Salary Survey Extra: What is the spice of life?
Posted on
April 6, 2017
by

Salary Survey Extra is a series of periodic dispatches that give added insight into the findings of our most recent Salary Survey. These posts contain previously unpublished Salary Survey data.

What do you add to your food to make it taste good?

Sometimes we really dig deep with our Salary Survey Extra reportage. The IT certification world isn't just about training and skills, or the dollars-and-cents impact of adding an acronym to your resume. Certified IT professionals are people too, after all, with thoughtful opinions about many more topics than simply those related to technology.

That's why when we do our annual Salary Survey — and all of the in-between PLUS surveys, too — we venture outside the realm of the expected. Yes, yes, this is another overblown introduction to some follow-up from one of our Not-So-Serious questions, the ones at the end of every survey that let us take the temperature of the survey population about everyday dilemmas.

It's food for thought, as in sometimes we literally ask our survey respondents to think about food. Past topics have included breakfast preferences, for example, or the new science about hot dogs. At the end of 2016, we decided that seasoned IT professionals would probably have some thoughts about seasoning. Not the experience kind; the kind you put on your food to make it taste good.

Some people out there probably just eat their food without adding anything at all. "Spice? Not nice." Don't most of us, however, usually mix in a little something extra, even if it's just a sprinkle of curry powder, or a dash of pepper? Let's find out!

There are many, many different flavor optimizers, and we certainly can't claim to have thought of all (or even most) of them. So take these results with a, um, grain of salt, as the saying goes. You'll notice, after all, that two of the groups to speak up loudest in our results are the comedians (who chose "All of the above") and the contrarians (who chose "None of the above").

And now, the envelope, please:

Salt — 13.2 percent
Pepper — 9.0 percent
Salt and pepper — 19.3 percent
Curry — 3.7 percent
Soy sauce — 1.7 percent
Sriracha sauce — 6.6 percent
Hoisin sauce — 0.3 percent
Peanut sauce — 0.9 percent
Barbecue sauce — 4.1 percent
Ketchup — 2.8 percent
A1 — 0.8 percent
Tabasco — 7.0 percent
Parmesan cheese — 4.6 percent
All of the above — 12.8 percent
None of the above — 13.2 percent

Original question: My food tastes better after I add a little ...

About the Author

Certification Magazine was launched in 1999 and remained in print until mid-2008. Publication was restarted on a quarterly basis in February 2014. Subscribe to CertMag here.

Posted to topic:
Jobs and Salary

Important Update: We have updated our Privacy Policy to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

CompTIA IT Project Management - Project+ - Advance Your IT Career by adding IT Project Manager to your resume - Learn More