The 1994 Open Systems Salary Survey of 150,000 professionals – excluding management – conducted by Pencom Systems Inc and UniForum, shows that Unix software architects are the best paid among their colleagues, with yearly salaries averaging $73,930. Kernel developers command some $71,500, X Window programmers $69,000, object-oriented programmers $64,030 and application developers $53,220. The majority – 51% – of salaries range between $35,000 and $55,000. Those compare with the average salary for mainframe specialists of around $44,000, Pencom says. The average yearly salary for men across the open systems industry is $52,980 – $46,290 for women, an inequality of 13%, although that is significantly lower than the average across the computer industry as a whole, which is some 33%. The survey showed that Unix firms in the north-east of the US pay best, with salaries averaging $54,860. Results from phase two of the study, which will sample a further 140,000 professionals to identify which attributes lead to increased salaries in the open systems industry, is to be published at the end of June. Full copies of the results are available on the Internet by completing phase two of the questionnaire which is posted in some 18 locations.
