COMPENSATION: It’s a Buyer’s Market as Hard-Hit Design Firms Put Lid on Pay, Bonuses
Among design firm managers, the only positions that saw any increases in median salaries over the past two years were for project managers and market-ing directors, according to a recent sal-ary and compensation survey published by ZweigWhite, a Natick, Mass.-based management consulting firm. "We still arent seeing the big salary increases of five years ago," says Laura B. Rothman, ZweigWhites managing editor.
Some jobs have taken real hits. Median salaries for information technology managers have fallen 8.5% in the past two years. "Design firm IT spending fell from 3.9% of net service revenue in 2002 to 3.2% in 2004," says Rothman. This belt tightening has had a corresponding impact on IT staff pay, she adds.