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CAD Manager's Survey 2010, Part 2
27 Oct, 2010 By: Robert GreenRobert Green examines survey results about compensation, job security and workloads, corporate spending and training, and authority in the workplace.
This edition of the CAD Manager's Newsletter picks up where the last one left off in reporting the results of my annual CAD Manager's Survey. In this installment, I'll provide news about the economic situation in which CAD managers find themselves and how their jobs have changed since my 2008 survey (prior to the global recession).
I conducted the 2010 CAD Manager's Survey in September 2010, and approximately 194 readers provided input for this survey. The 2010 survey occurred roughly two years after the 2008 survey, which allows me to compare the pre- and post-economic meltdown worlds of North America and Europe and the effects on CAD managers and their jobs. Here goes.
Compensation Changes
Given how much economics have changed in the past few years, I wanted to measure more than just salary levels. Some interesting results and conclusions follow.
The bad news remains bad in terms of compensation. The survey indicates the continuing trend toward cutting or freezing compensation levels.
From the survey responses, the salaried and hourly CAD managers said:
- 21% have had their pay cut since 2008
- 36% have had their pay frozen since 2008
- 43% reported no pay cuts or freezes since 2008
Although these statistics don't seem very good, at least the overall compensation has only dropped 2% (see "CAD Manager's Survey 2010"), so the pay cuts haven't been too drastic.
Layoffs and Project Load
To gauge how busy companies are, I used the good, old-fashioned gut-feel method of measurement. I simply asked CAD managers to choose the response that most closely described their situation. The measured responses are:
- Working and really busy: 26%
- Working and everything is fine: 23%
- Working, but business isn't good: 35%
- Worried about being laid off: 8%
I also asked whether survey takers had been laid off recently. Here are those results:
- Yes: 12%
- No: 88%
The news here is a little better than what I discovered in the 2009 mini-survey, because this year 43% of CAD managers reported bad conditions at their firms (as compared with 50% last year) and 26% reported being very busy (as compared with 10% last year). On a personal note, I believe the results of the survey echo what I see in the marketplace, namely that the economy seems to have hit bottom for most, but approximately 10% of companies are near economic death.
The percentage of firms conducting layoffs in the past year (61%) is only slightly better than last year's results (65%).
My conclusion is that things seem to not be getting worse and may even be getting a little better — but not enough better to generate new jobs for CAD managers.
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