IT directors rake in top pay

Nearly one in ten UK IT directors and chief executive officers earn more than £110,000 a year, according to the results of this year's silicon.com Skills Survey.

This year, 6.3 percent of silicon.com readers -- or 241 individuals -- who took part in our annual UK skills snapshot said they are IT directors or CIOs, and of those just under 10 percent fall into the category of the "super-earner".

Another 7.5 percent said they are board directors (presumably with responsibility for IT), of whom one in three fall into that top salary bracket.

But despite the image of the highly paid IT boss -- 50.2 percent earn over £55,001 per annum, according to our latest UK figures, compared to 22.7 percent of our total sample -- there are of course those at the opposite end of the scale. We found 11.2 percent bring in under £25,000 per year.

But the low-paid IT director is the exception. Indeed, only 23.6 percent earn £40,000 or less each year.

In comparison to other roles, the super-earner IT director/CIO comes second to the board director but above "Other" (15.9 per cent of this category), IT consultant (9.1 per cent), IT contractor (eight per cent) and IT manager (4.5 per cent). Of our respondents who are employed by an IT vendor -- 3.7 per cent of the survey total -- 5.7 per cent earn above £110,000.

But if you aren't part of IT's user elite but have eyes on becoming an IT director, be prepared to put in the hours. Almost a third -- 31.9 percent -- work more than 50 hours each week, compared to 16.1 per cent of the survey respondents as a whole. Indeed, only 34.4 percent work fewer than 45 hours per week, compared to a cumulative 67.6 percent for our total sample.

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