2001 WinWriters Salary Survey

A central element of any job we hold is the compensation we receive. While compensation is only one factor in why we accept a position, it's how many of us keep score and the way all of us pay the bills. Over 14,000 technical communicators viewed the results of our 2000 WinWriters Salary Survey. One of the reasons for the popularity of this WinWriters survey is that it focuses on the area of software user assistance. We hope you find these new survey results useful in gauging where you stand amongst your peers.

Methodology

During a two-week period in early December we accepted responses via a survey form on our WinWriters web site. The final results presented here represent 1,228 responses from people in 45 states of the U.S., in seven Canadian provinces, and in other parts of the world. The total annual user assistance payroll represented by these respondents is in the neighborhood of $130 million USD. The links in the gold sidebar take you to an analysis of the areas where we identify significant results.

We separated the following groups of responses from the main data set: Canada, Other than U.S./Canada, Part-time (individuals working less than 35 hours per week), and Contractors (independent contractor or through an agency). These groups have significantly different data values than the core group. We are presenting information for these groups on their own pages in this survey. The data for these groups is not included on any other pages of the survey including this one.

This study comes with a couple of biases. First, the majority of respondents are most likely customers of WinWriters. We received most of the responses on the heels of email broadcasts we made to our mailing list. However, the WinWriters constituency is large and probably is a fair representation of the overall user assistance community. We allowed anyone to participate and we did not require any personally identifying information.

Salary Range

The annual salaries range from $23,000 to $131,000 and fall into the following 25% groupings:

Benefits

While the bulk of this survey report focuses on salary, employee benefits can add up to a significant value. These often include medical and dental insurance, tuition reimbursements, professional society dues, and 401(k) plans. Since benefit packages vary widely and are valued differently, we asked the respondents not to include benefits in their salary figure.

We asked respondents how they rank the importance of stock options. Thirty-five percent indicate that they receive no stock options. Options are rated as Important or Very Important by 22% of the respondents.