Executive Salaries: CIOs Fall On the Low End of the Pay Scale

CIOs are poor relations compared with their colleagues in the executive suite (see “Salary,” Page 90). CIOs make significantly less than their CEO, CFO and COO. Even at the higher end of the scale, CIOs are still at a disadvantage. CIOs at the largest companies make 62 percent of what CEOs at the smallest companies make, but only 10 percent of what their own CEOs are making. Size does matter, of course?CIOs working at large companies (annual revenues of between $1 billion and $5 billion) earn twice the compensation of their smaller company CIO counterparts (annual revenues of less than $100 million).

CIO’s survey (“The State of the CIO,” Page 44) asked 500 CIOs, CTOs and vice presidents of IT to report their compensation for 2001. To compare those results with other executives’ compensation, Sheila Greco Associates, a human resources consultancy in Amsterdam, N.Y., provided salary and bonus data for CEOs, COOs and CFOs of 250 companies?in the same annual revenue categories used in “The State of the CIO” survey.