Cadalyst - November 2007 - (Page 40)

cadmanager Miscellaneous Benefits & Compensation Receive bonus Receive profit sharing Receive insurance* Salaried pay structure Hourly pay structure Hourly with overtime pay structure 0% 20% 9% 37% 40% 60% 80% 100% 54% 40% 93% 61% The trend is away from salaried positions . . . but those who are salaried are making more money. Insurance benefits are provided to 93% of U.S. CAD managers. I removed all responses from countries where medical care is socialized to achieve a United States–only statistic for the survey. This number is up substantially from the 81% I measured a year ago. * United States–based CAD managers only. Figure 3. Miscellaneous benefits and compensation. CAD Stations/Personnel Managed response (exactly in the middle of the sample) was $57,000, while the standard deviation for the sampling increased substantially to $18,375 (from $15,469 in the 2006 survey). To interpret this data in a bell curve illustration, I would say that 68% of the CAD managers in our survey make between $38,625 and $75,375 (slightly tighter than the $38,975 and $69,913 range in the 2006 survey), because this income band represents ±1 standard deviation around the mean. The big news in the salary data is that CAD managers have finally made salary advances after several years of very modest income growth. While the standard deviation increased — indicating more wage disparity from high to low salaries — the average salary range continued to move upward. I conclude that more CAD managers have been successful in making job moves or working with their employers to get better salaries due to the generally good economic conditions in the past year. The survey shows that today’s average CAD manager is responsible for running software on 39.8 CAD machines (down from last year’s 45.8, but up from 36.3 in 2005) and provides CAD support for 43.5 users (down from 47.8 last year). These results are interesting in that the average numbers of machines and users supported are far higher than the median values of 11 and 12, respectively. Put into plain language, 50% of CAD managers support 11 or fewer machines and 12 or fewer users, but the super CAD managers who support more than 100 machines and users skew the average numbers way higher than you might expect — and they also make the highest salaries, by the way. The average trends seem to bear out that, on average, you’re supporting slightly fewer machines and people than you did last year. As in past years, the survey data shows that many CAD managers support users but have no hardware support burden because IT/IS departments are assuming more of the burden for hardware management. What never changes is that the CAD manager still handles all the CAD user support. There appears to be no danger of IT departments assuming primary CAD support any time soon. Other Compensation Of course, base salary is only part of the story when considering total compensation. To gauge the total compensation picture, I asked about salary structure, bonuses, profit sharing, and company-provided insurance to really see what’s up. I’d like to draw some conclusions based on the survey responses in figure 3 as follows: Profit sharing and bonuses are common and rising. In fact, for those receiving profit sharing (40%) and/or bonus packages (61%), the average value of the plans is reported at $4,664 (up from $2,360 last year) with values ranging from $100 to $40,000. If the value of these programs were averaged throughout the entire survey population, the average salary would increase by $3,507 per response. Only 54% of CAD managers are in salaried positions. The trend is away from salaried positions (60% were salaried in last year’s survey), but those who are salaried are making more money. I must admit that the trend away from salaried CAD managers surprises me. 40 November 2007 | cadalyst | www.cadalyst.com Hire/Fire and Budget Authority When asked whether CAD managers had the authority to hire and/or fire staff members, the results were a resounding 64% no, 14% maybe, and only 22% yes. The good news is that these numbers haven’t changed much since last year, but the bad news is that we don’t have any more authority than we did a year go. My follow-up question about whether you can discipline those who don’t follow standards revealed that 50% have this authority, exactly the same as last year. Looking at budgeting authority, it isn’t surprising that only 21% of respondents reported being able to approve their own purchases and 19% reported sometimes being able to approve budget items. These numbers track hire/ fire authority almost exactly and haven’t changed since last year’s survey. http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - November 2007

Cadalyst - November 2007 Contents Editor's window Cad Central Conceptual Inspiration for Less Than $200 From Any Angle - Publish and Share Your 3D Designs NX 5, Part 1 - CAD/CAM/CAE Software Newforma Project Center Fourth Edition - Software for Project Information Management CAD Manager's Survey 2007 Sharing and Collaborating with Your Team To BIMfinity and Beyond! Solutions for Sending Large Digital Files Cad Cartoon Issue Indexes Cad Fidential

Cadalyst - November 2007

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