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Private sector pays IT sec folks 6 figures+, last time I googled the salaries of the alphabet boys I wasn't very impressed.

Example: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/FBI-Salaries-E24637.htm

Example: http://www.criminaljusticeschoolinfo.com/fbi-agent-salary.html

If you're really a Director of Development, then you realize there are many factors that go into salaries, and not just your title. You're also way on the bottom end of the scale...

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/director-of-development-salary-SRCH_KO0,23.htm

Under $100k in my area (suburban Washington DC), is barely a living wage.

I have some issues with the study; for one thing, it's worth noting they don't tell us how they actually did the study. For another, I have no idea how they came to the conclusion that $128K is A) high; and B) at the top of the scale for software engineers when their own data contradicts this.

Here, allow me to present Netflix, which happens to also be in the Bay Area, and Glassdoor's software engineer salaries for Netflix:

http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Netflix-Salaries-E11891.htm?filter.jobTitleFTS=software+engineer

Senior Software Engineers average $177K; Software Engineers average $161K.

The more important issue is that we're trying to "combat STEM crisis" when both men and women have more financial incentive to manage a GAP than manage a laboratory.

It seems more and more these days, that malware is becoming user-mode to avoid the nasty popups that comes with trying to gain administrator mode.

Which makes sense as a lot of stuff you need to do as malware can be done strictly as usermode without needing to get admin priviledges. This one apparently checks to see if it can get admin or running in a restricted user account.

So even malware these days are learning to be friendly and compatible with users who aren't admins and not requiring admin for everything.

Some built in simple clarification about file structure for clueless users might help nip user space malware in the bud. I am a long time linux user. As such I understand the . prefix designation for hiding configuration files and binaries.

Perhaps it would be a good idea for Apple and Microsoft to do a little bit of of education by putting a small app on the desktop that checks and reports all new hidden user directory files, with simple explanations of what the hidden files are doing and why cleaning out on a regular basis will not alter your core. After all a binary executable that runs in userland is really just a file or a subset of a file, and even the most clueless users can understand why house keeping your home directory is a good practice. Hell if they don't I might just write some opensource ones that do exactly that. Might scare the hell out of the snake oil so called computer security people that want to sell a/v and anti malware...like the guys who cooked up the phoney Mac malware that this article is about.

I just wonder who is funding them. Perhaps they are just getting desperate to prove that Apple is as bad as Microsoft so that everybody with a Mac will run out and buy their snake oil the way Windows users do. Might even be some unemployed coders trying to prove to their ex employer that they are really great at what they do! Heck all it would take is a few real security these guys trying to find work and presto a new software release of SyMactec System Tools with antivirus and antimalware is in the works and in the stores. Hell they might even start peddling it for your Android and Iphone as a must have for idiots. Grrr.... nothing pisses me off more that the snake oil computer software repair industry.

First and foremost, I find it unlikely that supervisors at ford are clearing $100k, and even if they are, manufacturing jobs are hard damn work.

First, median teacher salary is only $40k, not 50k. Second, median production supervisor salary is just shy of $80k. Source: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Ford-Motor-Production-Supervisor-Salaries-E263_D_KO11,32.htm. As for your comment that manufacturing is hard work, sure it is. Digging ditches is also hard work. Does that mean we should pay people more to dig ditches than to educate our children? That's just plain nuts.

First, make kids go to school year round.

That's actually a terrible idea. Kids need time to be kids, too. Most of them don't get that time while school is in session. You'll end up with kids that are very well educated, sure, but they won't be well-adjusted. Further, studies show no benefits to year-round schooling.

Also, the argument that you would reduce seasonal variation in the economy by switching to year-round schooling is disingenuous at best. The reason people take vacations during the summer is that unless you're traveling to the southern hemisphere, this is the best time to enjoy yourself outdoors. That will not change. What will change is that parents will take their kids out of school more often, which is disruptive to the education process. And to the extent that people take fewer vacations during the summer because of year-round schooling, they are unlikely to take additional vacations during the winter because the weather sucks anywhere that ordinary Americans can realistically afford to go. In short, it will reduce the seasonal variation in the economy by decreasing the number of people taking vacations during the summer, which will result in fewer seasonal jobs, but will result in no additional year-round jobs.

Worse, parents whose kids go to different schools may find that their kids' vacations are not at the same time. Those parents will have no choice but to take one or more kids out of school when they should be in class. Think of it as taking the problems caused by staggered spring breaks and multiplying them across every vacation your family takes.

No, there is nothing good about year-round schooling.

It is. It's an easy thing to say. And very soothing to stockholders I'm sure. But how are you going to do it? It's sort of like saying "I'm going to have an innovative idea by 3pm tomorrow!" Ok, that's great. How exactly do you do that?

Innovation isn't something you simply decide you're going to have, and then you have it.

What you can do is to change your culture, foster ideas, hire people and don't abuse them. Make your environment a place where innovation can happen. I'm looking at you forced curve. People who think "outside the box" do not like being put in one. If you set up your environment to where only drones do well, then drones are what you'll have. Any real rogue thinkers in the Microsoft structure would get crushed like ants. Need I remind you Einstein did some of his best work while he was getting poor reviews as a patent clerk?

And innovation isn't something you can really buy, either. Although MS tries. The current MS policy of borg-like assimilation of any outside company that might have a good idea isn't really working, is it? It's a wonderful tribute to the amount of money you have, but it hasn't produced any sort of good results I can think of in a decade. Hell, you guys couldn't even keep Hotmail working. They were the #1 gold standard, and Google waltzed right into that space with Gmail and it's a done deal now.

In short, if you want to lead you better change. Your culture is all wrong for innovation.

Also, MS hires good people. If you are competing against other good people (not useless dolts), then it's hard to win on ability alone. It's far more effective to do a reasonable job, and suck up to your boss / make your boss look good / advertise your "achievements" to your boss's peers, etc.

Eventually, the people who are good at the game get promoted, and forget that the game is actually a bad thing. They start consciously rewarding people for playing the game (not getting fooled by it, but actually expecting their workers to game the system), and madness prevails.

I keep seeing this over and over that they hire good people. Everyone wants to only hire good people and why would good people with a poor rating at places like this work at such a place? Good people choose where they want to work. Bad or entry level people on the other hand get chosen by employers and have to suck it up just to get a job.

Also after you have a termination on your application or resume many places refuse to hire you or you work in another shitty company that can't find good workers who are willing to put up with the crap and lower pay even if you are a good performer but didn't make the metric. It makes you look incompetent and ruins your career. That is not really fair to the worker and his/her family.

I will even go further and say studies show when you turn your office into a dictatorship you do not even have to fire the lower performers. The good ones will simply quit leaving the bad apples who are desperate for a job to stay. Do you want to weed the out the bad apples? Or do you want to retain the cream of the crop? You can't have both in such a situation.

In law school, you get all sorts of people being admitted to the program. Microsoft supposedly hires only the best and the brightest. If you're firing the same percentage of people in both situations, you're doing it wrong.

Well anyone worth their salt goes to many sites like , googles and reads articles like this on slashdot before taking a job offer. If they are the best and brightest they would RUN! Every employer wants only the best. But they can't possible get all the best unless they pay 40% above market value, and kiss ass to the employees and do crazy things and have tremendous growth and so on.

The people desperate for the job end up working at MS. 10 years ago I would believe you but today? Why would the best and brightest want to work there?

The current median is 85K in that area. Keep in mind that figure will be distorted low due to cheap H1-B labor.

According to glassdoor, their current offerings are a bit on the low side compared to google, amazon, and similar in that area.

It looks like they would have a LOT less trouble hiring qualified people if they would go 5-10k higher. So, big surprise, lowball offer = a problem finding takers.

I admit, I'm a bit of an Apple hater sometimes. It's their attitude, towards thinking they own basic concepts, but I digress. I did a quick check to see what competing retailers are paying.

Best Buy sales associate $9.70: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Best-Buy-Hourly-Pay-E97.htm Fry's Electronics sales associate $9.19: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Fry-s-Electronics-Hourly-Pay-E3186.htm

Not in New York City they're not, and that is what the New York Times is talking about. Yes, Much of the country starts people at ~$9 / hr, but in NYC, $9 / hr is starvation wage. $12 / hr will pay for food and possibly rent, but thats about it. Glassdoor uses the nationwide numbers, and the number of retails sales people in rural areas far outweighs the numbers in the major metropolitan areas. That is why the major met areas pay more, because each individual sales person does more volume by virtue of being in a target rich environment.

-=Geoskd

I admit, I'm a bit of an Apple hater sometimes. It's their attitude, towards thinking they own basic concepts, but I digress. I did a quick check to see what competing retailers are paying.

Best Buy sales associate $9.70: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Best-Buy-Hourly-Pay-E97.htm Fry's Electronics sales associate $9.19: http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Fry-s-Electronics-Hourly-Pay-E3186.htm

Not in New York City they're not, and that is what the New York Times is talking about. Yes, Much of the country starts people at ~$9 / hr, but in NYC, $9 / hr is starvation wage. $12 / hr will pay for food and possibly rent, but thats about it. Glassdoor uses the nationwide numbers, and the number of retails sales people in rural areas far outweighs the numbers in the major metropolitan areas. That is why the major met areas pay more, because each individual sales person does more volume by virtue of being in a target rich environment.

-=Geoskd

Ah yes, Leo. The man who bought the overpriced UK software company Autonomy for $10 billion (out of a HP purse of $12 billion) after Oracle turned Mike Lynch of Autonomy down for overinflating the price of his company. HP snaps up Autonomy,
whose annual turnover had just hit the $1 billion mark; the only problem is that, with Lynch and his buddies no longer in control, HP could see the actual profit the company makes, and not the sugar coated fantasy fed to drooling investors and share holders. Result: Lynch and his management team sacked, and Autonomy looks like it may be closed down to save money.

There not a shortage of tech jobs right now, particularly in engineering, but also in other hard sciences.

Maybe if "we" got out of the mindset of wanting to pay third world wages, people would move to these kinds of fields?

It is funny, in my opinion, the ones to the greatest extent setting wages ( trying to keep them low ) seem to be the ones lamenting the fact that people don't want those jobs, and all the while praising the market for all the magic it can do ( and it can ).

I thought tech jobs were paying well in the US? The lowest wage I could earn in the US is at least two times as much as I earn in Argentina working as a software developer, even when most things cost twice as much as in the US (1000 ARS are 224 USD)

I don't see how USD50 000 is a third word wage.

There not a shortage of tech jobs right now, particularly in engineering, but also in other hard sciences.

Maybe if "we" got out of the mindset of wanting to pay third world wages, people would move to these kinds of fields?

It is funny, in my opinion, the ones to the greatest extent setting wages ( trying to keep them low ) seem to be the ones lamenting the fact that people don't want those jobs, and all the while praising the market for all the magic it can do ( and it can ).

I thought tech jobs were paying well in the US? The lowest wage I could earn in the US is at least two times as much as I earn in Argentina working as a software developer, even when most things cost twice as much as in the US (1000 ARS are 224 USD)

I don't see how USD50 000 is a third word wage.

It costs 34.99 Euro in the uk (about $45 us) and (to keep consistency) UK Mcdonalds workers make about 5 Euro an hour making that about 7-8 hours of work to buy Skrim. http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/McDonald-s-UK-Crew-Member-Hourly-Pay-E36806_D_KO14,25.htm

So essentially, its worth less work in AUS than anywhere else, Making it the least expensive in AUS. If anything, you should be talking about how much better you have it, not the constant "woe is us" bull.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/McDonald-s-Crew-Member-Hourly-Pay-E432_D_KO11,22.htm

So working 9-10 hours to be able to afford the game in the US as opposed to 3-4 in AUS

Those poor gamers.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/McDonald-s-Crew-Member-Hourly-Pay-E432_D_KO11,22.htm

So working 9-10 hours to be able to afford the game in the US as opposed to 3-4 in AUS

Those poor gamers.

That's actually a little better than most retail jobs. Best Buy hourly pay.

Hmm ... I found this quote on GlassDoor. It's from 2009. See: http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/RuggedCom-Interview-RVW1056302.htm

Today, Microsoft doesn't even make Glassdoor's top 50 list, check it out

$40k seems like a good estimate, and googling for a minute seems to verify the numbers I've heard recently from my colleagues:

Caltech $45k

MIT $43.4k

UT-Austin $43.5

U of AZ $41.5k

I only know what the overhead is at places I've been, but 85-100% is what I hear from others. 100% is good enough for making an estimate. FWIW, 100% is what any freelancer charges for overhead. Maybe it's a bit less at some universities/labs, but the point is: those costs are significant.

$250k/FTE-year is a reasonable guess of what a mid-career Ph.D at a national research center costs when charging to a grant. Maybe it's 10% less, or maybe 20%. But it's not factors of two off. It's a reasonable number to work with.

And yeah, I understand how research gets done in an academic environment. Thanks.

My point, to make it explicit and at boring length, is that $40k ain't much. When it comes to crowdsourcing funding for science, if you're honest with yourself about real costs, $250k is not that much money. It's not nothing. But when someone says they're going to raise $250k for crowdsourcing of funding, the number that pops into my head, from having filled out innumerable budgeting spreadsheets, is "that's roughly one scientist full-time-equivalent-year." Adjust accordingly for who you plan to have do the work, equipment, purchases, etc. But it's a reasonable equivalent. If yours is that you can get four postdoc FTEs for that price, fine. I'm skeptical, especially since the salaries you're paying your postdocs don't square with what I can find on the web and with what I hear from the postdocs I work with, and I'm skeptical of 30% overhead numbers, but fine. You have your $250k equivalent, and I have mine.

$40k seems like a good estimate, and googling for a minute seems to verify the numbers I've heard recently from my colleagues:

Caltech $45k

MIT $43.4k

UT-Austin $43.5

U of AZ $41.5k

I only know what the overhead is at places I've been, but 85-100% is what I hear from others. 100% is good enough for making an estimate. FWIW, 100% is what any freelancer charges for overhead. Maybe it's a bit less at some universities/labs, but the point is: those costs are significant.

$250k/FTE-year is a reasonable guess of what a mid-career Ph.D at a national research center costs when charging to a grant. Maybe it's 10% less, or maybe 20%. But it's not factors of two off. It's a reasonable number to work with.

And yeah, I understand how research gets done in an academic environment. Thanks.

My point, to make it explicit and at boring length, is that $40k ain't much. When it comes to crowdsourcing funding for science, if you're honest with yourself about real costs, $250k is not that much money. It's not nothing. But when someone says they're going to raise $250k for crowdsourcing of funding, the number that pops into my head, from having filled out innumerable budgeting spreadsheets, is "that's roughly one scientist full-time-equivalent-year." Adjust accordingly for who you plan to have do the work, equipment, purchases, etc. But it's a reasonable equivalent. If yours is that you can get four postdoc FTEs for that price, fine. I'm skeptical, especially since the salaries you're paying your postdocs don't square with what I can find on the web and with what I hear from the postdocs I work with, and I'm skeptical of 30% overhead numbers, but fine. You have your $250k equivalent, and I have mine.

$40k seems like a good estimate, and googling for a minute seems to verify the numbers I've heard recently from my colleagues:

Caltech $45k

MIT $43.4k

UT-Austin $43.5

U of AZ $41.5k

I only know what the overhead is at places I've been, but 85-100% is what I hear from others. 100% is good enough for making an estimate. FWIW, 100% is what any freelancer charges for overhead. Maybe it's a bit less at some universities/labs, but the point is: those costs are significant.

$250k/FTE-year is a reasonable guess of what a mid-career Ph.D at a national research center costs when charging to a grant. Maybe it's 10% less, or maybe 20%. But it's not factors of two off. It's a reasonable number to work with.

And yeah, I understand how research gets done in an academic environment. Thanks.

My point, to make it explicit and at boring length, is that $40k ain't much. When it comes to crowdsourcing funding for science, if you're honest with yourself about real costs, $250k is not that much money. It's not nothing. But when someone says they're going to raise $250k for crowdsourcing of funding, the number that pops into my head, from having filled out innumerable budgeting spreadsheets, is "that's roughly one scientist full-time-equivalent-year." Adjust accordingly for who you plan to have do the work, equipment, purchases, etc. But it's a reasonable equivalent. If yours is that you can get four postdoc FTEs for that price, fine. I'm skeptical, especially since the salaries you're paying your postdocs don't square with what I can find on the web and with what I hear from the postdocs I work with, and I'm skeptical of 30% overhead numbers, but fine. You have your $250k equivalent, and I have mine.

$40k seems like a good estimate, and googling for a minute seems to verify the numbers I've heard recently from my colleagues:

Caltech $45k

MIT $43.4k

UT-Austin $43.5

U of AZ $41.5k

I only know what the overhead is at places I've been, but 85-100% is what I hear from others. 100% is good enough for making an estimate. FWIW, 100% is what any freelancer charges for overhead. Maybe it's a bit less at some universities/labs, but the point is: those costs are significant.

$250k/FTE-year is a reasonable guess of what a mid-career Ph.D at a national research center costs when charging to a grant. Maybe it's 10% less, or maybe 20%. But it's not factors of two off. It's a reasonable number to work with.

And yeah, I understand how research gets done in an academic environment. Thanks.

My point, to make it explicit and at boring length, is that $40k ain't much. When it comes to crowdsourcing funding for science, if you're honest with yourself about real costs, $250k is not that much money. It's not nothing. But when someone says they're going to raise $250k for crowdsourcing of funding, the number that pops into my head, from having filled out innumerable budgeting spreadsheets, is "that's roughly one scientist full-time-equivalent-year." Adjust accordingly for who you plan to have do the work, equipment, purchases, etc. But it's a reasonable equivalent. If yours is that you can get four postdoc FTEs for that price, fine. I'm skeptical, especially since the salaries you're paying your postdocs don't square with what I can find on the web and with what I hear from the postdocs I work with, and I'm skeptical of 30% overhead numbers, but fine. You have your $250k equivalent, and I have mine.

You chose well to decline. Check out Blue Coat at glassdoor.com . They do not look like a great place to work across the board (not just in technology).

I don't think a lot of people go to that site to report their salary, especially if they are happy what they are making, but even so... Plenty of programmer jobs in there at 100k+..

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/programmer-salaries-SRCH_KO0,10_SDAS_IP2.htm

Also Ebony grows in the US, what do you think golf clubs were first made out of?

http://www.grownincalifornia.com/fruit-facts/persimmon-facts.html

Maybe Gibson's millionaire CEO should stop taking private jets to 3rd world countries trying to outsource every penny and start paying American lumberjacks. He might also want to pay and treat his employes better since Gibson has one of the worst employee ratings on glass door. In 2008, the company was the 5th worst company to work for by employee reviews.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Gibson-Guitar-Reviews-E6869.htm

FYI this law was made and passed by fellow Republicans, no liberals were involved, it follows a Republican ideology of national sovereignty and regulation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Lacey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley

And in '81, under a Republican controlled Senate and with a Republican President, Congress removed the heightened proof standard of "willfully" from the statute, making "knowingly" the standard. The amendments also allowed for warrantless arrest for felony violations under the Act and expansion of the role of federal wildlife agents. I would hardly call Senate Leader George Bush and President Ronald Reagan liberals.

http://www.animallaw.info/articles/ovuslaceyact.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/97th_United_States_Congress

I dont work at google, but I find this site useful sometimes:
http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm?sort.sortType=BP&sort.ascending=false&filter.jobTitleFTS=software

I'd imagine a lot of Zynga employees will do just that, if they're smart. Then, since they won't need to put up with being massively overworked and severely underpaid anymore, they'll flee the sinking ship in droves.

Translation: take your profits after a single-digit number of weeks, and then walk away.

It probably has something to do with the fact that your paychecks are probably half the size of mine, regardless of the fact that you probably have a better skillset.

So, as long as we are posting as anon, we can easily compare this with some glassdoor links. Here's Google's: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm So what company do you work for that pays an out of college grad 200K/yr + bonus, and can I get their number?

Actually, a federal minimum wage worker working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 months a year would only earn $22330, whereas 12 hours a day, 7 days a week would be $31262: [(8hours*$7.25)+(4hours*1.5*$7.25)]*44weeks*5or7daysaweek.

In HISD, a new teacher with a bachelor's is looking at earning $44,987 during the same 10 months. My mother (who teaches at a private school and so earns less than that even with decades of experience) puts in about 13 hours a day during the week, plus another 6 on the weekends (she's at work at 7am, has kids until 4pm, cleans the rooms and preps it for the next day until 6pm, has dinner, grades papers and prepares papers for the next day for another 2 hours in the evening, and does about 6 hours of preparation every weekend). Using my mothers hours and the public school pay (which, as I said, is more than she actually earns, but it'll work for this): she earns $11.82 an hour: 44987/(44weeks*40hoursaweekregularpay*(31hoursaweek*1.5forovertime))

In comparison, according to this, the average Mcdonald's team member earns $7.60, a fry cook $8.35, and a shift (not store) manager $9.81.

So the difference between what a teacher makes and a Mcdonald's shift manager earns is about the same as the difference between a shift manager and the cashier.

Meanwhile, neither of the McDonald's jobs requires (after checking their website) a high school diploma, whereas the teaching position requires a minimum of a Bachelor's degree, plus specific training in teaching. And that's not even touching on the difference in what the job actually entails.

So yes, $26500 might be a bit of a hyperbole. However, the reality isn't exactly the cushy, high-paying job many people seem to think it is.

Hey, anyone know where one could find similar little blurbs for companies not on that list? Employee pay by job and all that that?

Try Glass door.

According to this review:

Pager duty is a major pain. Smaller teams can expect to be on-call at least one week per month, while larger teams spread out the pain longer. Getting paged in the middle of the night for a high-severity problem that take eight hours of investigation to fix is enough to drive many to quit.

Sounds like they're trying to make routine (as opposed to rare, emergency) use of on-call engineers as a way of maintaining 24/7 staffing without actually paying for 24/7 staffing.

It gets worse. Xerox wants a consulting division, so they are planning to buy Affiliated Computer Services. If Dell and HP can buy consulting companies, why shouldn't Xerox?

Problem is, ACS is in the bottom 25 of worst places to work. (Entry #21). The former head of ACS left due to a back-dating-stock-options scandal, and as a part of his golden parachute, the ACS Board gave him a $1 million per year salary allowance for security services. He needs $1 million per year in bodyguards, and the Board gave it to him. Oh yeah, they are a class act with the utmost integrity.

And Xerox wants to marry them.

In my opinion, if you have Xerox stock, sell it. Sell it now.

That average is low, according to glassdoor:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/Microsoft-Salaries-E1651.htm

Not including bonuses, benefits, or all the other perks, SDEs here (yes, I'm at MS) earn, on average, about $91,000. However, on a good team, there is one SDET per programmer, earning an average of $84,000 a year (which is only $4k more than the current starting salary). Additionally, there are PMs that manage features, managers of each area, and managers above those that drive cross-team collaboration (moving all the way up). It's not simply "throw 4 million man hours per line of code" - there's a much larger process.

Include on top of that buildings, supplemental costs (janitors, computers, et cetera), and you can see that there is a big cost. Your last sentence sums it up nicely - we have to earn a living, too. Part of that means that, eventually, a product needs to be shipped. With 40M SLOC, there are inevitably bugs. The question as a company full of people with families to support is, when is the product "good enough?"

I think a lot of slashdotters miss that: a product isn't "done" when it's perfect, but when it's "good enough to sell." Some bugs remain in the product by choice - a certain amount of code churn inevitably introduces new bugs - either behavior that is unexpected/changed or regressions in the code. Waiting for perfection leads to a product that's never released, and a bunch of laid off engineers/contingent staff.

I do not know the exact law, exact regulation or a link or I would list it, but when I mention this, it will seem obvious to most.

I talked to a tech at a bank, he stated that there were laws on the books that made it illegal to connect up the banks private network that connects to other banks.

He also indicated that automatic updates (any and all) would be considered a violation of those same banking laws.

This is probably why nobody screams bloody murder and why the banks are so quick to eat losses due to fraud and scamming. They know that once the TRUST in the system is compromised, they have lost the war.

Yet just a couple of days ago I read about institutions who did NOT segment their networks (physically separating the connections between public internet and backend banking systems) and were finding that someone with enough technical knowledge could install monitoring software between connections and watch everything that passes. That much of the information is not encrypted as it is suppose to be.

Lets face it people, if you are NOT monitoring your outgoing packets and communications you simply do NOT KNOW whether you are safe or not. This monitoring takes time, time is money. Have you looked at salaries of IT professionals in the Security area of networks. You get what you pay for and the pay typically lags behind almost everyone else in IT, except in specific rare cases and where companies understand the importance. Than they pay higher rates for better people. You do not have to believe me, just go to Glassdoor and see for yourself.

These companies literally lose billions when they are hit, yet they will not pay a simple 6 figure salary to have someone with TCP/IP monitoring and packet sniffing experience montior their networks. Just hiring 3 or 4 of these types of IT professionals would be cheap insurance at preventing break ins and quickly cutting off attempts that probe your networks for weaknesses.

Personally I think companies should create Tiger teams of 3 - 5 IT white hat hackers to work each of three shifts. When the company is probed, have their team attack back. When the honey pot is accessed, proof positive of a cracker and/or hacker, basically someone doing something they should not be doing, go on the offensive.

I have always thought the best defense was a strong offense. Pretty soon the smart crackers would leave your company alone as they do NOT want their infrastructure crippled by attacks any more than you do. And if someone has left their PC unprotected and gets attacked, well that is their personal responsibility. Had they never allowed themselves to get cracked in the first place they would never have been used, attacked and thrown away.

Just to take a stab in the dark, the company isn't Reynolds and Reynolds is it?

.

If everything worked as IT engineers/managers wanted it to, then all they'd be doing are things a cashier register host would do, @$12/hr.

.

Quit whining IT folks, a. that's why your job is hard, and b. that why you're paid the big bucks. If you want respect, tell your customers to tell your managers your high salary is not to get problems solved faster, but that problems are time dependent (i.e. at 2am) and they are hard in your environment. In some cases, that's why IT get a bad rap, some IT folks take advantage ignorance from customers and work at 10% capacity, charging 110% hourly rates. Same in the auto-mechanics industry (some are good, most are bad, but they all charge $100/hr). Also, no one takes ownership of a problem--it's Cisco's fault, MS's, Apple's, HP's, IBM, etc... Sure it maybe the right thing to do, but it sure loses respect from your customers quickly (I've been there, believe me).

krakround is right, you can get this salary information on Glassdoor.com, and they also have free accounts for students, so that you don't have to post your own information.

For fulltime jobs, check salary.com and glassdoor.com for good salary information. For salary.com, you can enter in a job title (e.g. software engineer II) and zip code; the salary range results are pretty accurate. When you move to take a fulltime job, be sure to check the cost-of-living adjustment calculator there too.

If you are looking for an internship, then I recommend you not be so concerned with money. The goal of an internship is get real-world experience and do a good enough job so the manager will remember you well enough to write a letter of recommendation when you need it later. You will have the rest of your life to worry about making money. I would also recommend you get as many summer internships before you graduate as possible with a mix of big-name and small companies (where presumably you'll have more responsibilities at the smaller companies).

http://www.glassdoor.com/ I don't know about internships.

Take a look at Glassdoor for employee comments about HP. They are fairly representative and job security is a myth. The only thing that has changed from the Carly years is that the bottom line looks much better. HP is in the process laying off or having mandatory transfers to core sites for most of their IT people. In short, IT people at HP are experiencing something very similar to you. Obviously, working as an on-site rep for HP is different and will probably be secure as long as HP has the contract with your company and they don't figure out a way to centrally administer or automate your job away.l

HP used to be a great place to work. It isn't that way any more, and it continues to get worse. HP is now run by bean counters, whose core competency is cutting costs. You probably won't enjoy working for HP. See all the negative comments on Glassdoor.com.

direct glassdoor.com links:
reviews of microsoft
reviews of google

direct glassdoor.com links:
reviews of microsoft
reviews of google

From reading google and microsoft reviews at glassdoor.com, it became apparent that microsoft is like a government job with tons of bureaucracy. However google on the other hand treats non-engineers (marketing, etc) like second class citizens. Marketing and Sales guys complained that the expected endless promotions but instead found a kind of invisible ceiling.

Apple hires a lot of workers at the lower end of the 'food chain', which skews their average salary.

The sample comes from people giving their salary to glassdoor.com and, presumably, describing themselves as software engineers. TFA shows a comparison of salaries for "Software Engineer(s)", not for all employees.