Technology salaries by city (table)
IELTS Academic Task 1 table showing median annual salaries for three technology roles across four cities.
Band 6.5
Prompt: The table below shows the median annual salaries, in thousands of US dollars, for three technology roles in four cities. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The table shows the median annual salaries, in thousands of US dollars, for three technology roles — software engineer, data analyst and product manager — in four cities.
Overall, product managers earned the most in every city, while data analysts earned the least, and San Francisco offered the highest salaries of all the cities.
San Francisco had the highest pay, where product managers earned 170 thousand dollars, software engineers 150 thousand and data analysts 110 thousand. London came next, with figures of 110, 95 and 70 thousand dollars for the same three roles. Berlin was slightly lower, at 95 thousand for product managers, 80 thousand for software engineers and 60 thousand for data analysts. Bangalore had by far the lowest salaries, ranging from just 25 thousand for data analysts up to 45 thousand for product managers. So the same roles were paid very differently depending on the city.
Band 8.0
Prompt: The table below shows the median annual salaries, in thousands of US dollars, for three technology roles in four cities. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant.
The table shows the median annual salaries, in thousands of US dollars, for three technology roles - software engineer, data analyst and product manager - in four cities.
Overall, San Francisco offered the highest pay for every role, while Bangalore offered the lowest by a wide margin. Within each city, product managers were the best paid, followed by software engineers and then data analysts.
In San Francisco, salaries were far above those elsewhere: product managers earned 170,000 dollars, software engineers 150,000 dollars and data analysts 110,000 dollars. London came a distant second, with figures of 110,000, 95,000 and 70,000 dollars for the same three roles respectively.
Berlin's salaries were lower still, ranging from 95,000 dollars for product managers down to 60,000 dollars for data analysts, with software engineers in between at 80,000. Bangalore paid substantially less than all the others: product managers there received 45,000 dollars, software engineers 35,000 and data analysts just 25,000 dollars - roughly a quarter of the equivalent salaries in San Francisco. The pay hierarchy between the three roles, however, remained identical in all four cities.