Whew. This is a crazy time, isn’t it? The aftermath of the pandemic is kicking in, and there are layoffs happening in Silicon Valley companies, but… the data profession is on fire. I don’t know anyone who’s been out of work for too long because companies are so desperate to get data help.
So it’s time for our annual salary survey to find out what data professionals make. You fill out the data, we open source the whole thing, and you can analyze the data to spot trends and do a better job of negotiating your own salary:
Take the Data Professional Salary Survey now.
The anonymous survey closes Sunday, Jan 1. The results are completely open source, and shared with the community for your analysis. (You can analyze ’em now mid-flight, but I’d wait until the final results come in. I’ll combine them into a single spreadsheet with the past results, and publish those on January 3rd.)
Thanks for your help in giving everybody in the community a better chance to talk honestly with their managers about salary.
Update Jan 2: this year’s salary is closed, and the results are here.
15 Comments. Leave new
150K Senior Database Engg
You should be extremely grateful for that salary, too. Most companies wouldn’t even hire someone who can’t follow the instructions in a short blog post. Never leave that job, my friend – you’ll find other companies will be a lot less forgiving.
Is there a blog post with a compilation of roasts like these already? ?
At some point I should totally do that!
Great work here as always. Would you consider adding an industry sector dropdown next year? (GICS sectors would do the trick – there aren’t too many of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Industry_Classification_Standard)
Thanks! We talked about that in the past, and I ran a test with a few hundred people from my email list. I asked them to pick their sector, and about 50% of the respondents either said their company spanned multiple sectors, or they weren’t sure what it was.
Did you use a dropdown, or free text? I think if you use a dropdown with very few options (thus the GICS sectors) and say “pick the closest match” you’ll get a very good response rate. Basically all but maybe a dozen companies on the planet have a very clear focus. (Those companies being mega conglomerates, in which case a worker would select based on their own sub-company.)
“Don’t know” could be a valid choice too. If you don’t know what your company does, that’s actually a really interesting data point that is probably influencing your salary.
IMHO a rough selection will add a ton of value in terms of people being able to understand their relative positioning. And yes, I’ve mentioned this in the past, perhaps multiple times. I’m strongly convicted and I’m not giving up just yet!
A drop-down – effectively, an email where I told them to reply with the one letter that matched their choice.
perhaps the main reason data people are underpaid (if so) is because of the lack of understanding of the skill levels. A senior engineer/DBA is a good person with sufficient knowledge and experience to handle many things, but is not expected to have deep knowledge. that is for staff engineer. A proven track record of handling very difficult issues is a principal engineer.
Maybe on us market.
In my case becoming DBA was next after being db developer. More like an architect role (not data warehouse one)
submitted. i hope to remember to check this on January!
Hi Brent!
Since this survey has so much power in (and I guess this power comes from people comparing to other people’s salaries, and either envying or looking down on them), is there a way for you to add a column for the survey, where people would say if the company they are working at is hiring, and if yes, some kind of a way to reach them?
Maybe some of the people missed your “Who’s Hiring” series, and this is the best place to add this option, I think.
There’s so much difference between the countries and the salaries people get, so I would be grateful to have the chance to get the same money as some of the people in this list.
(If you’re going to roast me, think about that you’re roasting a person with a salary from the end of the list, so make that roast a creative one) 🙂
That’s not really the goal of this survey. It only goes out once per year, whereas the open job postings on the site are fresh every month.
Thank you.
This year there are seem to be more people participating in the survey, compared to previous years ?