Hawk asked:

 I notice that your "National Average" for a Information Security Specialist is $81,968. Yet when we've offered slightly above that to prespective qualified candidates they laugh at us, and leave. We've had similiar issues with offers for Information Security managers, you have $109,498, experience seems to indicate something more like $125,000. What's the joke that I'm missing?

Here's one case where the National Average may be way too low for your geographic location (or the amount of expertise your candidates have). If you're in a major metropolitan area, expect to pay more. In some cases much more. If you're competing with many larger companies in your area (even if you're much smaller), expect to pay more. If you're competing against a bunch of other people for a small pool of candidates expect to pay more.

I'm glad to see you have questions about salaries. Unfortunately, I can't answer specific questions about how much a certain person should be paid in which currency. Why? Because it depends.

Your salary depends on your experience, the title of your job (yes, unfortunately), where you live, and what your company is willing to pay for it. That means you have control over your experience and what your company is willing to pay. (Sure, you have some control over where you live, but changing countries is a lot harder than changing/obtaining experience and discussing what your company is willing to pay.)

I've mentioned the idea of increasing your value to your employer in previous posts, but I haven't given any specifics. Ok, here are some specifics.

I think of technical skills in four areas:

1. Functional skills. These are the skills you were taught when you learned about technology. If you're a developer, these are your design, development, and debugging skills.
2. Domain expertise. How much you know about the insides of your organization's products. I think of problem-space (what's the problem you're trying to solve) and solution-space (how does the system solve the problem) aspects of domain expertise.
...Read more

A reader emailed me yesterday, explaining that I hadn't taken the rising costs of health care into account (see Spark Your Salary) when I said if you got a raise higher than inflation you were ahead (even if it was just a little bit).

This reader got hit with huge insurance costs this past year, more than wiping out his raise. To be honest, I'd forgotten about rising insurance costs, because we encountered large increases a couple of years ago.

Maybe I'm cynical, but I don't see health costs coming back down. And, health costs are accounted for in the inflation numbers, so I wasn't completely wrong. But I bet for a bunch of you, who only in this past year got hit with large insurance premium raises (and increases in the cost of an office visit ad nauseum), I was wrong. Sorry about that.

From the great folks at recruiting.com, a pointer to Employers Focus on Worker Productivity.

In case you haven't read these articles (free registration required), take a look at: The Hiring Dilemma for High-tech Firms: 'Make vs. Buy' and Why Some Companies Retrain Workers, and Others Lay Them Off.

Roman Rytov sent me a link to his Three questions employees should periodically ask themselves. The questions are:

1. What is my dream position in 10 years?
2. What are the transition criteria?
3. Why do I want to work there?<

I like the idea of these questions and I would ask the first one little differently:
What position will give me the most fun now and for the next year or so? I find it too hard to imagine where I want to be in 10 years. By asking what's fun for now, I'm going to learn new things, so I'll look for what's fun.

In my work, I've been finding that people (and projects) who are using Agile techniques, even if not Agile lifecycles are more content with their work and are receiving salaries they think are higher.

I can't tell if they're right. Maybe I can persuade the surveryors to start asking the question next year :-)

Let me ask you: Are you using Agile techniques, such as continuous building, implementing by feature, iterative planning, working in cross-functional teams, test-driven development in your project? Do you think you're making relatively more money?

One of my conclusions while reading the salary survey is that employees need to know what they're paid to do. You might be thinking, "I know what I'm paid to do. I'm a developer/ tester/CIO/ whatever." Yes, but that's only part of the story. Via Nobscot's blog, I discovered How To Maximize Your Pay Raise. My favorites of the 15 points are:

1. Do An Outstanding Job
2. Accomplish Your Goals
3. Make Them Want To Reward You
...Read more