Questions and FAQs

Below are the questions that AUGI members were asked when filling out the survey. If you did not take part this time, be sure to come back next summer and chime in. Every year we try to improve the value of our survey, so, if you have any questions or suggestions for the future, please send an email to Melanie Perry, the AUGI Salary Survey Manager, at salarysurvey@augi.com (after you have read the FAQ) . Every suggestion is read and filed away for reference, when questions are reviewed each year. We try not to make too many changes, so that we can have some continuity from year to year, but, we always keep an open mind and a list of user input.

Thank you for your interest in this great source of information for members, from members!

The AUGI Annual Salary Survey consists of the following 20 questions:

• What is your gender?
• What is your age?
• What is your geographic location?
• What type of area do you work in (urban, rural)?
• How many years of CAD-related experience do you have?
• How many years have you worked at your current company?
• What is the highest level of education you have completed?
• What is the average number of hours you work per week?
• How are you compensated (hourly/salary, etc)?
• What employee benefits are made available to you?
• How many people are employed by your company?
• How many people work in your department?
• What is your current job title (most closely matches given title)?
• What is your field/industry?
• What is your annual salary?
• How much did your pay increase or decrease this year?
• How do you rate your job satisfaction?
• How do you rate your feeling of job security?
• What is your company's current workload?
• Have you experienced a change in employement in the past year? (eg laid off, hours cut, hours increased, left for better job)

(Note: The first Salary Survey in 2002 asked only 11 questions, the others have been gradually added in over the years.)

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

Who can take the survey?

You do have to be an AUGI member to take the AUGI salary survey, but membership is free!

Don't forget to set your member information and preferences in the 'My Account' control panel.

What about my privacy?

The survey results are not tied to your user name and the results are not sold or given to any other entity. The results are presented in wide groups and by category.

Although the survey results are NOT tied to your user name, we do require a member log-in to ensure that no one person 'floods' the survey with duplicate answers that could skew results.

What currency is used for the survey?

The currency is in US dollars. This is done only for the sake of simplicity, as this is the form of currency used by the majority of the members who have responded in the past and is not meant to exclude anyone.

Please, participate on behalf of your country and region. To help you do that, we have included in the survey itself, a link to a site which will convert other currencies so that we can use a common number.

What do you mean when you ask for the amount of our Salary? What is included with that?

Our conclusion is that your salary should include your base pay plus any bonuses, commissions, and overtime (although we know this can vary from year to year, it is still financial compensation), just try to estimate based on past years as closely as you can.

I don't see my discipline/field/industry in your list?

Don't see your line of work listed under our choice of disciplines? We've tried to cover a wide variety of industries, but at the same time, we want to gather enough data to provide meaningful results. Therefore, we avoid getting overly specific. As more people participate in the AUGI Salary Survey, we can add other options and further break things down.

I don't see my job title in your list?

This one is a biggie! We know that you fill more than one role in your company. You might do drafting, CAD management, IT, training, and so much more, BUT the assumption is that your pay is going to reflect your actual job title and how your company classifies it (not necessarily all of your additional duties).

Please select the one job title that most closely matches your job title or your primary duties.

Also, AUGI does NOT post Job Descriptions to accompany these job titles as they vary so widely between companies and there would be no simple way to quantify task variations in our survey results.

Pay varies so much between cities, states and regions, why can't I get information specific to my postal code?

You are absolutely correct. Pay can vary greatly based on location.

But, the fact is, we only have so many responses and there aren't even enough to break them down by state, let alone postal code. We're only as good as the information we take in (see the 2002 Salary Survey results to compare what we offer now).

We encourage you to gather your salary information from multiple sources, so use this survey in conjunction with Salary.com, Indeed.com/Salary and others specific to your industry or region.

Pay varies so much between countries, why can't I get information specific to that?

We have enjoyed increasing response from around the world with our more recent surveys and that's all Thanks to the International members of AUGI!

Unfortunately, there aren't enough replies to our survey from most countries to provide the broad information results.

Perhaps that participation will increase and we can begin to do this by country chapters, but, at this time, it is just not possible with the small amount of replies we are getting from our members.

I want to participate in the survey, but, I am currently unemployed.

If you would still like to speak for your industry, feel free to participate and simply use the information from your last place of employment. The value that employer placed on your job title can still be useful to the community.

How can I customize these results so they actually have some meaning for me?

This is, unfortunately, not an interactive, queryable database of results.

The survey is calculated in MS Excel, and cannot be too specific, for the amount of labor involved.

The way that the Survey Manager has the results set up should enable you to calculate your own worth by averaging the various factors which apply to you.

Find the Average Pay for your Job Title, Discipline, Type of Location, Gender, Level of Education and Years of Experience, then just add it all up and average them out to get a clear and personalized picture just for you.