What are the tech skills that pay the bills? The top five roles to be in for earning power are C-Suite Level Managers, Big Data Engineers, Mid-level Leads/Managers, Security Engineers, and Information Architects. That is according to a ‘Skill Up’ report by Packt. Developers and tech professionals in North America have the highest average salary, whilst those in South and South-East Asia are worst off, according to the third annual survey.
As for the lowest paid roles, hobbyists came out on top, yet we can assume respondents identifying as hobbyists do not work full-time in a tech role. In terms of full-time professions, Game Developers had the lowest average salary, followed by Web Developers, Technical Support Professionals, and Mobile Developers. So what do you need to learn to earn? Respondents with Splunk, Hadoop, Kafka, Chef, or SAS under their belt earn more than the average salary. It seems as though Big Data is the industry to be in.
Does the tech industry have a gender diversity problem? That 90 per cent of respondents to Skill Up were male suggests the industry’s lack of gender diversity. Packt asked respondents if they thought the tech industry does have a gender diversity issue, and a majority of 47.2pc agreed. About a quarter, 24.3pc didn’t think there was an issue, while 28.5pc sat on the fence.
The biggest gap between gender equality appeared in the Financial Services and Software Solutions sectors, whilst Design and Marketing came out on top for diversity. It may come as no surprise that 18-24 year old males were the least likely to agree there is a gender diversity issue. Perhaps a rose-tinted view stemming from a lack of industry experience?
The full Skill Up 2017 survey report is free and available for download here. Visit www.packtpub.com.
