SMB vs. large corps: How IT salaries differ
Which size is it better to work for?
How much do salaries differ for the top positions in IT if you work for a small or medium business versus a large corporation? The short answer is a lot.
Janco Associates has just released its mid-year IT compensation study. Part of the study focuses on six-figure IT salaries and how they differ depending on the size of the organization.
Janco divides the data into six categories:
- IT Leaders - Large firms
- Mid-management - Large firms
- Staff positions - Large firms
- IT management - SMBs
- Mid-management - SMBs
- IT staff - SMBs
(A business with 100 or fewer employees is generally considered small, while one with 101-999 employees is considered to be medium-sized. I asked Janco about its criteria for this distinction, and they said that large companies are companies whose gross revenues are equal to or greater than $500 MM. Mid-sized companies are companies whose gross revenues are less than $500 MM.)
Here’s how the six-figure salaries for IT staff in large corporations differed from their counterparts in SMBs:
| Large corporations | SMBs | |
| Programmer/analyst | $172,089 | $129,641 |
| Senior Network Specialist | $165,013 | $146,562 |
| Disaster Recovery Coordinator | $152,696 | $102,598 |
| Software Engineer | $135,279 | $171,374 |
| Database Specialist | $124,791 | $125,631 |
| Systems Support Specialist | $103,848 | $108,685 |
It’s interesting that the software engineer and system support specialists actually make more money in the smaller organizations.
Summary Results and Changes in Demand for IT Jobs 2010
