Puppet has released its 2016 State of DevOps Salary Report,. The report is based on the over 4,600 responses to its State of DevOps survey by IT professionals all over the world. This year’s report answers the question every politician would like to be able to answer: Where are those good jobs? The answer is easy, the good jobs are in IT. And good news for those in the United States: The highest salaries are in the United States, followed by Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Western Europe is a little behind that pack, and Asia Pacific behind that.
In addition to the fat salary for IT workers, the United States pays the highest salary to IT managers also. In a nod to the income inequality issue that we have heard so much about in this U.S. election season, the gap between workers and managers was wider in the United States than it was in other areas. The difference in salary between managers and workers in the United States is illustrated from the report here:
Other good news for U.S.-based IT pros is that both workers’ and managers’ salaries increased in 2016. In case you are interested in how Puppet divided workers from managers, it was done by title:
The good news wasn’t only for U.S. workers, though. It seems IT workers the world over are being pretty well-paid. In an era where so many ask, “Where are the good jobs?” the answer more than ever is IT. The disruption caused by the digital revolution is truly resulting in those with digital skills becoming the haves and those without those skills being the have-nots.
In addition to IT workers in general being well-compensated, IT workers in certain industries actually tend to be better paid than IT workers in other industries, noted Nigel Kirsten, CIO of Puppet. It would seem if your employer is in the technology, media/entertainment, retail/consumer/e-commerce or finance vertical, you stand a better chance of making a higher salary.
Additionally, Kirsten noted that if you work for a larger organization (more than 10,000 servers), you generally have a better chance at earning near the top belt of compensation. Also, more good news for the DevOps team, the more mature the DevOps practices at an organization, the higher the compensation tends to be. Both of these metrics point to the fact that larger organizations with mature DevOps practices value the investment made in not only infrastructure but also people.
One dark spot on the report is that, once again due to the overwhelming majority of respondents being male (94+ percent), we really don’t have enough data to see if gender pay equality exists in the IT and/or DevOps world. I look forward to the day that the number of female respondents increases and we have more insight into this important metric.
In the meantime, this is just a quick take on the report. I encourage you to go download the report and read it for yourself. You can even see how your own salary compares.