Take a minute to tell us what makes your job great.

Give a Little, Get a Little

Take a minute to tell us what makes your job great.

• By Linda Briggs
• 05/01/2000

We spend most of our time here at MCP Magazine working to bring you information to help you do your jobs as IT workers and Microsoft Certified Professionals. Around this time of year, we ask for a little information back from you to help us serve you better.

First, our fifth annual salary survey is in the works (it’s slated for the August issue and will appear online beginning July 15). As we do each year, we’re contacting a statistically selected number of MCPs in the U.S. to ask you questions about your work, your skills, your certifications, your location, and your pay. If you’ve received an email asking for your participation (the survey is online), please consider setting aside the 15 minutes it will probably take to complete the questionnaire. Your participation is essential in enabling us to present you with meaningful figures on who earns what. Last year, MCSEs reported base salaries averaging $65,100, but there were only 139,000 MCSEs. This year, there are nearly 250,000 MCSEs worldwide—what effect will that have on pay? In today’s hot job market, we can guess that we’ll again see salaries climb—but how high? We need your participation to tell us that and much more.

Another popular cover feature that we’re repeating this year also calls for reader participation. Last May, we published an article titled, “Great Job! Companies That Treat MCPs Right.” To ferret out the 17 top companies we selected for the article, we asked readers to go to our Web site and complete a form nominating their firms as great places to work (or for a few of you, as abysmal pits that you couldn’t wait to escape from).

This year, based on reader feedback, we’re narrowing the nomination to a particular business unit or branch location within a company. Does your local management publicly recognize your talent, treat its IT staff like stars, encourage training and certification, supply the right tools for the job, keep overtime under control, and buy its technical professionals BMW roadsters? Well, the final item is a little farfetched, but the rest aren’t. If you like how you’re treated, here’s your chance to tell the world—and help raise the standards for IT professionals in general.