15th Annual Product Management and Marketing Salary Survey

Leading Indicators of Salary Amount Include Location, Gender and Area of Focus

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Feb 10, 2015, 10:30 ET

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Feb. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Pragmatic Marketing has released the results of its 15^th Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey, a comprehensive survey that explores the types of challenges product teams face around the globe.

Among the findings: Product managers and marketers earned an average of $100,000 to $120,000 a year before bonuses in 2014; the average annual bonus was just over $10,000.

More than 1,300 respondents from 40 countries took part in this year's survey. It took a deep dive into the contributing factors that bumped a salary up or down:

Respondents with at least seven direct reports averaged $28,000 more than their counterparts. Those with no direct reports earned $9,000 less.
Experience mattered. Respondents with 11 or more years' experience in the industry earned $17,000 more on average. Those with less than two years' experience in the industry earned $24,000 less.
Department size also affected compensation. Product managers and marketers earned $8,000 more on average in large departments with 26 or more people. But small departments with five or fewer people resulted in an average salary decrease of $7,000.
Location was also a factor. Respondents in California made $14,000 more on average and in Massachusetts they made $12,000 more. Overall, respondents in the Pacific region earned more than others across the US.
Females earned an average of $7,000 less than their male counterparts.
Those who spent more time on strategic activities earned $7,000 more on average than their counterparts who focused on tactical activities.
Australia had the highest average salary at $136,000.

Pragmatic Marketing's annual survey provides a benchmark for the industry and helps professionals, analysts and executives keep a finger on the pulse of a rapidly evolving area of technology companies. The survey was conducted between Nov. 19 and Dec. 19, 2014 and can be downloaded at: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/resources/annual-survey.

About Pragmatic Marketing, Inc.

Pragmatic Marketing, Inc. was founded in 1993 and has become the authority on technology product management and marketing. The company has trained more than 100,000 product management and marketing professionals, with more than 25,000 becoming Pragmatic Marketing Certified. Pragmatic Marketing's team of thought leaders produce blogs, webinars, podcasts and publications that product professionals around the world turn to for industry insights. For more information, please visit www.PragmaticMarketing.com or call 480-515-1411.

Media Contact:
Lisa Sorg-Friedman
480-563-9287

Other blurbs we pulled out throughout the survey:

Respondents from 40 different countries
Those focused on what to put on the shelf support 7 products on average. Those focused on making products fly off the shelf, or both aspects equally, support 12.
Respondents universally stated that they should be spending about half their time on strategic items and half on tactical. Unfortunately, they actually spent less than 30% of their time on strategy and spent their time being more tactically focused.
Versatile players: more than 20% of respondents have also held the position of product owner, project manager, business analysts or programmer
Company revenue is $51M+ - make $5,000 more / if company revenue is less than $10M earn $8,000 less
Master's or Doctorate – make $4,000 more / No college degree make $8,000 less
If your department reports directly to the President or Managing Director make $3,000 more / if dept reports to "sales" make $9,000 less
If you spend more time determining how to make products fly off the shelf, you'll make $9,500 more on average.
If you spend the majority of your time as an MVP for Executives, add $13,000 to the average salary
More time discovering new opportunities means you'll likely make $11,250 on average
What does not affect salary? Number of years in current role and whether they are focused on hardware, software or services.
For the most part, the same factors that affected salary affected bonus. The exceptions: who their department reports to and whether they focused on deciding what to put on the shelf or how to make it fly off. Those had to effect on bonus amount.
This year we asked more detail around how respondents spent their time. Across the board, respondents spent more than twice as much time interviewing current customers as interviewing potentials and conducting win/loss combined.
On average respondents spent only 2 hours a month on win/loss. Just 31% of respondents said that performing win/loss analysis was their responsibility.
All respondents spent more time on roadmap activities than they did on analyzing market segments.
Respondents spent about equal time analyzing potential initiatives as measuring current ones
On average, respondents spent 20 hours per month articulating product requirements and less than 5 articulating buyer requirements
More time is spent on product launch than on any other Go-To-Market activity.
Respondents with off-the-shelf responsibilities spent almost one day per week on sales channel enablement.
On average, all respondents spent 4.6 hours per month personally delivering product information to buyers.
Across the board, respondents spent 29 hours per month managing email and 39 hours per month in meetings. Forty-three percent also spent time managing direct reports.