Salaries rise as storage grows

Ezine

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Why I love/hate my job

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Storage professionals who participated in our annual Storage magazine salary survey weighed in on the best and worst aspects of their current jobs, from technology to tight budgets and free donuts.

Eight reasons to love my job

  1. Learning curve: "The variety of the day-to-day operations and the continual learning."
  2. Hands-off: "I create my own projects; there's no micromanagement."
  3. The challenge: "Achieving the near impossible."
  4. The perks: "Free donuts on Friday."
  5. Coworkers: "Working with good people who have passion and dedication to their jobs."
  6. Costume changes: "I get to wear lots of different hats."
  7. Home office: "Flexible work hours; being able to work from home."
  8. Pride: "Being the 'go-to' guy."

Eight reasons to hate my job

  1. Too demanding: "Too much pressure on one person -- me."
  2. Tight budgets: "Growing so rapidly -- budget cannot buy what we need."
  3. Typecast: "Not much advancement opportunity."
  4. The bottom line: "Poor benefits and mediocre pay."
  5. Spread too thin: "Too many areas under my responsibility to be an expert at any."
  6. Time crunch: "Lack of time to plan and complete projects -- never given time to properly plan and implement technologies."
  7. The big three: "Office politics, paperwork and bureaucracy."
  8. Finally, free bagels, but "have to pay for cream cheese."

 

Judging by our survey results, Veronneau made the right move. The financial services industry he works in reported average annual salaries of $93,798, which is a figure topped only by the $94,513 reported by respondents in the IT services industry. Ranked third was media and publishing, where annual salaries averaged $90,577. These three vertical industries were also atop the salary chart in the 2008 survey.

Veronneau noted that the cost of living in Toronto compares to some of the priciest U.S. cities. Still, our salary survey shows Canada ranking third to last in annual salaries vs. U.S. regions, with an average of $78,042. Only the Midwest and Southeast regions of the U.S., with average salaries of $77,336 and $76,102, respectively, fared worse.

The Mountain region had the highest annual salaries with an average of $120,300. Last year, the Pacific region recorded the highest average salaries at $96,141; this year, the region ranks fourth with $94,375.

Learning curves and certification clout

From Veronneau's viewpoint, storage is a dynamic, cutting-edge technology, and it can be a challenge to keep current. "What I've seen is that the storage skill sets really vary," he said. He's a fan of vendor-specific certifications.

This was first published in December 2009

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