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IT (And Other) Salaries On The Rise In The U.S.
pertinax18 writes "CNN Money is reporting that salaries for most college grads are on the rise once again. Especially interesting to collegiate (and other) /. readers may be the 4.1% increase in pay for CS grads, and 10.7% increases in pay for others in the field. From the article: 'If those numbers sound enticing, it's probably because computer science graduates are long overdue for a pay increase. "They haven't seen an increase since 2001 and this is the first year, in all four reports, that they showed an increase," Koncz says.' Are things finally starting to look up for us?"
Why is it Bush's fault when salaries go down, but a magical coincidence when they go up?
Show me places in the industry or people who have received raises. Not to sound bitter, but I know not a single person in my circle of friends and business associates who've said they're getting raises.
:(
It's more about cuts and firings lately
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Im went to ITT school for HTML intraweb programming and Im stil only get 5.45 per hour?!?
The numbers look great on a cursory glance, but they are missing one thing important: They don't list what percentage of graduates were able to find a job within x months of graduation.
So sure, maybe the ones that were hired are making more, but if they are only hiring a small percentage of grads, you'd expect them to make more, wouldn't you? (As they would be more qualified than the average grad)
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I wonder if this isn't a side effect of a lot of the outsourcing to India that's happening. If a lot of the lower paid jobs (tech support and the like) are outsourced, what's left behind are the higher paying jobs which results in a higer average.
A year ago, getting an IT job was hard as hell. Countless resumes, postings and searchings EVENTUALLY netted me a DBA position.
In the last few months, I've started getting emails randomly from recruiters who've seen my resumes posted. I haven't been looking, haven't updated it. One of the opportunities struck me, so I took it. No problems. I've been offered more jobs in the past month - without looking for anything - than I could even get close to a year ago.
What does salary increase mean?
While there is certainly crossover, your typical IT employee is/was not a CS major. CS is programming and software engineering, IT is servers and networks, and yes, occasionally writing some code. Programmers' salaries rising doesn't mean shit to most of us IT employees.
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Low wage jobs have been outsourced from the U.S. therefore the remaining jobs in U.S. drive higher mean wages, even for college graduates.
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I wonder how much of this is due to outsourcing. Get rid of a bunch of the lower-than-average wages from the equation and you will get a perceived increase in average, which could then be misconstrued as a good thing. For example... 30K 40K 50K 60K = average of 45K Now outsource the jobs of the 30K and 40K guys so they go work at McDs and you have... 50K 60K = average of 55K Oooh were all making 10K more. WRONG.
What job, exactly, does a history major apply for, other than history teacher or museum curator?
I hardly ever have an experience at work where I'm working on a design document or expense report or something, and all of a sudden it's like "OH SHIT! I'm gonna miss the deadline! When did Hannibal cross the Alps!?"
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If IT Jobs are really earning more money than there must be a few things going on. Firstly, The industry may be seeing increased profits, Secondly, There may be increased demand for IT Professionals. Thirdly, There may be a decreased supply of IT Professionals.
The salary paid to those working is not just something that is nice to have high. It is calculated from the state of the system. If the pay is bad then do something about it. Sometimes the only thing you can do is find a different job as there are too many workers in the industry.
Also, the industry can regulate this more if IT people want more money. Take the Medical Profession for example. They place a limit on the number of accepted students every year. If CS education did this as well, then the decreased supply (I don't think the demand is going anywhere) will force employers to pay the workers more money. On the reverse side, not as many people would have jobs. This is almost like the question on Socialism vs. Capitalism. If you want everyone to be working and be marginally content, then don't expect alot of money. Judging from this article, that is not what people want but infact the Capitalistic prespective in that they want more money.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
Sorry, but this is not as good a bit of news as it looks...
Unemployment in the IT sector is up (due to both outsourcing AND the struggling economy), so who cares if the people with jobs are getting a bit more money?
Furthermore, this article is talking specifically about fresh out of college newhires - something the person who posted this seems to avoid clarifying altogether.
Guess what? They're getting these jobs and their first increase since 2001 (CS graduates) because the older folks who were making $60k and are now unemployed are gone - a net savings of $11k.
Bottom line: It's still brutally difficult to find a decent computer science / IT job right now, and the people in them aren't getting huge raises. It's also important to note that there's complaints heard 'round the country from IT and CS folks about the fact that they're working ridiculous numbers of hours.
The insane high salaries of the tech boom, however unjustified they seemed at the time, were actually justifiable because these fresh out of college kids were often dumping 60-80 hours per week into their job. (Note that I agree that the rest of the spending during the tech boom, however, was just as stupid as everyone says it was).
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As a partner in a small tech consulting business, I can state without reservation, "New CS Graduates don't have a clue what they're worth." The survey is almost certainly taken from a handful of large, national employers with fixed entry-level employement packages.
/. articles they read over the last 5 years, you either end up with new grads with no experience, who think they're the second coming, or experienced folks who had a bad co-op or were laid off rapidly from their first job, who walk in demoralized, and are willing to work for peanuts.
The truth is that most CS graduates go into smaller businesses. And when they walk in my front door, they have no clue what they should be making. I've had B-students who held a student job doing data entry for their University walk in the door and tell me they're "willing" to work for $75,000 a year, to be a code monkey after graduation. I've also had graduate students with quite a bit of experience walk in and tell me they're expecting $36-40k.
Depending on how many
As far as I'm concerned, the question of "What's a Degree Worth" is bunk. 90% of a new grad's worth has little to do with their academic program, and everything to do with their attitude, their experiences, and their fitness for the job. There's MIT grads that I wouldn't hire if they were the last non-Indian programmers on the planet.
A degree is worth nothing. The grad's attiude and ability to produce is what sets their salary. Lacking that, they're either unemployed 6 months later, or getting bonuses and raises because the company wants to encourage loyalty and keep them around for a long time. The diploma on your wall has very little to do with that.
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Agreed, averages may be useful to spot trends, but never compare your actual salary to them.
Programmers in NYC get 80K per year just so they can keep up with the increased housing, cost of living, etc. Programmers in the Midwest get 35K. Same quality of life, just different numbers. Take a look at these numbers to make a comparison by region.
Comes from employers/tax returns (I believe), so will probably be more accurate than surveys which have voluntary participation.
In related news: A statistician from the local college drowned today in a lake with an average depth of 7 inches.
Presidents don't create or destroy jobs. They don't raise or lower wages. At best, what they can do is create circumstances that make it possible or impossible for CORPORATIONS to do these things.
.coms were created, hiring way too many people for jobs that the market simply wasn't prepared to sustain for the long term.
You know what caused the tech market crash? Clinton? Bush? No... YOU did! By "you" I mean every American who pissed their savings away by investing WAY too much money in an empire that (at the time) had almost nothing to offer in terms of REAL product. As a result of all the venture capital flying around, too many
The result? Exactly what SHOULD happen. Companies collapse, people lose their jobs (unfortunately), and the economy (not the president), along with the basic rules of supply and demand, slowly corrects our mistakes.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
HOLD ON THERE! Don't let something like economics get in the way of someone's pet theories. Next thing you know, you'll be wanting journalists to have proof for their stories before they're published! (couldn't resist ;>)
Are you in the telecomm industry? If so, you would have heard of the so-called "CLEC"s (Competive Local Exchange Carriers) that were to compete with the big telecom boys. As soon as Bush was elected, they went out of business... because the smart money knew that Bush would support the incumbent big firms against them... just like he sabotaged the Microsoft antitrust trial. As went the CLECs, so went the telecomm infrastructure startups who were building innovative equipment that the CLECs would have bought, but that the ILECs have no interest in buying, because they have a monopoly anyway.
It is no accident that the bust coincided with Bush's election. Without Bush, there still would have been a dot-com bust, but other sectors would not have been as badly affected.
It is also no accident that oil prices, after stagnating for pretty much the entire Clinton years, started skyrocketing after Bush's election. It is his priority to keep gas prices high. For every cent in gas price hikes, the Oil industry makes millions of dollars. And guess which industry forms Bush's personal financial base.
Magnus.
What should we have done? Let the inspectors finish their jobs maybe? Assemble a convincing case and get UN approval before playing cowboy half way across the world for something Hussein *might* do? Afghanistan was one thing, but we also had widespread support, because it was a reasonable and just thing to do, going directly after Bin Laden.
Iraq was something we never should have undertaken. Life is filled with choosing the lesser of two evils. Invading a sovereign nation and pissing off 90% of the Arab world, torturing people, ignoring basic rights, excluding ourselves from international treaty agreements, this whole mess is going to return to us ten-fold over the next century.