Why Business Analysists Earn Less Than Developers At The Beginning?
I’m going to be honest with you. In the beginning of the career, Business Analysts (and Project Managers also) earn less than Software Engineers and Quality Assurance Engineers because of one reason.
A fresh graduate can be groomed to become a Software Engineer or a QA by a University or a learning institute itself. Because, for a fresh SE or a QA, they mostly need programming knowledge to work on the job. Soft skills aren’t the spotlight for the job at this point. Basically a fresh CS graduate has got all the competence to become a developer straightaway.
But on the other hand, Business Analysts career demands more skills such as communication, people skills and 29 overall to work on the job. No amount of theoretical knowledge can pour these on to a fresh graduate. Only working experience can. Therefore the learning curve to become a BA starts low. Further, we learn a lot from Seniors. Knowledge from them never outweigh what we learn by reading and we always learn by doing. As We BAs deal with both external business environment and the internal team, the situations are identical to each. So does the challenge. The expertise to tackle a such situation comes from the experience, not purely from the knowledge. As a matter of fact, a Business Analyst has to learn a lot once they have embarked the career.
This is not the case for developers. They have resources readily available to tackle an on the job challenge and internet helps them to work independently from the beginning. (I once was a Developer and talking in my experience). Specially the websites like Stack overflow helps a lot.
Anyway, I’m writing this to make you aware and not to discourage you becoming a Business Analyst. Even though BA starting salary is low, the salary increments are higher than developers. Because with working experience, you become indispensable. In addition, always keep learning new things and participate in trainings. Your value as a Business Analyst will eventually soar.
Good Luck !!!
