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."

Comments

Half by Half

[ackthpt]

Not surprising. Where I work people only seem to get pay increases by moving up the ladder, there's been no COLA of any sort for a few years. Other places I've worked in the past 10 years have only mustered 2% if anything at all.

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.

In other news

[cubicledrone]

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.

Only in major cities

[shuz]

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.

Re:Only in major cities

[shuz]

*sigh* agreed. My programmer and graphic artist are all in the same boat. The current fear though is that I'll never again be able to have full control over all the aspects of my jobs, systems, security, and networking. I get to dabble in being a mail admin, cisco admin, DBA, WebAdmin, perl guru, shell scripting guru etc. I am worried that by leaving I'll get a much better paying job but that I'll need to start from the bottom again and do more mundain work of creating users all day. I am also forced to learn very broad topics every single day. Something that I am told doesn't happen in corporate america. Though I think the loss of control and general paranoia is the biggest thing keeping me from leaving. Also I have only seen about 5 systems administration type jobs in Minnesota in the last 3 months. I swear that the jobs still are not out there!

Re:Screwy economics

[Xerp]

Wow. You get a pay rise every year! The norm for our company is to get a review every year to first of all see if anyone gets a rise at all. Most years we don't. Last year I was lucky and got 3%.

The company I was at previously did give a rise every year, but more of the order of 7-10%. On top of that we had quartely bonuses of between 1 and 2 thousand. One year I got a rise of seven thousand, with bonuses totaling nearly the same amount.

Why did I leave the previous job? Why, why, why..

Very happy in Canada

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm doing pretty well north of the border. Lost my job on Xmas day 2003 and found my next gig in March 2004. With a 25% wage increase :-)

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.

IT salaries devalued by outsourcing

[andrewzx1]

One of the affects of IT outsourcing is a downward pressure on US IT salaries. With many IT jobs going overseas the affects are multifold. the jobs that are sent overseas creates a surplus of workers here in the US, and so workers don't have to offer premium salaries to fill positions, they can offer less.

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.

Offshoring Jobs and Salary

[reporter]

I stopped at a hi-tech job fair today in Los Angeles. Most of the recruiters with whom I spoke told me that their management is currently exporting most of their information-technology (IT) jobs overseas. The most popular destinations are India and China. What is interesting is that the job tables (at the fair) having Indian immigrants tended to praise the benefits of offshoring to India. Meanwhile, the job tables having Chinese immigrants tended to praise the benefits of offshoring to China.

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?

I'll throw in one other factor.

[jd]

If you lose enough of the low-paid jobs to India, the average salary goes up, even if nobody who stays employed ever sees another cent.

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.

Source?

[c0d3r]

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.

good luck

[bobalu]

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...