We get it. Your life is busy. You work hard. You have other obligations. Maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s continuing education. Maybe it’s community service. Maybe it’s plugging into an audiobook or podcast and running for a couple of hours at the end of the day just to clear your head. Maybe you waited until the end of the year to use up your stockpile of vacation days and the plane to Brazil and Iguazu Falls leaves tomorrow.

If you’re reading these words, however, then there’s an excellent chance that you have at least one (1) current IT certification. And if you have at least one (1) current IT certification, then we really need your help. If you haven’t already taken the 2023 Salary Survey, then now is the time to do so. And if you have already taken it — thanks for that, by the way — then we need you to get all of your IT-certified friends to do the same thing.

We started early this year, so there’s still time: You have until 10 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2 to take the survey.

We’ve already had a strong response. Quite a few certified professionals have already done what we’re asking you to do. We want our data to be as representative as possible, however, of the worldwide IT certification population. So we need participation from as many people as we can beg, borrow, arm-twist, or cajole into answering a few questions. So take our survey, please!

Or maybe enjoy the following Top 10 list of Reasons to Take the Salary Survey and then go take it. Without further ado:

10) Everyone else is doing it. Yeah, we know what your mom said about “everyone else” and the things that they do. Would you plant a tree, and buy an electric car, and get solar panels on your roof — all to curb the effects of climate change — just because everyone else is doing it? Wait — what now? See what you did, Mom? Sometimes everyone does something because it’s the right thing to do.

9) Get a free one-year subscription to the digital edition of Certification Magazine. Because who doesn’t like free stuff? And who doesn’t like certification? Just take the survey all the way to the end, and a free one-year digital subscription is yours for the taking.

8) It’s what James Bond would do. Stay with us, here: James Bond has a license to kill. And that license is sort of like a certification: He had to train really hard to be admitted to that level, and he has to periodically certify his fitness to continue to be so licensed. (See what we did there?) So Mr. Bond digs certification already. Sure, he might be more likely to get around to it if we had Q embed the Salary Survey in a gadget that can only be activated once the survey has been completed. But you can always count on Bond — James Bond — to do the right thing.

7) Get 40 percent off the regular cost of a one-year print subscription to Certification Magazine. It’s like we’re giving this thing away, right? We won’t even make you choose between getting 40 percent off the cost of a print subscription and getting the digital edition for free. Take the survey and you can have them both!

6) Do it for Harry, England, and Saint George! Once more unto the survey, dear friends, once more! Or, um, well look, nobody has to die to get this thing done. If you want to imitate the action of the tiger, though, and disguise fair nature with with hard-favour’d rage while you click things, then sure. Stiffen the sinews! Summon up the blood! Then get in there and take that survey!

5) You can get early access to Season 2 of The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime if you complete the survey. You have questions. We have questions. The adaptation/freewheeling interpretation of notes drafted by J.R.R. Tolkien and added to The Lord of the Rings as appendices razzled and dazzled its devoted audience across eight episodes released on Amazon Prime in September. There were flares of symphonic brilliance as well as blares of "What the flaming balrog was that?" But don't you want to find out where next season takes us before anyone else does? We could be pulling a fast one, of course, sort of like Durin clowning Gil-Galad out of his banquet table. But what if we’re not? There’s only one way to find out …

4) Do you like $50 Amazon gift cards? Because we have some of those, and it’s a ton of fun giving them out. Complete the survey and you could wind up with enough Amazon moola to get, like, the entire three-season run of the original Star Trek TV series on DVD. (Physical media, people. Don’t trust the streamers!)

3) There are two little words that will open any door. Please take the survey. See? It’s almost like you can’t not do it, because we asked nicely. Also, thank you for taking the survey. (Bam! You’re totally locked into this thing now.)

2) [REASON TO TAKE SURVEY GOES HERE] Note to self: Don’t forget to come back and finish this one.

1) The world could end tomorrow. On the bright side, none of us would ever have to deal with kitty litter, or blunder into a cloud of secondhand cigarette smoke, ever again. Ask yourself, though, do you really want to go to your grave with the knowledge that you could have taken the Salary Survey and didn’t do it? You gotta live life while you can!