So You Think You Are Fairly Paid??

Some interesting data from Payscale, the compensation software firm, about people's perceptions over whether they are paid a fair wage or not . It isn't Sales Engineering specific, but I've a few thoughts about that at the end.

This is the data from a survey of 71,000 . it shows that even if you are paid at or above the market rate, there is still a good chance that you feel you're underpaid relative to your peers. A massive 60% of employees who are underpaid say they intend to leave - compared to 39% of employees who are overpaid. (The report notes that presumably they are unhappy for many other reasons!).

The lesson for SE Leadership here is that if someone is being paid under the market rate - there is a 5 in 6 chance that they know it and a 60% chance they will take action. Even being paid at market (so at the 50th percentile) 2 in 3 SE's will still think they are underpaid. So .. if your pay package (it's more than just base salary + commission/bonus) is truly competitive - make sure the SE team knows it!! Reinforce it, with realism, at every opportunity.

And a word to the wise, don't rely on those comparison reports HR/Finance obtain from independent salary/consulting companies unless the companies surveyed are a true comparison to yours (and they rarely are). Remember that there is always some other company out there who is willing to "buy" your SE's and pay more for them. Money is one of the major reasons that SE's leave a company, Management is another, and Lack of Belief in the product is a close third.

Perception is reality!! Get real.

 

Age And The Sales Engineer

General statistics about the SE population have always fascinated me - particularly when they relate to age, gender, income and all those other "Human Resource" type metrics.

I've long maintained that gender diversity in the worldwide SE gene pool is atrocious and that we all need to do whatever we can to encourage more women into the profession. But that's a topic for another blog entry. This one is about age.

Age is neither a positive or a negative when it relates to being a superstar SE. With age comes experience and (hopefully) wisdom and a lot of knowledge gained from watching your own and other people's mistakes - and successes. With age also comes a lot of bad habits, some reluctance to change and a touch of cynicism. With youth comes the willingness to challenge the way things are now, potential incorporation of new thoughts and technologies into "the way we get things done around here" and unbridled enthusiasm.

The optimum SE team (whether its 6 or 6,000 members) has a mixture of youth and experience - and I know I am equating age and experience and that's not always the case. It's also the case that the average age of the SE team frequently matches the average age of the entire company (to within a year) - so it's interesting to note this data from Payscale showing age related to technology company.

I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to draw your own conclusions about the data.