Wishing for a boost for your career self-esteem? Would you settle for a red-letter day reality check on your salary? Join search400's ongoing AS/400-specific Salary Survey, and see how your compensation stacks up against AS/400 and iSeries salaries nationwide. You can carve your data as you like it: the survey lists income according to job title, experience and other criteria.
After signing up for search400's survey, compare your findings to those for midrange programmers at Salary.com. The site's Salary Wizard provides a real-time look at base salaries based on data from 1.3 million workers at 5,000 U.S. companies. (In mid-December, AS/400 analysts nationwide reported annual earnings of more than $58,000; Salary.com puts the figure for midrange programmer/analysts closer to $63,000.)
Salary.com will release this month its first regional IT report for leading New England businesses such as Fleet Boston, Reebok and StorageNetworks, all of which contributed to the study. But Bill Coleman, Salary.com's vice president for compensation, says IT workers will also gain, as the results are expected to be added to the database behind the Salary Wizard.
AS/400 professionals can ask Salary.com to add AS/400 and iSeries-specific categories by sending e-mail to feedback@salary.com. "As long as the midrange market keeps growing," Coleman says, "we'll consider adding AS/400 jobs to the IT category."
In the meantime, Coleman advises AS/400 programmers to add XML and other e-commerce skills to their r�sum�s. "Those with the hottest skills see the highest salary increases," he says. But Coleman concedes that the worth of e-commerce skills can rise and fall with the Nasdaq. "As some B-to-B business models come under question, the skills associated with them may be becoming less valuable," he says.
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About the author: Baard is a contributing editor in Milton, Mass.
