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The differences between incident managers and problem managers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes More than 10 years to become an incident manager, becoming a problem manager takes usually requires 6-8 years. Additionally, an incident manager has an average salary of $87,053, which is higher than the $79,324 average annual salary of a problem manager.
The top three skills for an incident manager include incident response, infrastructure and ITIL. The most important skills for a problem manager are infrastructure, RCA, and identify trends.
| Incident Manager | Problem Manager | |
| Yearly salary | $87,053 | $79,324 |
| Hourly rate | $41.85 | $38.14 |
| Growth rate | 2% | 16% |
| Number of jobs | 22,181 | 75,250 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 60% | Bachelor's Degree, 60% |
| Average age | 48 | 47 |
| Years of experience | - | 8 |
As the name entails, the job of an incident manager revolves around the incident management process. Your duties and responsibilities may vary depending on the sector, but typically include defining the process on how your team should work with handling incidents, keeping a report of incidents, logging all service request and incident details. Additionally, you will be responsible for investigating all service requests and incidents and identifying, scheduling, and performing incident reviews. As an incident manager, it also your responsibility to guide the incident process analysts and coordinators.
Problem Managers are responsible for managing a problem's lifecycle with the primary goal of either to minimize an incident's impact or to prevent an incident from happening. Their duties include undertaking problem registrations, performing problem prioritizations, conducting problem investigation, and implementing problem control. Besides that, they are involved in coordinating error reviews, managing problem closures as well as carry out root cause analysis in problem identifications. Problem managers also produce incident reports, execute preventative actions, and create a feedback loop to find correlations and causations of problems that occurred.
Incident managers and problem managers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Incident Manager | Problem Manager | |
| Average salary | $87,053 | $79,324 |
| Salary range | Between $63,000 And $119,000 | Between $53,000 And $116,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | - |
| Highest paying state | New York | - |
| Best paying company | Airbnb | - |
| Best paying industry | Finance | - |
There are a few differences between an incident manager and a problem manager in terms of educational background:
| Incident Manager | Problem Manager | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 60% | Bachelor's Degree, 60% |
| Most common major | Business | Business |
| Most common college | University of Michigan - Ann Arbor | Carnegie Mellon University |
Here are the differences between incident managers' and problem managers' demographics:
| Incident Manager | Problem Manager | |
| Average age | 48 | 47 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 75.4% Female, 24.6% | Male, 68.7% Female, 31.3% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 3.1% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 9.0% Asian, 13.3% White, 69.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% | Black or African American, 6.7% Unknown, 5.2% Hispanic or Latino, 10.0% Asian, 13.2% White, 64.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 9% | 11% |