32 Reasons Why Geeks are Severely Underpaid!!!

I came across this interesting article on why geeks are underpaid (compared to say, sales people). Read it at http://www.negotiations.com/articles/geeks-earning-more/

You're good at what you do, maybe you're an ace. So are you being paid what you're worth? See how many of the 32 Salary Negotiation Rules you're using.

Why are sales professionals still rewarded with the biggest pay packets?
Are sales professionals better qualified or smarter than IT professionals? No, there's no such thing as a sales degree. Do they work longer or harder? Of course not. So why then is IT not the best paid profession?

Two main reasons:

1._Sales brings home the bacon. So measuring their success is easy, and their impact on profit is immediate. Technology's profit impact is neither immediate nor easy to measure. Geeks can't do much about this - sorry. 2._Salespeople negotiate every day. So they either negotiate well, or they have skinny kids, and change career paths. Every year 1 in 3 leave the sales professional - a much higher churn than the IT industry. Geeks can't afford not to play catchup here. The good news is that learning to negotiate well is not nearly as difficult as mastering a programming language.
We've watched salespeople out manoeuvre and out negotiate geeks in the opening hours of our training courses. In response we've put together this comprehensive IT salary negotiation article to help geeks close the gap.

We start with 32 essentials. We suggest that you mark your diary to review this article when looking for your next position, raise or annual review. For those interested in a bright long term career trajectory and the bigger cheques this brings, answer the questions and complete the exercises outlined in our "4 foundations steps" towards the end. Finally, to assist you in your preparation, download our Salary Negotiation Checklist (M$ Excel). Time to put your starting salary, salary increment, or pay raise under the negotiation microscope.

The author then goes on to talk about 32 IT Salary Negotiation Rules :)