Tom Schmidt wrote:
On Tue, 28 Mar 2006 14:43:05 -0600, Desi de la Garza wrote:
We are in the process of justifying the requirement of having multiple
levels of SysProg job titles depending on experience and knowledge.
At the same time provide management with information as to why SysProgs are
higher salaried than application programmers. They are at a loss as to why
that is. Weird that they do not question why a network tech makes more than
the applications also.
One reason to do so is because other employers behave that way and if your
organization does NOT behave that way you will begin to lose your more
experienced SysProgs to them (at their higher pay ranges). So your
management will either have to go along with the trend or be in a
continuous training mode. (Steve will love that idea!)
As to why the salary differences by position: Consider which group answers
the questions and which group asks them. You generally pay more to the guy
with the answers. (That's a key premise behind consulting anyway. Right
answers are usually worth more, but sometimes it is a function of
presentation and not content so much. That is a key premise of
marketing.)
--
Tom Schmidt
Madison, WI
...
A number of reasons for the SysProg salary differential:
(1)a SysProg needs a large amount of specialized training to handle
issues on hardware and operating system configuration which application
programmers never have to consider;
(2)a SysProg needs the ability to resolve those problems that
application programmers are unable to resolve, including
cross-application and performance problems which application programmers
may be ill-equipped to address;
(3)a SysProg needs a large amount of innate curiosity, an ability to
read with understanding many boring and arcane hardware and systems
manuals and documentation, and an ability to do independent research to
acquire the expertise to do (1) and (2) competently;
(4)if you don't pay enough to attract and retain good SysProgs that
are sufficiently competent at (1)-(3), then those you end up with are
more likely to make mistakes that kill not just one application system,
but the entire Operating System and all application systems. In the
worst cases everything could be down for hours or even days. A marginal
SysProg has many more opportunities than an application programmer to
make a mistake that could put the entire company out of business.
--
Joel C. Ewing, Fort Smith, AR [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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