Many of us work for some organization and get paid to do so. We might work for ourselves or others, but every so often we hope to get some renumeration for our efforts. For most of us, we negotiated some pay rate and then hope to get annual raises the reflect our work product.

The interesting thing that I've learned in many years of changing jobs and negotiating pay is that many of us have no idea what others doing similar jobs are being paid. There isn't a set scale of pay, unlike many other industries, and since our jobs can vary dramatically from organization to organization, despite having similar titles, we may learn that our compensation deviates dramatically from others in similar situations. I have found in the past that many people base their salary request on what they were previously making, not on what the market might be for others doing similar work.

Last year SQLServerCentral ran a salary survey and then released the aggregated data. This was a quick attempt to help you understand where you might stand relative to others, and it was very popular. Brent Ozar took our survey a step further, with a more detailed set of questions and data. This week Brent has beat us to the punch, with a new survey for 2017. I encourage you to participate and help build a useful data set. I plan on doing our own in the new year, and hopefully we'll have two good sets of data that you can review and analyze.

Most of us are data professionals, and we know that having more information helps us to make better decisions. Filling out these anonymous surveys can help others understand where they might stand relative to others.  This is the type of data that can enable you to better negotiate your own pay in the future. I've had good luck asking for adjustments when I had information and confidence. You'll get both of these from the results of the survey, so take a few minutes and submit your information.