How much does a CIO earn in France?

CIO, CSO… These are high-profile, high-responsibility roles that are increasingly in demand within companies, as digital and information technology issues have become crucial to the smooth operation of any organization, whether public or private. As a result of this appeal, the IT sector is facing a severe labor shortage. Management positions, in particular, offer attractive salaries—due to the competitive nature of the market. Behind the advertised salary ranges—which can sometimes be astronomical—lie significant disparities, however. How can you sort through all the available data and gauge your salary relative to the IT sector? What factors can you leverage to negotiate it? Here are some answers.

“CIOs earn more than the average manager”.

This is the conclusion reached by Apec in its 2020 Barometer on executive compensation. The figures speak for themselves: the median salary for IT managers is €69,000, compared with €51,000 for managers in all professions, an increase of 35%.

To explain this, we must first remember that these positions combine expertise, experience and exposure… Thus, the typical persona of the CIO is :

• Graduate IT training (engineering school)
• An expert and experienced profile, with several years’ experience, proven technical and managerial skills, and the ability to manage and steer a vast scope (IS security, data, applications and web services, development….).
• More and more, as a strategist and “business partner” for the company, the CIO carries a great deal of weight in the organization, with major responsibilities, a certain amount of pressure and, on the other side of the coin, a great deal of exposure (turnover is real, with CIOs sometimes feeling like they’re on an “ejector seat”).
• Still overwhelmingly male (with pay often unequal to men, as in all other professions)

All these facets combine to make CIOs and CIOs attractive professions – and rightly so. But can we generalize?

Wide pay gaps

For CIOs, as for any other position, there are many parameters to take into account when setting salaries: experience and seniority, company size and sector of activity, location, and so on.

Above all, behind the term “Information Systems Director” lie a wide range of profiles, which explains the wide discrepancies that can be observed when looking at the salary scales for these professions.

Even if the skills required and the major missions are the same, it’s hard to reconcile the day-to-day life of a CIO(Chief Information Officer) in a CAC 40 group heading up a management team of several thousand people, with that of a CIO in an SME, or of an RSI (Information Systems Manager) who is just as crucial to the organization.

So, how do you assess a CIO’s salary level and position in relation to the market?

We cross-referenced a number of sources (APEC, Glassdoor, recruitment agencies, etc.) to try and synthesize an assessment of a CIO’s salary.

First of all, it should be pointed out that these figures a priori agree in presenting total compensation (gross salary, fixed + taking into account all variable salary supplements such as bonuses, employee savings schemes, target bonuses, etc.), but that it remains difficult to guarantee the perfect homogeneity of the data compared.

Many variables affect salary

To complete this analysis, it should be borne in mind that many parameters have a significant impact on salary levels:

• Don’t confuse “on-the-job” salary with advertised salary. The salaries listed in job postings tend to drive down overall pay levels: these positions most often seek junior candidates, who have less experience and therefore fall at the lower end of the pay scale. Conversely, the salaries of incumbent CIOs are generally higher due to their seniority, and positions filled through the “hidden” market ” (sourced by recruitment firms, for example) will generally offer higher compensation levels, in line with the seniority of the profiles being sought or poached.
• Intégrer la composante géographique. Deux variables rentrent en ligne de compte et peuvent avoir un effet inflationniste sur le salaire des Directeurs des systèmes d’information (à l’instar de beaucoup d’autres métiers d’ailleurs) :
  • Location in the Paris region vs. the rest of France; as a general rule, an additional 20-30% is factored in (with salaries commonly exceeding 120K€ in Paris, whereas outside the Paris region, the range is between 70 and 100 K€).
  • Whether or not the position of CIO has an international dimension
• Take into account the size of the company (more or less than 250 employees), and often correlated, the size of the Budgets for which the CIO is responsible for steering.
• Take into account the managerial dimension and level of hierarchical responsibility of the position: we consider both the Headcount (internal/external) for which the CIO will be responsible, and his or her own position in the company’s organization chart: does he or she report directly to General Management or to another functional department? Is he or she a member of the Executive or Management Committee? Does his or her scope encompass only information systems (which is already a broad one!), or other areas such as transformation, organization or innovation?
• And finally, consider the business sector: Certain activities, such as banking, insurance or e-commerce, are closely dependent on the Information System. As a result, they have traditionally enjoyed higher salary levels than other companies or sectors in which IS is less directly central to strategy (mechanical engineering or metallurgy, for example).

These are all factors that can be taken into account when determining a CIO’s remuneration, and which can be used to negotiate the amount of his or her fixed salary or perquisites.

[1] It should be remembered that :

• Average = sum of values in a series / number of values in the series
• Median = series / 2 equal groups