it] and notify a patient if anything in the data falls out of line with commonly accepted best practices, said Robert Heyl, architect manager of Aetna’s E-Health business unit. For example, he said, if a physician prescribes a medication that would have an adverse reaction with medicine prescribed by another doctor, a patient would be called and e-mailed about the potential problem." That's cool. BI and Data Mining doing some serious good.

Thanks for your time.

Top IT Departments Pay More

Many who read my previous posts that say we should pay really good BI developers and analysts more money, understandably had a common response: "Sounds good, but how do I know it will work and how do I convince my boss that it is the right thing to do."

One item for you to use as evidence: According to Intelligent Enterprise, "While the top IT organizations have 24% fewer full-time employees than median organizations, those smaller staffs are generally paid about 24% more than IT professionals at the other companies, says Holland. "

Look at the article -- it is a good one. These "Top" companies pay the good ones more and lose the bad ones. And they are better for it. Not a bad strategy.

Goes for Business / Systems Analysts, too

In my last post, I mentioned that good developers do not necessarily need/want a promotion to a manager/architect position, just because they are the best developers. Perhaps for some -- paying them more is all that is required.

Responses I've heard from various individuals disagree with me. The main theme in these disagreements is this: With the increased use of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to comform with the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), developers are called upon to do less and less. This is because SDLC and CMM call for proper and complete documentation. This requires the developer to simply implement what has already been throught through for him/her. So, it stands to reason, you do not need strong developers because the analyst work is already completed. Implementing it is the easy part.

My first response: Due to the poor quality of many of the technical specifications and design, you still need good developers who can work through bad design and documentation. So, my original sentiment holds true. Our industry does not have the quality of analyst required.

My second response: Pay your best analysts more, too! In othe words, take my previous article and replace the word "developer" with "analyst" and I think it still holds true. Find you best analysts and -- if it is in-line with the career path -- do not necessarily promote them, but pay them more.

Why promote the good developers? Just pay them more. It's worth it.

There is an interesting trend I've seen in my days as a Big X consultant as well as a full-time Project Manager. We are running way low on good programmers. This is a result of several things:

• The general dumbing down of America. Video games, instant message and e-mail (among other things) have created much shorter attention spans and lower work ethic. This causes us to have less smart people.
• IT careers and programming are not sexy anymore. For those smart young people that do exist, they no longer want a career in IT. I think this article described it best. Basically, our funnel is drying up because there is no longer the intrigue or challenge perceived in development and IT, as there once was. In other words, "kids today view managing computer environments as boring and tactical."
• There is a language barrier for some foreign programmers. Number 1 and 2 causes a US shortage that is now being filled by talented foreign developers. I believe foreign programmers will fill the gap in the next 20-30 years. However, there is still a language barrier (for many), preventing a complete fulfillment of the gap.
• We promote the good ones.

Of these four, the typical manager has immediate control over only #4.

In my experience, good programmers rarely make good managers and architects. I would also contend that many would prefer remaining programmers. However, there is also a shortage of good managers and architects so organizations feel compelled to fill these roles, as well. But here's the rub: If you promote good programmers who are required to manager and architect solutions that mediocre developers will create (since we promoted all the good ones), then the whole project, program or IT organization will fail or have severe challenges.

What's the solution? There are a couple of them:

1. Make sure the promotion of the programmer is in-line with the individuals desires. When discussed with the individual, make sure compensation is removed from the equation (see next bullet). Does the individual want a different role/promotion because they desire it or because they desire to make more money? The answer to this question is the only on you need, assuming you are capable of bullet #2.
2. Pay your best programmers and analysts well. The GE model for employee recognition works with developers and analysts: Concentrate most of your time, attention and money on the best ones, at the expense of the bad ones. Why give even a cost-of-living increase to a poor employee, when you could provide that money to a good employee? You want a bad developer / analyst to leave the organization in order to make room in the budget for the next good one.

Remember, if you promote your best developer you just lost your best development skill. One could argue that doing so allows that individual to mentor, train and coach others making the whole team more productive. I disagree. Most of the developers I've met in my career are terrible mentors, trainers and coaches -- just as they are bad managers and architects.