(IDG) -- The System Administration Networking and Security (SANS) Institute is preparing to publish its survey of more than 7,000 sysadmins detailing average salaries in 1998 broken down according to position and gender, among other parameters. The survey's preliminary results conclude that the average sysadmin salary for 1998 is $61,072, up six percent over last year's average of $57,346. The rate of increase for 1998 dropped roughly eight points against the 14 percent increase recorded for 1997-1998. SANS attributed the rate decline to the inclusion of lower-paid Windows NT administrators responding to this year's survey.

Top salaries for sysadmins are paid out by the finance and automotive industries, followed by non-computer manufacturers, and system integrators, with all of them pulling more than $5K over the average, said the SANS Institute's Alan Paller, who added that the results were only preliminary at this time.

Salary distribution

Salary range
Respondents

%
Males/% of total Females/% of total

Under 20,000

105
1.5%
103/ 1.6%

2/ 0.3%

20,000-29,999

245
3.4%
220/ 3.4%

25/ 3.4%

30,000-39,999

659
9.2%
574/ 8.9%

85/11.5%

40,000-49,999

1226
17.1%
1078/16.8%

148/20.1%

50,000-59,999

1415
19.7%
1258/19.5%

157/21.3%

60,000-69,999

1338
18.7%
1204/18.7%

134/18.2%

70,000-79,999

880
12.3%
799/12.4%

81/11.0%

80,000-89,999

532
7.4%
472/7.3%

60/8.2%

90,000-99,999

272
3.8%
250/3.9%

22/3.0%

100,000 & up

499
7.0%
477/7.4%

22/3.0%

This year, for the first time in the four years since the annual survey was first conducted, respondents were both Windows NT and Unix administrators, which dragged the average salary down because Windows NT administrators are salaried on average $7K less than their Solaris counterparts, said Paller, although they earn more than administrators for Ultrix, SCO, OSF1, and NCR/AT&T. Of the 7,209 respondents, 3,124 are Windows NT administrators and 1,740 are Solaris administrators. The rest work on other flavors of Unix.

A further breakdown of the results shows that security administrators make significantly more than their counterparts in system and network administration (see chart).

Salary distribution by administrator type

System

Network

Security

Salary range Respondents %
Respondents
%
Respondents
%

Under 20,000

63
1.7%
31
1.4%
11
1.0%

20,000-29,999

136
3.6%
78
3.5%
30
2.7%

30,000-39,999

322
8.4%
270
12.0%
64
5.8%

40,000-49,999

692
18.1%
431
19.2%
109
9.8%

50,000-59,999

773
20.3%
455
20.3%
188
17.0%

60,000-69,999

729
19.1%
391
17.4%
217
19.6%

70,000-79,999

454
11.9%
241
10.7%
190
17.2%

80,000-89,999

273
7.2%
135
6.0%
119
10.7%

90,000-99,999

135
3.5%
80
3.6%
55
5.0%

100,000 & up

240
6.3%
131
5.8%
124
11.2%

Average Salary
60,394

58,455

68,261

Paller said that there were no major changes in the industry this year that influenced salaries, explaining that "all the new PCs and the new Web servers, multiplied by the fear of top management about security breaches and business-stopping system failures, kept these salaries [growing] three times as fast as salaries [across all industries]."

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According to the survey, California and neighboring states beat out the Boston-Washington corridor for highest average salary by location, as was the case last year. This, said Paller, was due exclusively to the very high pay of independent consultants in the California area.

The gender gap in the field seems to be remaining tight, said SANS. Although the lopsided male/female respondent ratio of 5,996 males to 680 females makes drawing any conclusion difficult, results showed a comparable percentage of respondents in each salary range except those earning more than $100K annually, where women beat out men by roughly 25 percent to 17 percent.

Among other interesting results, SANS found that there is little difference between the salaries of those who have completed college and those who have had some college training but have not received a degree. However, they both came in $3K higher on average than sysadmins with only high school educations. The average salary for someone with a Master's degree is $6K higher than someone with a Bachelor's degree, and PhD respondents make $2K more than Master's degree respondents.

More detailed analysis will be conducted by SANS over the next several days, and a final report will be issued in the first week of November.