I am very active in the area of recruitment of CCIEs internationally. In fact I have done salary surveys within my large database of CCIEs for various employers in different countries. In recent days I have been involved in offers that went out to CCIEs in the Northeastern United States and they are not anywhere as low as the quoted salary in this article. If you survey CCIEs with less than 3 years of experience you will see base salaries in the 80k – 100k base but the incentives offered by many Cisco Partners include on top of the base may include annual performance bonuses, commissions and certification bonuses. When you review the salaries of CCIEs with more than 3 years of hands on industry experience the base salaries become a lot more complicated and higher. If the CCIE has Unified Communications experience then the salaries go through the roof and I recently saw a package worth more than $170k for a CCIE with heavy voice experience. Security focused CCIEs are also well paid and competing for higher packages. R/S CCIEs are what me and my peers call plumbers and these network plumbers can command high salaries depending on their level of experience, employer and skills. I have employed PMPs and various levels of Client Server professionals and have not seen the consistently high wages that the CCIEs command. In this time of technological and economic challenges as in the 80s a smart engineer can move into a great salaried role on their own initiative. After all you are worth whatever you can convince an employer to pay! See my blog www.ccieagent.com for more insight.