More storage, more people, more money(continued from page 3)
As noted earlier, bigger is better when it comes to company size
and storage salaries, but size matters in other respects, too. The
amount of storage you manage is likely to affect your paycheck's
bottom line (see "Average salary by storage capacity managed"). The
average salary for respondents responsible for less than 1 terabyte
(TB) is $66,077, and this figure rises steadily to $91,467 for
those with more than 500 TB on their plates. Respondents who don't
manage any storage averaged $80,500. It may seem like an odd twist
that these folks make more than those overseeing up to 99 TB of
storage, but the group likely includes management types who no
longer have direct management responsibilities over installed
storage systems.Responsible for more than 100 TB of installed storage,
PharmaCare's Bartels manages a team of eight people, three of whom
are dedicated to storage. When Bartels needed to add a storage
person to his staff, he didn't have much trouble finding local
talent. "I think it's relatively easy in the Pittsburgh market," he
says. "I had about three [people] who were qualified and as many as
a dozen submissions for that job."
But outside of major urban areas, finding qualified storage
workers can be tough. "The University of Florida is right here,"
MacKay says, "so what you get is a glut of young guns on the market
who are willing to work for nothing." That tends to hold down
salaries and drive more experienced people to seek employment in
the state's larger cities.
The number of direct reports a manager has counts as much as the
number of managed terabytes in determining storage salaries. In all
cases, managing more people translates into pulling down bigger
bucks. Managers of one to five people earned an average salary of
$77,788 in our survey. Increase staff size to six to 10 people, and
pay climbs by about 11%; up that compensation by an additional 13%
when managing 11 to 20 staffers, with a top end of $105,308 for
respondents who manage 21 to 50 people.
Continue to page 5 out of 8