If you've been following along with our annual industry surveys (with this survey we're at three and counting), you've seen us build a well-rounded and surprisingly consistent picture, year over year, of the Windows IT pro community. In our first survey, in 2004, we dedicated an entire issue to your answers to our detailed survey questions. We built a composite profile of our survey respondents, right down to their deep and abiding affection for all things Star Trek. We pulled back a bit last year to focus on the nittier, grittier aspects of how you make your living, and we learned a lot about your salary concerns and job satisfaction levels.
This time around, we're again looking at the work you do, how you're compensated for it, and how you feel about it. We asked a few new questions in this year's survey to get a better idea of what you think working in IT is all about and, as usual, you've given us some intriguing statistics to ponder. Senior Editor Jason Bovberg looks at your community participation in "Sizing Up the IT Pro Community" on page 40 and considers the ever-shifting concepts of workplace in "Blurring the Line Between Work and Home," on page 44.
Survey Matters
This year, 1503 respondents answered 61 survey questions. We sent approximately 7500 invitations to participate in the survey to a group of IT professionals who have agreed to receive a variety of additional information from us, and we also ran announcements inviting participation in the survey in our email newsletters and the Windows IT ProWeb site. As an incentive to participate in the survey, we offered the chance to win one of five $100 American Express gift certificates and randomly selected the five winners from among the respondents. The survey was open for voting from July through August. Our survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent.
Most of our survey respondents, 74 percent, live in the United States and Canada. This number is down slightly from 76 percent in 2005. Where did that 2 percent go? Evidently to the Europe/Eurasia region, which bumped from 13 percent participation in 2005 to 14 percent in 2006, and the South Asia region, which contributed 2 percent in 2006, up from 1 percent in 2005.
In the United States, our survey respondents aren't quite evenly divided throughout the country, although the percentages don't diverge wildly. Slightly more reside in the southern states (26 percent), followed by the West (25 percent), the Midwest (22 percent), and the Northeast (19 percent).
Line IT Rules
Although the number of people responding to our industry surveys has varied a bit over three years, the percentage of respondents who report their job title as systems or network administrator has remained consistent. In 2004 and 2005, our question about job title prompted a separate response for systems admins and network admins. The percentage of respondents who held one of those titles in 2004 was 36 percent; in 2005 it was 32.6 percent. This year, we combined both job titles into one category and garnered a 32 percent response. Altogether, a full 49 percent of respondents to the survey this year identified their job title as belonging within the IT Staff category. Another 36 percent identified themselves as IT Management, and the remainder fell into the Nontechnical Management, Technical (Non-IT) User, or Other category.
No matter what your job title is, providing IT systems administration is what most of you do all day. We provided 23 descriptions of job responsibilities and asked respondents to choose as many as were applicable. The number-one response, which 65 percent of respondents chose, was providing systems administration. That response was also tops in 2005, with a 59 percent response. In fact, the top five responses in this category remain unchanged in 2006 from the 2005 survey: Administering systems, supporting end users, administering the network, analyzing systems, and deploying desktop hardware and software—the mainstay tasks of line IT—fill the days for most of you. Figure 1 shows the percentage of respondents who selected each of the 24 categories.
We added two new responsibilities categories to the mix this year, and both garnered a pretty high percentage of your responses. Planning and implementing IT security strategy is a responsibility that 45 percent of you tackle regularly, ranking sixth in the list of 23. Providing identity/Active Directory management ranked eighth, with 43 percent of you saying this responsibility is part of your job.
Of course, we did add an "Other job responsibilities" category to this list, and many respondents contributed descriptions of the tasks that didn't fall neatly into the categories we provided. "IT purchasing" elicited several mentions. "SOX consulting" and "ITIL" were on the list, as were "Blackberry support," "building data warehouse," "scripting development," "printer repair," "AutoCAD work," and "provide high-end technical training." We feel for the respondents who entered "too much to list here" and "Gopher." The hands-down winner of the "I Wish This Was Me" category is "No job responsibilities; retired years ago."
Working Life
One set of statistics that hasn't budged in the three years we've been surveying is the number of years our respondents have worked in IT. The majority of you have worked in IT between 6 and 10 years; in both 2005 and 2006 the percentage of respondents fitting that time frame was 35. (In 2004 the percentage was 37.7, and the range of years we specified was slightly different: 5 to 9.) Ranking second is the category of 11 to 15 years: In 2005, 24 percent of you had worked in IT that long; this year, the figure is 25 percent.
The 40-hour workweek seems to be a twentieth century relic for most professions, and it certainly is for IT—60 percent of you work an average of 41 to 50 hours each week, 14 percent work 51 to 60 hours, and 4 percent work more than 60 hours. Most of you, 37 percent, are on call more than 10 hours each week. An additional 27 percent are on call between 1 and 10 hours.
The size of the organization you work for varies greatly among respondents, as Figure 2 shows. When it comes to the number of machines you support, the voting reflected the concentration of systems administrators among respondents. As Figure 3 illustrates, 44 percent of survey respondents support between 1 and 24 servers—by far the largest concentration of respondents supporting any number of servers or end users.
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