By Natasha Lomas, 11 September 2009 10:53
NEWS
Attention IT pros: the larger your employer, the more bulging your pay packet will be.
While working for a SME might have a lot of rewards - more flexible working hours, perhaps, or even a greater degree of job security - it will not bring you the biggest financial reward, new research has found.
IT salaries rise the more seats a company has, according to the research, with the difference in pay between a SME and a large corporate being more than £12,500 for one of the IT job functions surveyed.
The research is based on IT pros working at SMEs with between one and 99 employees; enterprises with 100 to 999 employees; and corporates with 1,000 or more staff.
Across all three types of companies, the highest paid techies are working in IT management - commanding an average annual salary of £56,746 at corporates. That figure drops to £56,412 at smaller enterprises and £44,311 at businesses with up to 99 staff - a discrepancy of £12,435 between the largest and smallest organisations.
Project management is the next best paid job function in IT and, once again, the larger the company the more money a techie can expect.
(Image credit: silicon.com)
Project managers at the largest companies get an average annual wage of £47,161, while smaller enterprises pay £40,093 for the same job and SMEs offer just £35,681 - or £11,480 less per year.
The same rule holds true for tech workers in communications - the third highest paid job function in IT - with techies at the biggest companies getting £41,505 on average, while those at smaller enterprises take home £1,275 less and staff at the smallest businesses get £8,635 less on average per year.
Other job functions with big pay gaps between companies of different sizes include support (workers at large corporates earn £7,898 more than those at SMEs) and administration (£6,932 more) and systems development (£6,736 more).
Such pay gaps are likely to reflect the greater complexity, resources or responsibility involved in an IT role at a larger organisation.
A spokeswoman for technology jobs site The IT Job Board said: "I think bigger organisations pay more because they have the resources and infrastructure to do so. Smaller companies may not always pay as much but - for many - they offer greater scope and more challenging roles."
"It would be true to say that the bigger companies across every sector pay higher salaries. Currently, the banking sector has a large number of IT pros in contract roles, and many of these pay significant amounts," she added.
The research is based on 992 UK IT workers who used the activeTechPros benchmarking salary tool between April and June 2009.
activeTechPros, part of silicon.com's parent company CBS Interactive, allows tech professionals to benchmark their salary against their peers from different countries, covering a total of 36 IT job functions across various countries, industries and company sizes. For more information and to use the benchmark wizard, visit activetechpros.com
Comments
There are 4 comments. Join the discussion
1. drew stephenson
All of which goes to show i am seriously underpaid ;¬)
2. paulinehance
there are thousands of jobs in medical coding needs to be filled
3. anonymous
... until they make you redundant!
4. Mark D
But usually smaller companies can offer a better working enviroment compare to the larger corporate, having work for both large and small companies I prefer smaller even if the package is lower, its not always just about the money but the quality of the working life.