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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."
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
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.
There's already a big IT industry in Costa Rica. Pretty much all my cousins are programmers, and earn decent money. And it's not just writing boring database apps, they write custom programming languages and stuff like that.
The biggest obstacle to IT growth, however, is that there is only one big state-owned ISP, and it sucks farts out of dead chickens. My parents pay like 40 bucks for 512k down cable modem. But at least there's cable.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
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?
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.
But that aint my point. I'm in IT cos I enjoy it. I'm a technologist, and I'm fascinated and motivated by what I do. Money isn't irrelevant, of course it isn't. But I have a good working life because I enjoy what I do, and my employer gets (hopefully) a better return because a happy worker produces better work. This isn't about a vow of poverty, this is about valuing the 40-70+ hours a week you spend doing something more than the cash you get for doing it.
So I will continue to look for those traits in the people I hire - you want people who believe in the cause, not mercenaries. Of course you want to reward the people who do good stuff, but we shouldn't promise everyone riches just for passing GO.
It's going to end up that the really smart and talented people end up going into other fields.
Isn't it better - for everyone - that people go into the fields they actually have a talent for?
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.
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.