No Jitter Research: 2016 Career & Salary Survey

As part of an ongoing No Jitter Research initiative, we recently polled the No Jitter/Enterprise Connect audience about their job responsibilities, career choices, salaries, technology challenges, and more for our second-annual Enterprise Communications Career & Salary Survey. Our goal this year, as it was with last year's inaugural survey, was to gain an understanding of the daily on-the-job life and career arc of IT professionals involved in enterprise communications. Click inside for our findings... and see how you compare to your peers.

At Work on Enterprise Communications
The 2016 No Jitter Career & Salary Survey netted responses from 479 IT professionals, with roles ranging from application development to data center server and storage management, network infrastructure, security, and so on. Of that total group, 338 IT professionals specified one of five general categories -- communications, network infrastructure, data center, network security, or application development -- when asked, "With which of the following areas is your job most concerned?" (The remainder selected the unspecified "Other" category.) We further pared our results to see what insight we could glean from the 104 respondents whose primary area of concern falls under the enterprise communications umbrella, be that because they're overseeing legacy on-premises telephony systems, migrating to cloud infrastructure, supporting enterprise mobility initiatives, or communications-enabling their business applications.

Technology Know-It-Alls
Anecdotally, we know that No Jitter audience members are often jacks-of-all-trade, perhaps having begun their careers in telephony and then taking on broader responsibility as unified communications took root, video conferencing became a go-to technology, and mobility grew to be an enterprise mandate. Our survey results show no differently, in response to the question: "In which technology/technologies do you have direct experience, training, and/or specialization?" As you can see in the above chart, most respondents have a background in telecom/communications and many have knowledge in other areas as well. A quarter of respondents even indicated experience in application development, a good skillset to possess as we move into a more software-centric, API-driven future.

Out with the Old...
When asked how important an understanding of certain technologies is to perform their current jobs successfully, enterprise communications respondents clearly signaled the rising tide for cloud communications and the sinking relevance of the legacy PBX, of either the TDM and IP variety. Slightly more than 70% of these respondents said an understanding of cloud communications was important or very important, while only 44% and 54% said knowledge of TDM and IP PBX systems, respectively, was important or very important. A healthy 60% said knowing about application development and communications APIs is important, too.

When taking all technology ratings into consideration, cloud communications landed in the number five spot in importance, behind UC (79%), mobility/wireless systems (78%), audioconferencing (76%), and IP networking (73%).

The Good with the Bad
As noted in Slide 3 on your technology experience, many IT professionals who responded to our survey have know-how in more than one technology discipline. This can be a positive, if you like to learn new things and work with new technologies -- two of the top three things respondents said they like most about their jobs. But if the learning piles on because your IT department is understaffed or your salary doesn't match your skill set... well, that can be a negative.

Staying the Course
Similar to what we found in our 2015 Career & Salary Survey, IT professionals with enterprise communications responsibilities tend to be well into their careers and into their sixth or more year with the same company, as shown above. Likewise, slightly less than 50% of respondents indicated that they've been in the same position within their organizations for six or more years.

Salary, Job Level, Education
Roughly the same number of respondents earned at the highest and lowest tiers of the pay scale, with 14% earning more than $150,000 and 16% earning less than $60,000, including bonuses and other incentives. The bulk, of course, fell somewhere in the middle, with 44% bringing home a salary in the range of $60,000 to $99,999.

While 37% of respondents reported receiving an annual cost-of-living increase of between 3% and 5%, 20% said salary has remained flat for the last five years. Education and training seems to have some merit, as 27% of respondents indicated a related salary increase in the last five years coinciding with additional knowledge gains.

Note that respondents heralded from all job levels: Executive management (21%), director/manager (41%), and staff (38%). The bulk are college educated, with 30% holding a bachelor's degree. Forty-five percent of respondents have advanced degrees -- 39% with a master's degree and 6% with a doctorate.

Quick Look at Demographics
We saw a sprinkling of respondents across a wide variety of industries, with the largest clusters in the education/training, finance/banking/accounting, and government sectors. Our respondents also hail from organizations of all sizes, as shown above.

Tell Us About Your Website Experiences (And Enter to Win an iPad!)
No Jitter is asking for your help with a brief survey. The goal of this research is to gain insight into enterprise communications and collaboration technology professionals' purchasing decisions. More importantly, your responses will help us to improve the production and delivery of information to better equip you and your colleagues as you make decisions.

All data we collect is confidential, and responses are anonymous and reported in aggregate. The survey will take about 5 minutes to complete. Please complete the survey by July 1, 2016, and as a thank you for your participation you will have an opportunity to enter a drawing where one randomly selected person will receive an Apple iPad Air 2 (16GB) valued at $399 from No Jitter! (This sweepstakes is not sponsored or endorsed by Apple.) Click here to take the survey.