Sorry this is so long. You can skim.
I promised some analysis of the data beyond what you can plainly see for
yourself at
http://labmanagers.com - this will be the first of, perhaps,
one installment.
(1) The survey is in the awareness of a significant number of university
administrators. Your boss may not readily admit that he/she knows the
numbers, but my correspondence tells me that a lot of them know my name as
"the NMR salary guy" and do know the numbers I present. This prestigious
credential has even led to my being invited to comment on the competence of
one of us. Fortunately, although it never happened, I was prepared to give
a strong review.
(2) The mean is moving up faster than the median. This is because most
people didn't get much in terms of raises since 2001 but more than a
handful got huge raises (most without changing jobs). I also note that some
high-earners who previously participated are no longer volunteering their
information. See a later point for my reasons for believing this.
(3) The mean "age" is holding steady in terms of "years since the BS." I
was amused that some people reporting got younger since 2001. I wish I
could say the same. I have aged. I fear that I am no longer sexy. In fact,
I have correlations to support this sad conclusion.
(4) Most NMR labs have grown in terms total MHz. Some have lost about 300
MHz but most have grown 100-200 MHz.
(5) The cost-of-living non-correlation is appalling. I hope that some of
those people living in expensive areas are either independently wealthy or
married to people who earn a lot.
(6) What I do: (a) I collect the email responses to the salary info
solicitation (b) then I decide whether it should be included and, if so,
see whether the person is in my last Excel spreadsheet (c) if so, I edit
the entry and put a marker at the end of the row - this is how I notice big
changes vs little ones and drop-outs. I print each valid data set and place
the paper copy in a file folder (d) new contributors get entered into Excel
with the following fields: name, institution, salary, experience, total
MHz, cost of living, number of subordinates (e) drop-outs without
end-of-row markers are deleted (f) the main data sheet is treated to mean
and standard deviation analysis on each column (g) the worksheets are
created to produce the correlations that I present graphically - if a data
point is so far out as to distort the chart, I delete it for purposes of
making a good chart, but I retain it in the data treatment (h) after
everything is saved, I do "save as web page" which produces a subdirectory
containing gifs for the charts in the work sheets (i) I rename these gifs,
make thumbnails for them, and produce the web page.
I think that's about all I can think of for now. Don't take the
http://labmanagers.com home page seriously - there was a time when I
thought it might lead to something, but it all seems so quaint now. Btw, I
will take my picture down and eliminate all that out-of-date stuff and host
smallish web pages from you for free. I'd rather labmanagers.com actually
served some purpose than give it up. I think it's a good domain name.
If someone else does the next survey, I may be able to use it to claw my
way toward the mean. I hope the Steering Committee will consider this. I
can provide a "boilerplate" Excel spreadsheet with all data but name,
institution, and experience deleted. The next person can giggle about who
got younger, though I will miss being regarded as important in our profession.
Bill
William C. Stevens, Ph.D. Director
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901
618-453-6498 voice / -6408 fax / 521-9892 cell
http://opie.nmr.siu.edu
Received on Sun Feb 27 2005 - 21:28:51 MST