Slashdot Mirror
IT Salaries to Grow 0.5% in 2005
halfacrayon writes "According to Robert Half Technology 2005 Salary Guide, average base pay for IT professionals overall will rise 0.5% in 2005. Data security analysts will command the highest salary (up to $93K), while system auditors will enjoy the highest increase compared to 2004 rates (5.1%). IT instructors are holding the bottom spot in terms of gross revenues (salary could go as low as $43,250) and business systems analysts will barely notice the increase of 1.9% that they should expect in 2005."
Better colors
I work for a company that consistently gives 4% a year. Last year I made considerably more with a salary adjustment. Is this not the norm?
That, however isn't just the IT depts but entire organizations, with the notable exceptions at a few places where executives cut nice retro-active deals, even as the ship was foundering around them.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
How do the /. feel the US job market is going these days?
As someone who recently explored the UK market, it seems like there are a lot of options for programmers here. What makes the US so different?
Free iPods - now in the UK!
All options though. :(
...but then I am a software engineer who only gets $40K per year because the company I work for has me working for 3 years on H1 visa. If I leave I have to leave the country and life I have made here for myself because I have no permanent visa. I should be getting at least $60K, so my 5% feels kind of crappy. I guess it's better than nothing though or having no job at all.
Home prices have increased 40%, inflation is over 3% and despite the tax cuts, about 1/3 of the average paycheck goes to taxes of one kind or another.
One step forward, Chapter 7 steps back. Thanks boss.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I got a 15% raise this year, but I am still getting paid well below standard for my position.
Unfortunatly inflation is around 2%, so you are all going to get a little poorer.
Storage being cheap these days, It has gotten so bad when all these companies store info on their own servers and hire people to make sure it's secure, and then the companies fuck it up later anyway. It'd be better, and overall cheaper, if there were a few security storage companies handling all your info. I would put more faith (well, a little more) in a company whose business model surounds being a secure storage company, rather than have my data secured as a precautionary afterthought of most companies these days.
Oh wait. .5% on AVERAGE. Damn. Cottage here I come.
I am a Linux Systems Administrator of 20 machines for a small time company in a small town of 50,000(which is the county seat). I command a salary of $28,000 and I am told to like it. A combination of corporation in big cities and the economy drive the average wages. Unless my current town is so drastically different these wage studies must only take into account large cities of 100,000 or more.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
I'm making in the mid thirties and was out of work so long I feel lucky. Felt lucky, anyway. Geez.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Capitalism is dying--Marx confirms!
I like the company I work for, but unfortunately, I may need to go someplace else if I want my career (and salary) to advance...
...just my 2 gil.
Considering RHI Techonolgy specializes in temping and most of that large portion of temping (ok... "termed contracts") is on the low end, I would imagine that salaries would remained depressed.
When I retire I think I'll make good money as a cab driver.... in Bangalore.
The Clinton administration's multiple expansions of the guest worker program continues to keep salaries down. We won't see salaries keep pace with inflation until the program is cut back to 1980's levels.
0.5%?!?! Great! So, basically, my commission is being doubled!!!.... grrrr
Oh boy, we almost got that keeping up with inflation thing LICKED! w00t!
Dude, where's my packet?
The national debt
;) ) and if everyone goes expatriate, the tax benefits are totally worth it.
The interest we will have to pay on the national debt
Inflation
So basically you can think of an average 0.5% growth as your petty little cost of living increase. Enjoy the Bush tax cut while you can because as he spends like a crackwhore with a stolen credit card, each person's "share" of the national debt will blossum. that means a bigger budget every year and eventually taxes will have to go up big time to keep the leviathan from choking on its own excess.
How about this. Why don't a bunch of IT companies set up shop in Costa Rica and pay their employees to move there? The advantages are enormous. Cheap cost of business, you're close to America, exotic location for the young employees (and exotic women for the young geek men
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I got a 47% increase in pay last year, by threatening to leave. I wasn't making bad money before hand, now I'm overpaid. If you're valuable to a company they'll pay what ever it takes to keep you there.
So, I'm happy with my 6% raise that I got last month.
Anyone got a mirror?
Dude, where's my packet?
ah well, at least it'll pay for an extra pack of DVD-Rs then.
meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Sounds like a Datamation article from 1986.
Most of my peers (experienced J2EE developers) make at least CDN$75K and I clocked CDN$90K in 2004. All this in one of the cheapest provinces (Nova Scotia).
Canadian wages are very decent compared the the cost of living here. I used to work in the UK and despite making more money there according to the conversion rate, the purchasing power of a CDN$ is just so much greater in Canada that it felt like getting an 80% salary hike.
We lowly IT instructors just can't seem to climb in that IT salarie hierarchy. I think I'm going back for my masters. :/
The indirect affect is that the perception of value of the IT work is lessened as well. Managers and owners hear that overseas IT workers will charge much less, so outsourcing is always an option if salaries rise too much. They will bring this up in salary discussions.
I had a future career as an IT worker/manager. I decided the future was bleak enough to get go back to school and get a Master's degree in management, not IT management. I now know enough about planning, finance, reporting, cost structure, leadership, supply chain, knowledge management that I can feel confortable mooving into another field.
Which is sad because I love IT. But I don't want to be around when all the jobs disappear. Like what happened to textiles, aerospace, and manufacturing. Sometimes its good to hedge your future.
Good luck everybody.
meta-systems analysts
we can't even find a job, let alone a raise
there's just no future aside from the details
I think I would like to survey IT salaries of other universes at this point. Maybe in another universe the damned Brits never touched India, and they instead speak vietnamese in reverse or whatnot.
Table-ized A.I.
Is this supposed to be a joke? Or the typical linux arrogant response?
/usr/lib or somewhere like that.
Its not the gtkhtml file or whatever, its gtk-x11-blah blah.
Like i said, the file it is complaining about (libgtk-2.00-- blah blah) actually IS sitting right there in
Is the problem that I am running Ubuntu x64 version?
IT employment to grow -50% in 2005.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Your "small town" of 50,000 would make it the third largest city in my home state. The county seat of my home county, which is geographically twice the size of Rhode Island, only has 1,500 people.
That said, I don't think that, in a similar position if it existed there, the salary would be any less. You are almost certainly getting hosed, but with IT unemployment as it is you probably can't really threaten to leave and expect a raise. That's how economics work, and sometimes they suck.
Incidentally, why don't you move to a larger city? There certainly may be factors like a wife and kids involved, but it wouldn't hurt to look around a bit. I administered a lot less than 20 Linux boxes for a lot more than $28,000 in 2003.
I'm an electrical engineer with a strong background in computer engineering/programming. Does anyone have any idea what the outlook is for people like me? ::worried as graduation nears::
Summary: Indian workers are doing great, American corporations are doing great, American workers are doing lousy.
Oh and tech companies are still lobbying hard for more H1B visas.
when the security weenies that work for my company are among the lamest, most rigid, least intelligent or intellectually curious technical people I've had the misfortune to work with. Give me an old crusty Unix admin over some alphabet soup Security Professional any day.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
What about un-employed hackers?
five percent of zero is still zero.
Damn you Bush for making me work for a living.
http://www.wom.cc
Proud Owner!
Peace.
Liberal's are o so whiny. The way a real man prevents each person's "share" of the national debt from increasing, while still allowing Bush to spend like a crackwhore, is to fornicate like crazy. Then you cut more pieces of pie. It's simple stupid!
0.5 increase in wages and 0.5 increase in prices equals 0.
Even more interesting is that engineering jobs requiring minimal training are also being offshored. A good example is quality-assurance (QA) software engineers. A Chinese engineer, with a horribly thick accent, told me that his company does not hire any American QA engineers because doing QA is much cheaper in mainland China. So, when his company completes a major software package, the management ships it via Internet to mainland China, and the Chinese QA engineers will then test the package.
In this never ending offshoring, what is the next "bottom rung" (of engineering) to leave America? Verilog engineers?
ln -s /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0.200.2
For that matter, if you lose all of the low-paid jobs, and cut everyone else's salary by less than half the difference, the average salary STILL goes up.
The US has outsourced a LOT of the lower-paid jobs, but relatively few of the higher-paid ones. To achieve a paltry 0.5%, there must be an unbelievable downward pressure on wages. And both bosses and the Government will be keen to see that figure stay low, as it will reduce the inflationary pressures.
The days of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" have passed, and everyone is joining in the game of massaging the statistics.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
So some lucky bastard brought up the average with a whopping 1% increase.
Because $93k doesn't seem that much for a top notch programmer.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I know the parent is a joke, but it's important not to confuse average pay increase with your annual raise amount. It's possible for the average pay to increase only 0.5%, with most people getting 5% raises.
Fictional scenario
-------
Before:
Employee 1 - 10,000/yr
Employee 2 - 20,000/yr
Employee 3 - 300,000/yr
After:
Employee 1 - 10,500/yr
Employee 2 - 21,000/yr
Employee 3 - 300,150/yr
In this case, the two worker bees each got a 5% raise, while the mega-rich CIO got a measly $150 (it's an improbable example on many levels, but just to prove a point). The average pay only increased 0.5%, but MOST people got 5% raises.
After indicting and trying in a court of law them for treason, of course. I am not advocating any lawlessness.
But I just bet that would do wonders for the IT job market.
Just my opinion!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The poor sots like me who got laid off, and managed to find a new job but at a 10% pay cut?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Is the problem that I am running Ubuntu x64 version?
It could be. Using x86_64 to run 32 bit compiles (such as your thunderbird) will require 32 bit libraries for compatibility. Unfortunately apt-get/synaptic isn't architecture aware.
Your best bet is to use synaptic and find libgtk 32 bit, it may be labelled differently. Install that, or wait until Ubuntu finally upgrades to Thunderbird 1.0, using the system installed thunderbird for now.
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
The source is robert half technology. They are a head hunting firm that agressively robs its consultants. I think they just want to pay less to engineers so are posting these bogus rates. In the silicon valley you can add 20k to each one of those numbers easily.
Think "electrician".
I started as a tech, spent the last 27 yrs in all manner of developer-consultant gigs, and I'm seriously thinking of applying for a journeyman electrician job.
Intellectually it's cake, it can't be outsourced, and they make the same money.
Cheers...
The revolution will NOT be televised.
for the 73 IT people left in the United States
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
A 0.5% isn't too bad. At the last company I worked at, my boss gave me a $0.05/hour increase and he thought that was a big deal. He got mad when I reminded him that the company five years ago -- under better management -- routinely gave me 40% raises.
Anyway, I found out his nickel was bigger than mine since he was able to build a house on the coast when most people couldn't afford to buy a house in Silicon Valley.
Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) introduced a bill to reform the H-1B visa program titled the "Defend the American Dream Act of 2004". His strong letter to the editor of the New Jersey Herald indicates that the bill will be re-introduced in the 2005 Congress. I can't recall the last time I have read a written statement from a public official that was so highly critical of H-1B.
To review the American Dream Act follow these instructions:
1) go to http://thomas.loc.gov
2) enter H.R. 5413 into the search engine
Pascrell's website is at:
http://www.pascrell.house.gov/
Click "Contact Bill" to give them feedback.
LOL, you must be a liberal, blaming others. Take responsibility and work for yourself.
...25 grams! Double-plus-good Winston!
I really lucked out - I got almost a 29% increase (28.something)
I'm the proud owner of 69,000 a year (barely 5 yrs. experience).
and this didn't include housing price increases..
I know we sure don't. I've never met anyone with those titles in my 13+ years in paid IT.
"We lowly IT instructors just can't seem to climb in that IT salarie hierarchy. I think I'm going back for my masters. :/"
I find it telling that the job that teaches the other "rising" jobs, itself isn't being paid much.
Thank you for the information.
IT salaries to rise 0.5%? That's great...
...until you factor in inflation, to get the *real* salary growth rate, rather than the nominal rate.
Consumer price inflation (CPI) is around 3.26%.
Basic microeconomics (the Fisher Equation) says you take the wage increase rate and subtract the inflation rate, in order to get the real wage growth.
0.5% - 3.26% = -2.76%
So, assuming your wage increases with this 0.5% rise, you're still not increasing your pay enough to outpace inflation. This means your real purchasing power will be decreasing this year, by 2.76% if the figure above remains anywhere near accurate.
Salary rising by 0.5% this year? Quite a shitter, if you ask me. But, of course, it could be worse (we could be seeing negative growth).
(The data security guys still come out ahead though: 5.1% - 3.26% = 1.84% real pay increase. At $90k/year, that's another $1656 in purchasing power they can afford, in real terms.)
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
" The source is robert half technology. "
I'm glad you said that. I've noticed and replied to many of their job listings over the years. Glad I didn't succeed.
you only had a brain :)
In other news Inflation was 3.3% last year according to the CPI.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdfso, accounting for inflation, this "0.5% raise" is an effective 2.8% drop in average IT wages. Just goes to show that statistics can say anything, but their meaning is often obscured.
Stop posting forcasts of incredibly low pay figures. Only put rosey forecasts out so my boss will give me a better raise.
Why do you think the raises get low? They read the pessimistic journals.
Blah.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
There is no mention in the article about wages for support workers - I am a support analyst at a medium-large (17,000 undergrad) University and they are doing a wage study - I wonder if I'll be making more than I do now. We have lots of money at the University. We don't just do support either; we do project work too and clean machines / administer Perfigo, etc. Any ideas what the average wages of us is?
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
mod parent up... this was not flame bait, it is the truth !
Living in major cities costs more. Sure, he could probably make twice as much in Silicon Valley--but he might well have expenses so much higher than he'd actually end up with less money left over.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...an entire R&D department was staffed in Bangalore for the price of a new microwave oven.
Kinda hard to compete when lunch a Whopper costs more than an average daily salary over there.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Salaries are only increasing 0.5%, which means they aren't even keeping up with inflation.
In other words, IT salaries are actually dropping in that they're not keeping up with the ever-increasing cost of living.
In other words, start typing your resume and get ready to train your Indian replacement hired under the pretext of a "labor shortage."
You aren't kidding. Its amazing that they're the ones doing these surveys showing how low pay is for the IT sector, and they're the ones doing the lowballing. I pity the poor contractor who has to work for them.
I did work for them and just about went bankrupt in a crappy job paying 50% of my normal salary while trying to stay employed. They not only lowballed me, but they took the client company for a higher rate for my services than any other contract house I've ever worked for (easily triple my normal salary).
Be very skeptical of what they pass off as factual statistic.
How do you figure they've done anything that they could be convicted of treason for, then? I suppose it depends on the country, but in the US treason is very narrowly defined, and can only come from two actions: committing acts of war against the US, or aiding and abetting those who are.
Last I checked, India wasn't at war with the US. Quite the opposite, actually. Given that, I'm not sure you can make a treason charge stick.
Now, there are other nations with less-strict definitions of treason, and you might be able to make it stick there. Then again, how many of them are involved in the outsourcing stuff?
should be happy that they are still collecting a paycheck with the dismal job they did in '04. Had to increase my team's time estimates for job completion by 50% to cover the work our BSA's aren't doing.
Excellent! .5%! That means 5 cents more an hour. Hooray for my ramen budget!
Our salary's keep rising around 4-6% a year but our company is not union, but if they killed our raises especially since were extremely profitable unions could get a toehold.
I for one am against our company unionizing it would only ruin the apmosphere.. glad I'm in Texas where it's right to work.
Although I respect you wanting to buy a house in 10 years, you could probably buy a house right now without changing your yearly savings rate. Find an online mortgage calculator and do the math, $130k sounds cheap to a city dweller like me.
It depends on what you're paying in rent but I'll bet you can pull it off and if you've got some downpayment you could probably get a rate that isn't much above inflation.
Even if you decide to move in a few years, if you are carefully about the place you choose to buy you could probably turn a profit on selling it.
anyone doing php/related web development in south florida? what you would expect in salary for mid-senior level developers?
At least you don't work at Qwest...
I was unemployed for 15 months, took a $7,000 paycut on my current job and lengthened my commute by 18 miles. A 0.5% raise wouldn't even cover my mileage.
Well thanks for the info. Looks like I am going to have to download and compile strace? This is going to be another set of headaches I'm sure?
I'm going to contradict the wage increase. I haven't seen a wage increase in almost 2 years. I won't complain. How many of you actually enjoy going to work? I look forward to my daily experience dealing with the joys of being a programmer, support tech, etc. We'd all like to see a raise, but be real. The average wage going up does not mean you like the job. Choose happiness at work before the extra nickel.
It's all about RTFM.
I make decent money, and my biggest single annual expense is, without a doubt, TAX (yes, twice as much as my mortgage).
So, before you blithely recommend moving to a bigger city for a better salary, you need to consider lots of things that go into "quality of life".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
What seems to have escaped many people (I think)
is that the software sevelopment sector has
not only seen declining salaries in recent times
but even more troubling is that salaries have
remained flat for a decade. No meaningful salary
increases in that amount of time translates into
a lot of lost income. While your income has
remained flat the cost of a typical home in a
typical metro area has probably risen at least
$40k to $60k.
Software Developer Salary
You can check out salary.com for salaries of other IT personnel such as SW Engineers, Network Support Techs, Programmers, etc. All make more than Electricians.
You wrote:
How do you figure they've done anything that they could be convicted of treason for, then? I suppose it depends on the country, but in the US treason is very narrowly defined, and can only come from two actions: committing acts of war against the US, or aiding and abetting those who are.
From wikipedia:
"In law, treason is the crime of disloyalty to one's nation. A person who reneges on an oath of loyalty or a pledge of allegiance, and in some way willfully cooperates with an enemy, is considered to be a traitor. Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]."
These politicians took an oath to be loyal to America and to protect America from harm and injury. Yet they have sold our jobs overseas and allowed foreigners to come in and take them and drive down wages. THey have cooperated with the corporate enemy and are guilty of treason.
I maintain that this is extremely injurious to the nation, and that they should therefore by treason, and if found guilty, be hanged.
The American legal system is flexible and subject to interpretation. Now you know my interpretation....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
When IT and labor has fired and offshored most of it's workforce, .5% for the few left that got demoted or overworked doesn't make my day any brighter. I sure as hell don't see it doing 3 jobs.
As smart as so many /.ers are, it seems most of the vocal would rather moan about what they're not getting than properly and actively manage what we *are* getting - it's not how much you get, it's how much you keep and what you do with it...
Wy wife and I *together* only gross a touch over $50k - in salary and wages. Investments? ah, yes...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
The bottom?
When to I get my pay rise!!!!
Does this new mystical job that I can get in 2 weeks also come with a special spatula that is dishwasher safe?
OK I digress,
Yes I have identified at least 13 sysadmin jobs near me in Minnesota just tonight. This is a heck of a lot better then a year ago when I was job searching. Now I just have to get rid of my fear of retaliation from my boss if "she" (yes she) were to ever find out. *sigh* Cest La Vie
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
If, on the other hand, you just want a place to live and want to build up a bit of equity, putting down the least amount as possible is better.
Yeah, right.
I assume this is for the USA. What you need to worry about is: How much will wages go up in India? If its less, well then... how would you like to train your replacement today?
Yeah like Robert Half doesn't have an incentive to post a less-than-rosy outlook so that their candidates will accept whatever will keep their clients happy? I don't trust them one bit.
"Taking some of the "glamour" out will be better for the industry, and it will be a better fit for the people who choose to do this. Money is, or should, be a secondary concern for everyone involved - there are bigger priorities here."
Hehe. Well the present growth in the fast food, retail, and hospitality industry must be because everyone's doing it "for the love."
Want to know whats really driving down the wages? Check this out:
r am es;read=3383
> Do you think that TEKsystems got to be one of the
> biggest based off of their salespeople and their new
> suits...try it was due to providing the best service
> and the best candidates.
They typically hire the cheapest contractors you can find, and you get what you pay for. They prefer H-1Bs because they can hire them for less than Americans, and they know that H-1Bs work under the strain of not being able to withstand being fired from a job because their visa will expire.
http://www.cedaily.com/bbs/horror/index.cgi?nof
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
"Really not bad at all. (I have no affiliation with any mobile home compnay, just my 2 cents)"
But you do have an affiliation with the tornado, and hurricane coalition.
"Unions and/or physical location needs help keep them from being devalued from global competition."
"Unions" are under attack in the US.
"Physical location" is sneaking over the border.
10 years + experience and good experience too, not just stuffing around, but making real global stuff, and its still hard to get a job. The problem?
.net/java web front ends to sqlserver back ends, not real high tech C++ stuff
1. most jobs are
2. the rest are oracle/dba crap
3. and the final is some manager stuff/tech support crapola
4. with 1% perhaps something interesting in C/C++ thats technical
5. with so many sub fields, its difficult to get any where unless you have the exact experience/history, which personaly makes for another bored out of his mind employee, you need someone skilled and smart but not necessarily someone who has done it before so that they arent bored shitless doing the same thing again.
WHY? because 99% of companies dont do much R&D any more, the tax reductions for R&D have dropped. Also most companies would rather just buy something from USA or ASIA rather than do any real work to make it. Very Very lazy businesses here.
Yes Australia is mainly mineral exports, food exports, financial services exports, construction, and administration. Real R&D? well 2% of GDP, most peoples attitudes are "the usa can do it better, why should we bother, its easier just to order it and get a tax expense discount"
Once everything is really really well automated and gui friendly, and super easy configurable, you'll see massive IT unemployed. Thankfully, attacks, spyware/viriss' cause enough problems to keep IT staff busy, but thats just Admin, not development.
Games market is crap too, why ask for degrees when I bet the people that started those companies have none, or had none when they started. So that market is left to just grads starting out or people with 3 years + on their belt. No new commers welcome, unless you know the startup execs personally.
And you wonder why more and more people are slipping into the underground economy of the underworld and untaxed cash world.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Welcome to the rest of America. May I take your cap and cane?
FL has the lowest salaries in the country as far as IT goes. Especially south FL. one recent job posting asked for a linux support tech with pay of $7 per hour. Pc technicians with 4 years of experience can expect $10 hourly. Forget health benefits.
They're using their grammar skills there.
this year I opted for the following option - - %25 salary increase - shorter working hours At the expense of - - not having to solve customer problems - not needing to work crazy IT hours - not needing to work in 'off peak' times such as weekends By moving out of the IT department into one of those customer facing kiss-ass jobs.. good for a change at least i think!
yeah but doing that doesnt deserve a $50000 raise, since any 12 year old could easily compute that logic/maths in class.
The amount of maths/logic decision trees that any programmer has to go through daily is 50x more than any CFO/been counter.
A better way is to do this;
A) Company A creates a 50million dollar investment fund, and transfers all employees homeloans to it at a reduced rate with nofees, therefore the employees save, and the company saves and makes a profit too.
B) Company A makes its own credit card, again no fees, just lower rates.
C) Company A creates a bulk dvd purchase system run by the employees, so all staff can buy dvds at 50% below retail cost.
There are many services that a big corporate can do which costs NOTHING and makes profits but can offer them at below market levels but only to employees. This creates extra savings for employees which then dont need pay rises because the company is helping reduce their costs.
Sure this solution isnt pro capitalism since it reduces costs/expenses and pools resources to save money like a mini commy nation, but who cares. This solution is whats worth a $50000 raise to the CFO, not some grade 6 math and simple simluation experiements in some spread sheet which any moron can do.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Penny-penching companies learn the hard way the true cost of that strategy, when the entire workforce is chomping at the bit to leave and will if they can.
Somehow I suspect companies like Google are not as miserly as others, even though many people are clomoring to work there.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From looking around at companies I have been in, I would swear it's the other way around!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No doubt. As someone who grew up in SC County, left, and came back a few years ago, I can tell you all signs indicate to me that Santa Cruz is fast becoming another Carmel. My friends in real estate tell me that the majority of the people looking for homes here are retirees from out of the area who have already made their money and don't have to worry about income. One friend just sold his house and moved out of the area altogether, and of the six offers he received, all but one were from out of the area. Two were from out of state!
The county and city government bodies don't do anything to help, because they're so fixated on maintaining Santa Cruz as it was back in the '60s and '70s, before it was "discovered." Mardi Wormhoudt thinks using the clogged Highway 1 is a "lifestyle choice" and Mark Primack has had a bitch of a time convincing people that mixed housing is better than the class-segregated zoning we have now. The same coterie of ageing hippies has been in power since the 1980s, and their hostility to businesses (other than those that cater to tourists on the Pacific Garden Mall) makes the irony of Santa Cruz's situation that much more appalling.
A huge number of Santa Cruz county inhabitants commute over Highway 17 every day to work in the bowels of Silicon Valley, yet the government in Santa Cruz (re-elected like clockwork in large part because of the UCSC voting population) refuses to understandd that it is possible to maintain slow growth and build a tech business climate at the same time. They just keep arguing that it's a zero-sum game, because they bought their houses long ago when they were easy to buy, and they've long since paid off their mortgages. They don't care about real diversity or real economic sustainability. "If you want to make big money, go live in Silicon Valley," seems to be the mentality. Unfortunately, you need big money just to survive here.
If I sound frustrated, it's because I am. I ride my bike to work. I want Santa Cruz to stay weird. I love the fact that we protect the environment in our community. I have friends who wear suits and friends who live to surf. But Santa Cruz the tolerant, vibrant Santa Cruz of old is turning into a bizarre mixure of college town and retirement community. If you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, or early 50s (unless you've made a ton of money in Silicon Valley), you'll only find work in Santa Cruz maintaining other people's houses or selling them coffee at Lulu Carpenter's. The middle class is being squeezed out, and quickly.
This week's Good Times (or was it the Metro) has a great article about the whole Santa Cruz affordable housing quagmire. I know this sounds like a rant, but I feel so passionate about it because I just hate to see Santa Cruz going down this path.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I would if I had points.
For 3 years now, my salary has not increased but diminished. A whopping 15% reduction in the whole year 2004 will eventually be reverted by 2005. Has anyone similar experiences?
The situation is worse in the UK than it sounds in the USA, over here I could quit my job as a CCNP, retrain in 1 month to become a HGV1 driver and earn well over £30,000 a year, much more than working my socks off in it.
The average salary hike for IT workers was 12% in 2004. It is estimated to be 12-14% in 2005.
~Once you have your choices narrowed down, the rest will fall into place.
Don't say you're an IT guy. Sell yourself as a business person who specialises in IT solutions.
Outcome: you do exactly the same work but for much more money.
I did this in my current position (software developer). I'm doing the same work as my last job but for a lot more money. I even get more respect.
Remember that business people look after their own.
--- "We've always been at war with Eastasia."
Don't feel too bad - despite what it may seem like on /., many others are in the same boat.
But just ask them what their power bill and rent payments are. Or how much they pay for meat.
People in smaller cities generally make less, but they generally also have less expenses. I live in a small area, and compared to people I know who live in a large city, I make only 60% of their salary.
Then again, I own a 3 bedroom house, and my mortgage payments are less than 1/2 of what they pay on their 2 bedroom apartment.
It is not so bad - you can't judge your progress in life by your salary alone. There are many factors to consider before moving to a larger job market. Real estate prices, food prices, traffic, pollution, privacy, and manners, all come at a premium in a big city. Then again, in a small city, you often need to wait a bit longer to get new products and services.
It is all a tradeoff.
hmmm according to the survey results, entry-level jobs right out of college are paying about 50k/yr. Since most of the recruiters I've talked to are telling me jobs are paying in the 30s and 40s, maybe I should get my BS all over again! (I graduated in the dark days of 1986)
IT instructors are holding the bottom spot in terms of gross revenues (salary could go as low as $43,250)
Try ~$2,500 per class, per semester. I'm glad I only teach because I like it and I have a day job as well.
(Ah, the wonders of working in the high pay, fast paced world of a Catholic college!)
--saint
Not really involved in the field but curious to know what sort of salaries people can expect? Is it like the US where it's hard to get into - what about graduate salaries etc?
I have yet to see any change in IT reflected in my Salaries. :^/
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
After being laid off (again) a year ago, I started a new php programming job near Cleveland, OH in November. My new job pays LESS THAN HALF of my previous salary, coming in at USD $33k. I don't know about the rest of the nation, but I competed with dozens of people for this position, and commute 90 minutes each way.
When it came time to negotiate it went like this:
"This position pays $33k, and we'd love to have you on board."
"I'd really like to join this company, but that salary is extremely low by any measure. The minimum I could accept is $45k."
"I understand this may be less than what you're used to, however we predetermined our rate of pay prior to holding interviews. We have great benefits and.... BLAH BLAH BLAH... the position pays $33k"
I've never negotiated for a position and gotten NOTHING... shows to go ya its still very much an employer's market.
I was hired, I'm sure, because the company is confident that I'm not going to find a job elsewhere (and haven't so far).
It would be interesting to see these figures adjusted for regional cost of living - they just don't seem to jive with reality in the Midwest.
How about this. Why don't a bunch of IT companies set up shop in Costa Rica and pay their employees to move there? The advantages are enormous. Cheap cost of business, you're close to America, exotic location for the young employees (and exotic women for the young geek men
No thank you.
It's that whole rule of law thing.
Go to another country, even a US protectorate. You will see what happens if someone has a criminal issue anywhere near you.
Good luck with this paradise you call Puerto Rico.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but there is more to it than 'lost to rent' and 'building equity'. I heard that argument a lot before I bought my home, I have a friend that used to be a realtor. But it's really more complicated than that.
I went from a one bedroom apartment at $600 a month to a home with a $1000 a month mortgage payment. I paid ~$150 a year for renters insurance and I pay $1100 a year for homeowners. I now pay $1200 a year in property tax. Roughly $500 of my monthly payment goes to interest and $40 is lost to PMI. I do get to write off the interest and property taxes on my income taxes, but the amount that it saves me barely covers the cost of maintenance. I also went from a maximum $50 a month electric and $40 a month gas to a level pay $130 a month gas/electric plus $30 water/sewer/trash. Not to mention the bonuses of having to shell out $1000 for new guttering or coming home to a broken water heater. You can save money by doing repairs yourself, but some of that will be offset by the new tools you need to have.
The money factor isn't as good as people make it out to be. You have to look and see if other factors are important to you. Home ownership, investment, freedom to make changes (such as rewiring the computer room or painting the walls). BTW, you can still have noisy neighbors, but now you have no Apt manager to deal with them. Thump, thump, thump. "are the windows supposed to rattle like that?"
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
That assumes that your boss is geek enough to read /.
salary could go as low as $43,250
Wow. That's almost $10,000 more than I make as a programmer.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
IT salaries to oncrease 0.5% on average in 2005 I guess I just have a tough time trusting a news article with a typo in the TITLE.
Here you ago. Everything old, is new again! .gov for all of my money back?
http://www.revengeismydestiny.com/
How log should I wait before I ask the
$10 bucks says http://www.whitehouse.com will be a dating web site.
Peace.