Annual IT Salary Survey Finds Dissatisfaction

BobB writes "A storm seems to be brewing in the IT job market. Pay raises have continued to outpace inflation, and bonuses are downright impressive — 11.6% on average. Yet, as the 2007 Network World Salary Survey finds, dissatisfaction over salary packages is rampant."

Comments

The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job market.

[QuantumG]

Get the head hunters to contact IT geeks every 6 to 8 months and offer absolutely plumb jobs. When you get em on the phone, "refresh their job details" and then tell them that plumb job is gone, but you'll keep an eye out for them.. just what salary range are you looking for? Oh, well, with your skills you should be getting paid a lot more than that.. etc.

Housing up 50% & Salaries up only 11% = !Satis

[Adeptus_Luminati]

I blame it in part on your (USA) housing bubble. Wait 2-3 years for the housing market to drop 50% and you should all be very happy! (Assuming you didn't first go bankrupt on your ARM sub-prime mortgage! heh)

Up here in Canada, you're lucky to get 4% raise/Yr in IT. Wages in general have been quite stagnent in the past 3 or 4 years (except Alberta Oil cities), yet our housing prices are climbing in mutliple urban cities at double digit percentage rates /Yr. Don't worry, our bubble will also be popping soon... then maybe we can all go down to Cuba an cry over our losses with cheap Tequilas & Cubans (cigars) in hand.

Adeptus

European salaries != US salaries

[seti]

What amazes me is the difference between average IT salaries in Europe and the US. Here in Europe, an average 30-year-old IT worker could expect to be making about 3000 euros before taxes every month (i.e. 36,000 a year). Reading that article, I gather the average US IT salary is about $80,000, which is about 56,000.

Can anybody explain this huge difference? Is the cost of living in the US just so much higher than in Europe? Or does IT just pay a lot more in the US?

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[c0d3h4x0r]

Cost of living in the US is generally higher because we have to pay for medical insurance, hospital visits, childcare/daycare, etc, almost entirely out of our own pockets, in addition to all the taxes we already pay. In most European countries, those kinds of services are provided through some kind of government-run socialized program paid for by your taxes. Here in the states we have to handle those things entirely on our own and they cost a lot, so we have to earn more to be able to do that.

Plus, here in the states, most people have to commute a really long way by car to get to their jobs, whereas in Europe the distances travelled by car for daily commute probably average less because (1) there just isn't as much sprawl, and (2) there's better public transit. The cost of owning, maintaining, and refueling a car adds up.

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[Bryan Ischo]

I'll try. These figures are for the Bay Area, CA (pretty much the epicenter of IT in the USA if not the world). And I'll keep it in Euros to make the comparison easier, using today's exchange rate of 1 Euro = 1.41 USD.

Taxes on salary in various 'slices' (this is federal income tax + social security tax):

16.2% for 0 to 5,354 Euro
21.2% for 5,355 to 21,737 Euro
31.2% for 21,738 to 52,624 Euro
34.2% for 52,625 - 67,286 Euro
28% + 4,171 Euro for 67,287 - 109,787 Euro
33% + 4,171 Euro for 109,788 - 238,688 Euro
35% + 4,171 Euro for 238,689 Euro and the remainder above

(the reason for the last three amounts is that social security tax is only on salary up to 67,286 Euros, salary in excess of that is not assessed social security tax)

You also have to add in state tax, which in CA is between 1% and 9%, depending on how much you make. It's too much trouble to work that into the table above, because the ranges are all different, but if you make more than 28,616 Euros (which just about any person working in IT would), it's 9.3%. So add that makes the tax rates closer to 40% - 50% total for the medium to high tax brackets.

Furthermore, there are small taxes assessed for things like state disability insurance, but these don't sum up to more than 1% usually.

State sales tax: 7.25% (if I rememer correctly)

- Medical insurance: free (paid for by employer) if you have a decent job, anywhere from 350 - 900 Euros per month (depending on the size of your family and your age) if you do not. I personally have never had to pay for medical insurance, and most IT workers would be the same.
- Childcare: ~5 Euro/hour
- Gasoline: 0.56 Euro/liter (= 3.00 Dollar/gallon)
- Public transport: about 3 Euro for 25KM by train, or 6 Euro for a 25KM with a return ticket (I am basing this on $4.00 USD for Caltrain between two "zones", which I am guessing is about 25 KM)

As to new cars, they are much cheaper in the USA and there are no additional taxes beyond state sales tax (although I have never bought a new car, I am just assuming this is true). That E 32,840 car probably would only cost E 22,000 total in the USA.

As you can see, the USA income tax rate is not so much different from your rate, when you factor in all income taxes paid (we pay alot of individual taxes in the USA - federal, state, local (sometimes - in New York City you have to also pay a local income tax!), social security, disability, etc, etc) the rate is typically somewere around 33% total in the USA (if you have a good I.T. job and are making $80,000+ USD per year), whereas it looks like around 40% in your country.

The difference is that sales tax (you call it VAT) is higher in your country (20% vs. 7.25%) and most individual items probably cost more in your country (the cost of gasoline, childcare, and a car demonstrate this).

One big factor you did not mention is the cost of buying a house or renting an apartment. In the Bay Area a modest size family home is at least $700,000 USD (about E 500,000), and renting a moderate apartment is about $1,800 per month (E 1,300). Owning a home in the Bay Area is very, very expensive (compare to homes in Canton, Ohio where my mom lives - houses there are about $150,000 USD, or about E 100,000).

In general, the USA is a very inexpensive place to live.

I have been living in New Zealand for almost a year now and I'd say that it's somewhere between the USA and your country in taxes and cost of living; more expensive than the USA but not as expensive as Europe.

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[locofungus]

16.2% for 0 to 5,354 Euro
21.2% for 5,355 to 21,737 Euro
31.2% for 21,738 to 52,624 Euro
34.2% for 52,625 - 67,286 Euro
28% + 4,171 Euro for 67,287 - 109,787 Euro
33% + 4,171 Euro for 109,788 - 238,688 Euro
35% + 4,171 Euro for 238,689 Euro and the remainder above

In the UK it's approximately:
0% for 0 to 7000 EUR
10% for 7000 to 10000 EUR
22% for 10000 to 53000 EUR
40% above 53000 EUR

Additionally we have Employees National insurance
0% below 7000 EUR
11% for 7000 to 47000 EUR
1% above 47000 EUR

And employers National insurance (Which the employer pays but doesn't appear anywhere on your payslip)
Which I think is
12.8% on everything.

(The employers NI doesn't affect your take home pay - if you earn 100000 before tax you will pay approx 28000 Tax, 5000 NI and take home approx 67000. Your employer will pay an additional 12800 NI so the overall income tax rate is either 33000/100000 = 33% or 45000/112000 = 40% depending on how you account for the employers NI)

Then there's VAT at 17.5% on almost everything.

Contributions to a pension scheme are paid gross (but employers NI is still paid)

Perks such as health insurance are taxed as though they were income but you don't pay any more NI.

House prices vary a lot. In London, average house prices vary from 1M GBP (1.4M EUR) in Kensington and Chelsea to as little as 200K GBP 280K EUR in Barking and Dagenham.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/uk_house_prices/counties/html/county37.stm

Tim.

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[Corgha]

Can anybody explain this huge difference?

This could get political, so please don't take any of these comments as judgments on the personal worth of Americans or Europeans, or about which nations are better that which other ones. There are lots of fine folks on both sides of the pond, and there's more to life than salaries and GDP. I'm just trying to explain the salary difference, since you asked. I'll just throw these possible reasons out there and we'll see what sticks...

According to an article in The Economist earlier this year (sorry, don't have a link), American companies get a higher ROI (usually measured in increased productivity) on investments in IT projects (this actually goes with the company, not the worker, so it's probably down to management, but in any case a higher "R" makes you willing to be a little more free with the "I").

Also, Europeans work significantly fewer hours per year than Americans, on average. Like 15% fewer, according to that linked speech from the President of the European Central Bank. Looking at the yearly salary, then, distorts the figure for how much people are being paid for each unit of labor input (though, even per hour worked, Americans are more productive, so that further raises the value of the labor to the company).

Put another way, according to that same ECB article the US has a 50% higher GDP per capita than Europe (Europe's is two-thirds that of the US), so the output is higher, too. And some of that trickles down (not much, but some).

And, of course, unemployment in America is much lower than in Europe (for August, it was 4.6% in the US vs 9% in, e.g, Germany). If you have twice as many people looking for jobs, well, the employer can offer lower pay and someone will be glad to be earning more than zero.

So, those would make it reasonable for companies in the US to be willing to pay higher salaries.

Plus, it's easier to terminate people without cause in America, which means poor performers with their low salaries (who would otherwise drag down the average) can be taken off your books immediately, without a lengthy process of review and appeal. In some places in Europe, it can take a while to fire someone and may not be possible in borderline cases, and you have to demonstrate cause. Since IT workers often have privileges you don't want them to use during a hostile termination, this sometimes leads to the ludicrous situation of paying someone not to come to work for a few months (and that person is probably not going to get a raise and a bonus and bump up the average, eh?). Of course, despite this, unemployment is lower, anyway, so it's not like the US is cheating by not counting all the $0 salaries, unless maybe you count the huge prison population ;)

Similarly, you have to take into account the large concentrations of American IT workers in places like Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is a very risky place. The companies that succeed are often flush with cash. But the companies that fail don't pay anybody, and unemployed people don't count into the average. And, of course, the cost of living is high in Silicon Valley.

So, those effects would also tend to raise the average.

Much of this stuff could be explained as the result of the different paths America and Europe have taken with running their societies, specifically with how much risk they are willing to tolerate. But, like I said, there's more to life than high salaries. And those American salaries are getting lower in real terms by the day as Americans' purchasing power is eroded by the falling dollar. So, enjoy your vacation days and social services and don't fret too much about it. ;)

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[locofungus]

and renting a moderate apartment is about $1,800 per month

To give you some idea of what prices are like in London, I'd just assumed this said

and renting a moderate apartment is about $1,800 per week

I've managed to find:

Walburgh Street, Aldgate, E1
Total Sq Ft: 533 (49 Sq M) approx.
Bedrooms: 2 bedrooms
For 250GBP/week

To give you some idea of what is available at the low end.

And at the high end:
De Vere Gardens, Kensington, W8
Total Sq Ft: 1,158 (107 Sq M) approx.
Bedrooms: 1 bedroom
For 1000GBP/week

Tim.

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[BVis]

I think there's another factor at work here that doesn't seem to be being considered. Employees actually have rights in Europe, whereas our very survival is at the whim of the employer on this side of the pond. Most states are "at-will" employment states over here, which means that you can be fired for no reason at all, and frequently be denied unemployment benefits on a pretense. (I've had this happen to me; a temp agency offered me a gig that I was unable to accept for safety reasons, and I was denied unemployment coverage because I 'refused work'. In this state temp agencies are obligated to contribute to unemployment coverage the same as any other employer, and the more people you lay off, the more you pay to UI. This makes screwing over its former employees in the agency's financial interest.) Even if it's an illegal termination (discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation (in some states)), proving it in court is IMMENSELY difficult, as the burden of proof is on the employee. The employer has the ability to say "There is no stated reason for that termination. We're not obligated to give one."

Why is this relevant to the discussion? Because being unemployed is expensive. Unemployment benefits in this state amount to 50% of the highest salary you received in the last 18 months, and only last 6 months maximum. (There's a fairly insultingly small extension to those if you can prove you're in state-approved job training.) As I understand it, this state is on the generous side of average for the US. Most workers try to squirrel away 3 months' salary, and not all of them succeed in doing so because of the costs of living. American employers are not required to offer ANYTHING in the way of severance pay, with the exception of compensation for vacation time earned but not used. (And there are ways around that; they just call it something else other than 'vacation time'.) American employers also are not obligated to contribute anything towards a pension or other retirement vehicle, with the exception of Social Security. (Employers and employees are each required to contribute 7% of the employees' pre-tax income.) Social Security at this point essentially amounts to a 7% decrease in income, as by the time most /. readers retire it will be bankrupt, thanks to the Baby Boomers' insurmountable sense of entitlement.

Employees in the US generally are worse off than our EU counterparts for the above stated reasons. Add more stuff in like about half as much vacation time, frequently no sick/personal time, no paid leave for childbirth/medical issues (except where the employer voluntarily carries disability insurance), and it's bleak indeed.

Here's a question though: How good are EU employers in general about providing training to IT workers? Over here it seems like a lot of places would rather rip an arm off than provide useful training.

Re:European salaries != US salaries

[pnutjam]

I would agree that most SINGLE or CHILDLESS people don't have to worry about healthcare. My employer offers pretty good insurance for my are and I still pay about $300 (pre-tax) a month, they pay over twice that. It's fine for must things, but if one of my kids has strep throat and we all need to get checked I'm suddenly looking at $100 out of pocket to cover the co-pays on five people. Follow up visits can easily make that over $150 for the month. I have three kids.

Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[imaginaryelf]

I mean, who is going to answer yes?

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[dropadrop]

Yes, I'm always happy for a couple of months after my last raise.

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[eggstasy]

I'm pretty happy with my salary. I never really understood why people cared so much about money. It just sits there, piling up. What on earth would I do with more money?
I don't smoke, I don't drink. I don't own a car (gotta love europe), neither do I want or need one.
My monthly utility bills amount to 15% of my paycheck, and food perhaps another 15% - I eat lots of fruit and veggies, and enjoy cooking stuff from scratch. Processed food is harmful and expensive.
Most of my entertainment is found online. Building stuff in Second Life, IMing friends, reading web pages and playing the odd flash game. I also enjoy cycling on weekends, and getting together with my RL friends for a chat over a 60-cent cup of coffee.
I do not own any consoles, CDs, DVDs, and buy maybe 1 or 2 books a year.
I end up taking my girlfriend to the fanciest restaurants in town for lack of a better idea of what to do with my money.
I realize that some people are addicted to the status symbol treadmill, but I find that an exceedingly frivolous way of life, and I do not personally know anyone like that.
I guess engineers lean strongly towards Make rather than Buy. We keep ourselves entertained through things that other people would consider "zomg too much work".

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[yaman666]

Wait until you get a family or decide you want to buy a house. Raising children, mortgage, college tuitions... those costs pile up. :-)

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

One word: family.

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[Blakey Rat]

Processed food is harmful and expensive.

Hm, interesting statement. Isn't pretty much all food processed in one way or another? (Iodine in salt, pasteurization of dairy products, vitamin C added, etc.) Most of these processes are in place specifically to make the food less harmful-- less likely you'll drink spoiled milk, less likely you'll suffer from iodine or vitamin C deficiency, etc.

Whether it's more expensive to buy iodized salt rather than non-iodized salt, I dunno. But saying processed foods are harmful strikes me as simply wrong.

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[tknd]

I was pretty happy with my salary until I realized I lived in the US. I'd say the unhappiness with salaries is a cause of cultural beliefs and influences like the "American Dream." In a nutshell, the American dream is to make lots of money so you can live a glamorous lifestyle. Many of the cultural influences and US laws also force people to working harder and making more money.

For example take the way the US is built and real estate. Most places in the US build outwards rather than upwards. Because there is so much space, most Americans feel like they need to own a piece of land and the lot has to be a certain size to fit all of their belongings. But the up front costs in owning real estate are higher than renting. Furthermore the infrastructure does not give very many benefits to those who rent in the US. Most places require a car in order for the person to have transportation. Some of the big cities don't require a car but those are few. So in order to support the car purchases and real estate purchases, more money is necessary. And it all fits within the American dream because by owning your own car and house, you've effectively shown your monetary success or your buying power.

Another thing to look at is how Americans actually think when they buy something. In the US, more = better. So say you have a vending machine that sells cokes with a regular size and a large size. Both are priced equally, and for most people the regular size is more than satisfying. Most Americans regardless of how hungry or thirsty they are will look at the vending machine and think, "Why would I get the regular size if the larger size is the same price; I'm getting more for my money if I buy the larger size." So the American will always buy the larger size even if he knows he will not finish the coke. But having the ability to buy the larger sizes requires more money.

The funny thing is that this sort of American logic works even as long as the larger size is not equal in cost per a unit to the regular size. If the larger size was 2x larger, the American would still buy it as long as the price is lower than 2x the cost of the regular size. In the example, I used cokes, but if you go to any American grocery store you will see this phenomenon in all of the products (large sizes priced at just above the regular/smaller sizes). In fact, I often find that for single people, the grocery store is very inconvenient because they always sell sizes that are too large.

Re:Is there anyone happy with their salary?

[bkr1_2k]

I think you're being a little pedantic, and you'll find the GP meant foods like boxed macaroni and cheese, frozen pizzas and the like. These are traditionally very high in sodium content, as well as several other "not so healthy in high doses" things, like fats. Your body needs fats, but not the amount of fat you get from a Big Mac and Fries. These foods also don't taste as good to most people, but they offer a convenience factor that people are willing to tolerate a slightly less appetizing flavor to get.

Pasteurized milk is debatable in its health benefits: http://www.mercola.com/article/milk/no_milk.htm
I don't know if this guy is one of those extreme types, but the information he provides about milk is accurate. Pasteurization of milk in Europe is also a fairly recent trend, and it still isn't done in many other parts of the world.

Re:inflation

[dropadrop]

It might not be inflation, rather your lifestyle adapts to how much you earn.

Re:Housing up 50% & Salaries up only 11% = !Sa

[Adeptus_Luminati]

Oh yeah, and I forgot to add that inflation calculations don't take into account the following:

1) Rising Energy costs (i.e. Oil @ $84 anyone?)
2) Higher Energy costs increase costs of most consumer goods due to higher cost to transport them
3) War in Afghanistan & Iraq costs a few billion per month that you pay through taxes
4) US dollar deflating for the past year against just about every other currency by 20%+
5) Crazy Tuition fees in your Universities
6) Even more insane Health Care costs

Time to buy Gold people, cuz your economy is going down the tube. :-/

In the voice of Dr. Zoidberg

[The Sith Lord]

What !
When did this happen ?
That's not funny !!!!

The unsatisfied worker

[markov_chain]

Quoted from bottom of article:

The 2007 Network World Salary Survey finds these characteristics are typical of network professionals who are more dissatisfied with their jobs than not:

• Has been in current position six years or longer and promoted only once or not at all.
  
• Makes less than $60,000 a year in a staff-level position, particularly working on collating and stapling, training or does help desk or tech support.
  
• Has no direct reports.
  
• Is not expecting to receive a bonus in 2007.
  
• Is not expecting to receive a paycheck in 2007.
  
• Works at a company with more than 1,000 employees, often in banking.
  
• Lives in a Southwestern state.
  
• Has earned a bachelor's vs. holding no college degree.
  
• Has been asked to move his desk more than three times in 2007.
  
• Has had a stapler taken away by his manager.
  
• Is not permitted to listen to the radio except from 9-11 and even then only at a reasonable volume.
  

Re:inflation

[Aeron65432]

Actually virtual all economists agree that the inflationary rate is overstated by around 1%. It ignores increases in quality, tech innovation, and the substitution effect. (if prices at grocery stores rise, more people will go to Walmart for their groceries yet this is not counted) It's also acknowledged by most groups in the Federal Reserve.

Chances are if your wages are really increasing by that percentage, your spending or consumption is up (did you buy that iPhone..?). Inflation has recently been around 2.5-3%, realistically around 2%...so if you're exceeding that in salary increases, it's probably not due to inflation.

Re:inflation

[witte]

Same here (Europe). Inflation figures seem way to positive to me.
Over the last years I saw my salary rise around 40%-50%, but the cost of living nearly *doubled*.

I can't even put enough money aside to get a loan for a house and am currently stuck at renting, which is a waste of money.

As to some of the remarks that this may be a result of a more exuberant lifestyle : Bullshit.
I have to be very careful I don't spend more than I earn, and the end of the month is always a difficult period.
(I can't even afford to buy a second-hand car at the moment.)

IMHO this has a lot to do with :
- Prices rising after introduction of the Euro. Overnight everything became ~+25% more expensive.
- Recession around 2000, only compounded after events of 9/11.

Prices rose for everything ... except labor.

Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[damburger]

I graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 2002, and have had awful trouble finding a well paid job. Most of the jobs advertised were web development, which were always badly paid (my first job out of university paid barely above minimum wage). These jobs usually ended before 6 months, once I'd completed a couple of projects for them and before they would be legally required to give me redundancy pay.

There were a couple of good job openings (I was once approached by a recruitment agency to apply for a job with Google in Dublin) but of course seeing as I was not the only desperate compsci grad in the West Midlands competition for them was pretty fierce and I didn't get them.

I was trapped in web development, but I was pretty good at it. I constantly taught myself new technologies as I developed sites, worked on projects in my spare time to expand my skills, and had a good eye for front end design from a job I had in the print industry. Despite this I was never paid more than £12k a year for web development. My current job is pays £14k, doing office admin work for the police, and that is the most I've ever been paid for anything.

Then it seemed to be looking up. I'd gone for a support job at a large US company, and at the interview they had been so impressed with my aptitude scores and my general IT knowledge they recommended me for a better paying job (£20k) with their programming department. Sadly, I fell foul of their Gestapo-like HR department, who decided not to give me the job because, during one of the interviews over the phone to a woman in Texas, I didn't sound 'positive enough'. I'm not sure how positive a man from Yorkshire is supposed to sound to a Texan over a transatlantic phone line, but there you go.

This is why I'm now starting a Physics degree. Fuck the IT industry, it's not worth it. I slaved away for cockle-picking money, and when my talents were finally recognised I was rejected because of some idiotic HR impression of me, rather than the evidence of my aptitude tests. Hopefully, physics is a field where people are rewarded for their knowledge and intelligence rather than whatever smarmy 'people skills' HR are after. Perhaps I'm being Naive, but it can't be much worse than being in the IT industry.

Re:Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[jcr]

I didn't sound 'positive enough'

Truth to tell, you come across as rather sullen here. I don't think I'd hire you, either.

-jcr

Re:Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[Bryan Ischo]

> Sadly, I fell foul of their Gestapo-like HR department, who decided not to give me the job because,
> during one of the interviews over the phone to a woman in Texas, I didn't sound 'positive enough'.

Sorry, that is really rough. I had a similar problem once where I got to the final stages of the interview process, the guys I interviewed with were all ready to hire me, but just because I *asked* the HR interview person if in the future the company would be considering allowing employees the occasional work-at-home day (not that I expected to work at home at all, but was thinking about the future when I might have kids).

I think it's really stupid that technology companies let their interview process get hamstrung by HR departments. They should not have HR interviews at all. If the people you're going to work with like you, the HR department really ought not to have any say in it at all.

Re:Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[gubol123]

You are missing the point there. Obviously skills are very important and forms the basis of your selection. But your attitude also plays a big role in getting you selected. I am from India and we do lots of recruitment. I, being from technical back ground now having grown to a managerial position, can appreciate the importance of both these qualities. if we get two (or more) candidates with comparable skill set and skill level, i will always prefer one with better attitude. Always.

Re:Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[locofungus]

After couple of kicks in the nuts no-one sounds rather positive. And unfortunately bad employer can ruin employee so that he won't be able to perform 100% for the next employer. Enough bad employers can bring anybody to a situation where one thinks about moving to a totally different area.

Just my personal view of the overall situation at the IT industry.

This might be true. But a first rate, confident, programmer in the IT industry who isn't on a super high salary in the City (earning well in excess of 100k) can just jump ship.

I've had to do it a few times.

1. I made a huge mistake going to work for one company (I probably partially overlooked the danger signs because they offered me a base salary 33% higher than I was getting). Within two weeks I realized I'd made a mistake going to work for them. Within six weeks I'd moved on and got another (smallish) salary increase. (I actually asked to be released from my four week notice period but the company asked me to do two of them to finish off what I'd been working on otherwise I'd have been gone in four weeks)

2. I was (unexpectedly - fallout from the .com crash) made redundant four weeks before Christmas (paid until Christmas Eve). I started a new job at a slightly higher salary on the first working day of January. Infact, for this job I actually demanded a second visit/interview (because I didn't want to make a similar disasterous mistake again - you can explain one six week job on your CV. Two or three starts looking very fishy) even though they were prepared to offer me a job after the first interview.

Tim.

Re:Wish I was paid like this in the UK

[pikine]

My code is compliant, tested on multiple browsers, and hardened against SQL Injection and cross-scripting attacks. All this while employed mostly by the technically inept who wouldn't know to ask for such things.

You sound like a heaven-send to them. However, such qualities may never be appreciated if you don't bring it up skillfully. Inspired by dental clinic and architect offices where you always find magazines with subtle or not so subtle messages, I would find magazines featuring a cover story of SQL injection and XSS attacks and just place them around the cube. I would then find excuses for people to pick them up and have a look (sorry, I'll be right with you in a moment. Feel free to read these magazines while I finish this up), then try to find a conversation topic about that. Then drop a line somewhere to mention, "I routinely keep track of these issues to make sure it doesn't happen here." That, and you portray a very professional image like dentists and architects.

(Is it true that Brits have bad teeth because nobody can bloody afford to see a dentist?)

If the way people perceive your value is your biggest concern (it definitely is, otherwise you wouldn't have quit IT altogether), then advertising your value should be your first priority.

About the "not happy enough" attitude, you just need to realize that, after all, American dream is all about "riding on a smile and a shoeshine." Even if you could find an employer who is sympathetic to your past career, it is still best to leave the sullenness behind.

Cryptic posts VERY badly misunderstood

[mcrbids]

Do you know where money REALLY comes from? (no it's not the government or the mint)

What you mean by "money" is obviously different than mine. My "money" has the stamp of the location it was minted in.

Do you know what inflation REALLY is?

Eh... Inflation is where money becomes less valuable when compared to other commodities. Money is a commodity, and all commodities have relative worth based on their availability.

Do you know who benefits from inflation and who loses out?

Benefits == people who owe. Loses out == people with cash savings?

If you think you know something valuable, out with it. Don't be a pompous jackass. Free exchange of ideas, and all that.

But let me guess: Your answer involves [a] Illuminati [b] Jewish bankers [c] Fractional Reserve Banking [d] Federal Reserve conspiracies or [e] Trilatteral Commision / Council on Foreign Relations?

Re:Cryptic posts VERY badly misunderstood

[jcr]

Don't assume that anyone who cares about returning to sound money is a conspiracy theorist.

-jcr

Re:Cryptic posts VERY badly misunderstood

[Colin Smith]

What you mean by "money" is obviously different than mine. My "money" has the stamp of the location it was minted in. Clearly. Money is any medium of exchange. Over 95% of the money in the US comes from debt. Not from a mint or from the government and it doesn't exist as bits of green paper. I doubt you hold most of your money as green paper.

Benefits == people who owe. Loses out == people with cash savings? Well, another way to put it. The people who benefit from inflation are those who can afford to be in assets rather than cash. The rich rather than the poor.

If you take on debt to get into assets you only benefit if that particular asset inflates at more than the rate of interest, something a lot of Americans seem to be realising around now.

But let me guess: Your answer involves [a] Illuminati [b] Jewish bankers [c] Fractional Reserve Banking Well, fractional reserve banking is the closest answer there, but debt was my point.

Re:Cryptic posts VERY badly misunderstood

[farkus888]

I think BS articles like this that continue to use salary numbers from right before the tech bust are a large part of the dissatisfaction with salaries you see now for those of us who have joined the industry since then. I think the memory of the good old days when those numbers were a lot closer to reality is the killer for those who've been in the industry all that time. Personally my biggest consideration is HR deciding that the people I've managed while performing all of the same duties they do deserve more money than me for 3 years running. I haven't had a REAL raise[higher take home pay] in that entire time either. It gets frustrating to be in that sort of environment for 3 years. especially when I am afraid to leave because I feel like I have more job security because I know about how long it will be till they lay me off, not looking forward to picking between job offers trying to guess who will keep me on board the longest.

Re:inflation

[timmarhy]

economists didn't see the sub prime morgage bust coming either, so excuse me for taking anything such experts say with a grain of salt.

you can talk about figures all you want, it makes no difference at the end of the day when my pay check is all gone and i have nothing extra to show for it.

Re:inflation

[jcr]

economists didn't see the sub prime morgage bust coming either

You've got to be kidding. I've been seeing dire warnings about a real estate bust for the last five years at least.

-jcr

I was dissatisfied so I asked for $65535

[sweet_petunias_full_]

Actually boss, never mind that pay raise I wanted, just make my salary exactly $65535 and I'll forget about the whole thing. You are using excel 2007, right?

Re:I was dissatisfied so I asked for $65535

[nacturation]

Awesome... you not only explained the joke but you also provided exactly the same link as the post you replied to.

Re:inflation

[Aeron65432]

Slashing interest rates to record lows (sub-1%) is going to create a subprime mortgage crisis. Anyone can see that coming, people will get easy mortgages fast and not be prepared for the adjustable rate rising. Many economists predicted a crisis, some didn't think it would be very bad. Frankly, this downtown is a necessary correction.

Inflation is probably not outpacing your salary, all those reasons inflation is overstated are rock solid. Compare your spending and consumption with last year. If your taxes increased (property taxes often do) factor that in. Unless your salary remained constant or you took a pay cut, it is impossible for inflation alone to account for a decline in real income, probably taxes and new purchases.

I still have too much.....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... month left at the end of my salary.

Salary is similar to menstruation:

• It comes once a month
• It lasts for about 3 days
• When it doesn't come you're in trouble

Money is important but not the only consideration.

[MikeFM]

I really like my job and the people I work with but I need my salary doubled to even begin to be satisfied with it. I'm willing to give up a lot to have such a great job but I think I should still make enough to support me and my wife without my wife needing to work too. If my salary doesn't go up quite a bit in the next couple years I'll probably be forced to find another job which is really not what I want to do. The company I work for claims that wages it pays are lower than average because we are located in an area with a lower cost of living. That's great and all but I'd still like to make the median income in this state at least. Cost of living may be cheaper but that only represents around 1/4 of my monthly bills. The other bills are just as expensive as they were when I lived in California.

If I could support a family while sticking at my current job I'd probably stay for a long time. The schedule is flexible, the work is fun and just challenging enough to be interesting, there is nobody micro-managing me and I mostly manage myself, my co-workers are friendly, and upper management isn't retarded (they're intelligent, honest, and fun to be around). I'm trying to do my part to earn the company more money so that my position can pay for it's own raise in pay.

Inflation

[michaelmalak]

Inflation computed using pre-Clinton CPI formulas has been running about 8% for the past 20 years, according to shadowstats.com. I currently make 4x as a seasoned professional now than what I did 20 years ago as a fresh college graduate. At 8% inflation per year, I'm currently making less than I did 20 years ago.

A lot of people go to Wal-Mart, see the low prices, and think inflation is low. They forget about housing, college tuition, and healthcare, which have all been running at double-digit percentage increases annually for the past several years.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[JanneM]

I'm willing to give up a lot to have such a great job but I think I should still make enough to support me and my wife without my wife needing to work too. Why, exactly? Not that making a bundle is a bad thing - I'd love to as well - but, I mean, what's so terrible about both adults in the household earning a salary?

Re:Housing up 50% & Salaries up only 11% = !Sa

[vux984]

Yes. The US has been lying about inflation for a few years now. When the price of steak skyrocketed, for example they took it out of the equation and substituted ground beef.

Recently they took out the cost of energy because it it went up huge; their explanation was that they didn't want it to 'distort' the numbers. (despite the fact that everyone in the country still has to buy gas for their cars and heat their homes so it -should- be reflected.)

Even worse, they have a fucked up system of computing negative inflation. If you bought a single core 1ghz computer 3 years ago and it cost $1000, then today, because you could get a 2ghz quad-core for $1000, you are getting $8000 worth of value; so in the index, the cost of computers has dropped by 75% over the last couple years... despite the fact that the price hasn't really dropped... its not like that 1ghz 1core computer is sitting at walmart for $125, even if you wanted it.

Similiarly if this years model of your car has had standard side airbags, and an improved emissions control system and costs $1000 more, well again inflation is negative, even though the car costs more, becuase they factor in the new features as 'increasing its value more than its cost'; so in some warped bizarro world the cost of buying a new car is deemed to have gone down.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[Ajehals]

Nothing, unless a) you work different hours from another (one works days the other nights, even if its only part of the time)* or b) you have young children and leave them in childcare, there is nothing inherently wrong with that technically, but it isn't very nice for the parents nor the children.

*This could be a benefit as well though

US Salaries != Japan salaries, either

[patio11]

US engineers get (mostly) paid on merit and (mostly) get paid a heck of a lot more than regular old company workers with similar degrees and experience. Example: the average national starting salary for a liberal arts major working 9-5 is somewhere in the $30k range. The average starting salary for a graduate from my CS department is in the $55k range. A disproportionate number of our graduates go on to live in high, high cost areas (California, New York City), but you can still see the disparity (there are plenty of 22 year old graduates in NYC not making 55k a year or anything close to it).

So, back to Japan: my starting salary approximately $25k, with some perks that could scarcely be believed (by American standards) which probably contributed an effective $15k on top of that. That is on a low-stress 9-5 We Don't Crunch You job.

Three years later, I switched into a job at a different company, with work habits which are more typical of Japanese companies and American programmers. My pay package is now about $40k, exclusive of perks. Perks are decent but no longer jawdropping. Of note to American engineers, I get paid overtime, national health care, 100% subsidized transportation expenditures, and am statistically speaking impossible to fire. (Number of nonvoluntary separations in my company's history is about 5, we have 1,000 employees, you do the math.) $40k is adequate where I live, where the cost of living is generally comparable to a Midwestern state with Californian food and fuel prices.

Total tax burden (national income tax, local residence tax, 5% consumption tax) is in the general neighborhood of a generic US state. (For those folks unfamiliar with the US system, local and state taxes can vary drastically in the United States based on where you are. For example, Alaska doesn't charge individual income taxes at all, California's top rate is almost 10%. Sales taxes are a similar mixed bag.)

The brass ring which many of my Japanese coworkers are aiming for is a management position paying approximately $80k, which they would achieve in the 35-40 year old range. (There are, of course, numerous promotions between then and now.) That doesn't fit into my long term plans but, hey, to each their own.

I should point out that I am working at a software development house in a major Japanese city other than Tokyo. If I were working in Tokyo, as a bilingual engineer if I were inclined to work in the financial sector I could name my price. I'd also be expected to work the sort of hours that come with having a job where the top rung of the salary scale is "Let your imagination run wild a bit".

Re:The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job mark

[an.echte.trilingue]

I see this more as an indication of wide-spread management failure in the industry than of money per se.

Ironically, (unreasonably) high wage demands typically have more to do with the non-tangible compensation that a job offers than the actual amount of money employees make. That is, when people are happy with their job, when they enjoy the social contacts, when they get to work in a nice environment and, above all, when they have a sense of purpose, then they make reasonable wage demands. When the job sucks, they spend 8 hours a day thinking "I don't get paid enough for this shit." In that case, no wage will be high enough.

One of those things that management should be doing is ensuring that their employees have the intangibles to keep them happy and productive. That is something that our much derided PHBs learn to do in their MBA programs. However, I think that the IT industry is having issues in this arena because the skill set required to perform the job is so specialized that programmers who get promoted to managers never bother to acquire "managerial" skill sets (or they just don't put any value in managerial skill sets) and people who do have managerial skill sets are so wildly incompetent in IT that you would not dream of hiring them to manage coders or SAs.

just my $.02
-mat

Re:The peasants are revolting!

[Opportunist]

Generally I am satisfied with my job. It offers a lot of perks that I can hardly find in other jobs. I mean, there ain't many jobs where they don't really care when you show up (I come around noon, usually), where you can pretty much do whatever you please (though my interests somehow happily coincide with the company's) and nobody ever bothers to check what you do and whether you actually do what you're supposed to do? I mean, yes, I do my job, and more than satisfying according to my superiors, but still, it's kinda odd that nobody ever wants anything from me than my final reports.

Still, a bit more salary would be nice. Though, what for? I'd just buy more computers or gadgets.

How about me?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Would you hire me? Am I chirpy enough for the personality-over-skills organization you run?

Re:How about me?

[vegiVamp]

I've had several of those wonderful personalities. No, I'll take an asocial guru over an average people person anytime.

Get a decent guru interested in a project, and he'll deliver more, better and faster than a half dozen regulars. I've worked with enough regular programmers to know that you need at least one week of heavy testing by another team for any noteworthy development. I've also worked with barely a handful of really good guys, whose code I had no qualms about dumping straight into customer acceptance without thinking. Those very few held themselves to a similar standard as me: sufficient pride in your work that when you deliver something as finished, you take it personal if someone finds a bug.

If your projects are so big that you really NEED a big team, then it's up to the team leader to also be very good at his job, which is to interact with each of them. He should be the one making sure they keep motivated (which requires a high degree of empathy), divide the project into manageable chunks (which requires both decent tech knowledge and an ability to interact with project managers), and keep marketroids and similar as far away as possible from the guys doing the actual work (which, aside from buzzword-compliant communication skills, also requires a firm hand, a thick skin and occasionally a stick with nails). Yes, decent team managers are as hard to find as decent tech people. A demonstrated ability to herd cats is a good starting point :-)

I'm sick and tired of non-tech people trying to tell tech people how they should behave to be fit for their jobs. HR should be kicked back to doing payroll & benefits. Shirts and ties are NOT required skills for a programmer or a sysadmin. If anything, they get in the way because they restrict bloodflow to the brain :-)

A very interesting hiring procedure would be a roundtable with the majority of the prospective co-workers. You only get hired if you manage to impress more than half of them.

Re:inflation

[Wansu]

  Actually virtual all economists agree that the inflationary rate is overstated by around 1%. ... Chances are if your wages are really increasing by that percentage, your spending or consumption is up (did you buy that iPhone..?). Inflation has recently been around 2.5-3%, realistically around 2% ...

The article you quoted says $1 in 1976 bought what $3.55 does today. If I divide my present salary by 3.55 and compare it to what I was making in 1976, I see a 7% increase. From all the people I've compared notes with, I don't think I'm far from the average pay, although my work has been far above average. Bear in mind, I'm considerably older than most of my coworkers and to stay employed in technical work, I've changed jobs and careers. Nonetheless, it's apparent that my wages have not outpaced inflation over the long run. Perhaps if I had been management material, I'd have made better money but I wanted to continue doing technical work.

Social TAX means low IT salaries

[MosesJones]

UK != Europe either (UK is much higher than 3k euro a month)

Some basic reasons

1) Employers Tax. The US and UK don't penalize companies for employing people. The UK has a small employer tax and some US states have none. Most continental countries have a significant company tax burden for each employee.

2) Culture. The US and UK have pretty dynamic IT markets with people not remaining with one company for a long time, this means people pay more to attract talent knowing that this will help.

3) Cost of firing. The US (more than the UK, but the UK is less than the continent) has very little employee protection which means you can get rid of poor employees or during a down turn. In the continent this isn't the case so the wages are lower as employers have to employ good and crap people and have to factor in the cost of not getting rid of them.

The other thing that shouldn't be overlooked is the fact that English is the lingua franca of computing, this does tend to mean that top people from all countries move towards the US (and to a lesser extent the UK) and that everyone has to speak english thus meaning there is more international competition for jobs in the US and UK markets.

With the way that the dollar is at the moment the average UK IT salary could well be above our cousins over the pond.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[chuckymonkey]

I agree with the parent. I love having a job good enough that my wife can be a stay at home mom. She loves it, it's much better for our girls, and I don't ever have to worry about some wacko being around my kids. I'm willing to make some real sacrifices for this. For instance, I work a rotating shift schedule every two weeks I switch between days and nights. They're twelve hour shifts, but the nice thing with that is that I also only work 4 days one week and three the next. The work is fairly interesting (I don't have as much free reign to come up with solutions to some of the problems, but hey can't have everything) and I still have time to continue going to school. The tradeoff to all this being that we live a pretty mediocre lifestyle, no HDTV, no Xbox360, no PS3, no iPhone, no Mac Pro, no super frills. Guess what though, you don't need all that to be happy, nice house, kids that know and love their daddy, and actually leaving town to go see and do things (for cheap) leads to a pretty happy lifestyle and once I completely finish my degree I'll be able to have all that nice stuff.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[weicco]

you have young children and leave them in childcare, there is nothing inherently wrong with that technically, but it isn't very nice for the parents nor the children.

WHAT?! How it is not nice to leave your children to childcare? Are your childcare services so lousy or what? Children, like adults, learn social skills when communicating with each others. Basically more people or around, more skills your learn (unless you have some medical condition of course). Even "bad" situations where kids argue and even fight with each other is a learning experience for everyone. Of course adult supervision is needed so that things won't go out of hand. But if you start over-protecting your kids, what kind of people they make when they are adults?

Don't get me wrong. There's people who abuse this system. They leave their kids for 12 hours a day to childcare because they don't want to be with them for some reason. Those people should get some serious therapy, I think.

And yes, I have a 4 year old son.

Re:The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job mark

[jellomizer]

Overall I would agree the modern MBA program puts a lot of emphasys on Buisness Ethics and focusing on the intangibles because the accountants can deal with the tangables. Sometimes forces higher then them force them to be more stupid, Policies like fireing 10% of all underperfoming or middle perfroming employees every year to make sure we only have the top ones available. Seem to force a lot of stupidity in management because they have to show costs savings even though they are IT and normally the more money they have the better the cost savings is for rest of the corporation. But the MBA program and the Managers are normally not the problem, unless they have some sort of powertrip ego. But most conflects with Managers and Employees happends because the manager actually has to deal with more issues at once, many are really conflecting eg. Increased Demmand on IT Resources, Lower IT Budget. And all these other things that lead them to try to get the most out of everyone.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[encoderer]

Wow, what backwards thinking.

So nowadays, the mere act of RAISING your own children is "overprotection?"

I agree, children should have social outlets. A morning pre-school for 3 and 4 year-olds is probably a good idea. But your notion that all day childcare is somehow > stay-at-home mom is a little silly to me.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[stdarg]

Well age is definitely a factor. A 4 year old can benefit from group play much more than 2 year old or, obviously, a 6 month old baby. Even then, who said kids who stay at home have to be alone all day? I think there are groups for stay at home parents where they can get together and let their kids play for a few hours a day. That only makes sense, since who would want to be alone all day? So I really don't see any social advantage that daycare has over a situation like that.

Also, why do you assume that not putting your kid in daycare results in overprotection? I'm sure many parents are overprotective, just like many parents with their child in daycare will be constantly complaining to the teacher that their child is being made fun of, not played with, or bored. But when you have your child at home at least you have the potential to do cool non-overprotective things, whereas most daycares are probably too concerned about their legal liability to do much stuff other than babysitting.

Further, I don't think there's any doubt that kids in group daycare are sick more often. That's just much more likely when you're around 30-odd kids (maybe constantly rotating too) who *have* to go to daycare whether they're sick or not, whereas in the above situation, if your kid is sick you wouldn't take him to group play that day.

And I've always heard that kids in daycare are more likely to have Attention Deficit Disorder (a quick search found this report).

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[GreyPoopon]

but, I mean, what's so terrible about both adults in the household earning a salary?

It's not terrible for two adults in the same household to be working. It's terrible for two adults in the same household to be forced to work. If you've spent 17+ years of your life in school (including kindergarten and college), it certainly makes sense that you ought to be able to earn enough money to provide food and a place to live for your family. It's the lack of choice that is so terrible. Back in the mid-20th century, when women were unable to get the same jobs that men held, women wanted to be able to make the same choices as men. And there's absolutely no reason why they shouldn't have had those choices available to them. Today, women (and men) still want to be able to choose, and rightly so. But now they are frequently denied the option of staying home with their children, while at the same time experiencing discrimination in hiring and salaries (albeit not as bad as in the 50's). Progress? It doesn't seem like it to me.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[BigDogCH]

I shouldn't reply, but this is insane....
Following your logic, we should send kids to daycare because 75% of abuse happens from relatives? Sorry, but If you truly believe that your kids are better off in the hands of someone "Not their parents", then you shouldn't have had children. Maybe the percent is high because they spend most of their time with close relatives?
Yeah, I heard that most car accidents happen within 10 miles of home, so I am moving.

Good management is difficult

[Overzeetop]

If management is good, then being gone for a week and everything functioning well during that time reflects well on their ability manage efficiently.

If your IT system is so fragile that being gone for a week leads to major failures, then you're not doing a very good job at...wait for it...managing your systems. You shouldn't have to be on your systems 24/7 just to make them work. If that's the case, then something wrong is going on.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[Attila Dimedici]

Studies have shown repeatedly that children who spend a significant amount of time in childcare (I forget what the number of hours involved was, but it was less than the amount of time that would be necessary if both parents work full time) are much more likely to be bullies and have other socially undesirable traits. Additionally, there have been several studies that indicate that children who are home schooled have significantly better social skills than those who went through the school system (considering that the researchers were expecting the opposite result, these latter studies are rather telling). Sorry, I no longer have the references for either of these studies, but I'm sure if you do a little research you can find them. My suspicion is that children are better socialized by being exposed to adults who have already learned how to be responsible than to other children who have not yet learned this.

Re:Housing up 50% & Salaries up only 11% = !Sa

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the US Dept of Labor the Consumer Price Index includes medical care, gasoline, fuel oil, housing, and education including college tuition. I think this covers your (1), (2), (5), and (6). Dollar deflation (4) is also covered to the extent that Americans buy imported goods which are now more expensive.

You are right that general income taxes (3) are not included in the CPI. To the extent the US government must raise taxes to cover the wars they are in, Americans' net incomes will be lower, but this will not count as inflation.

Re:The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job mark

[Zarf]

I think that the IT industry is having issues in this arena because the skill set required to perform the job is so specialized that programmers who get promoted to managers never bother to acquire "managerial" skill sets (or they just don't put any value in managerial skill sets) and people who do have managerial skill sets are so wildly incompetent in IT that you would not dream of hiring them to manage coders or SAs.

I think you are on to something. The problem partially stems from IT being a very young component in business. Consider that Accounting has been around for hundreds of years... there is an established relationship between various types of businesses and accounting professionals. Yet IT has only been around for a few decades. I don't think businesses nor the profession itself knows how to deal with the problems of succession and management of talent.

The most "fun" work environment for the worker is one of unstructured cooperation where there are no rules. This is not the ideal since that freedom can potentially lead to disaster in the wrong coworker's hands. Eventually management will get paranoid about waste.

The most "profitable" work environment is where nothing goes to waste and every key stroke leads to profit. This is not the ideal since that efficiency means a loss of adaptability and a high burn out rate for employees. It turns out that the highly profitable environment can only exist in sprints.

There should be a sustainable happy medium that works well as a company grows. I don't know what that is yet. I haven't seen it in my work history.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[weicco]

I answer only to this since I got to go in couple of minutes.

First of all, my english isn't so good so sorry if there was some rude or offending language :)

Second, I wasn't aware that childcare and family life is so different in USA (I assume that's where you live?). We have socially funded childcare system here in Finland. We pay something like 120 euros a month to local community and goverment pays the rest. We don't have nannies who come by to care the children or anything like that or at least it is not a custom. It is also not a custom to mothers get together with their children on dialy basis. It is considered almost rude. Something like every once a week is OK though :)

But my totally uneducated personal opinion on the matter from what I've seen is that kids who do not go to daycare tend to be not so socially skilled. But now when I come to think about it, those kids are at home with their mother almost 24/7 so they don't get much social contacts besides their mother and father. And if their parents are raised the same way I don't think they have very extensive social skills either.

And after all the yada-yada I don't and won't consider that taking my kid to daycare is a bad thing. I wasn't at daycare when I was a child and I had huge difficulties to learn social stuff at the later age. But now I'm almost "normal" though I don't like to meet strange people very often :) Hopefully my son come up better than I ...

Its called F*** You money

[tacokill]

F-you money is where you have enough to live the way you want to live without EVER having to go back to work. Until you reach that point, you still have a long road ahead. It's where you are financially independent enough that you can tell your employer "Fuck You". You might have "piles" of money right now but if you are smart, you are investing those dollars so you can reach F-you money as quickly as possible. After that, you can do whatever you want to do.

I used to be just like you. I'd look at my paycheck and wonder, "how the hell am I going to spend this?". But, from experience, as you get old into your 30's and 40's -- you quickly realize that, unless you are sitting on $2-$3mil US minimum, you are still going to have to go to work. Maybe you can delay it for 20 years and live off your savings in the meantime. But what happens when the money runs out? You'll have to work. You'll work not because you want to...but because you have to in order to pay the bills. And the bills get bigger as you go on. House, cars, kids, wives, new businesses, insurance, repairs, vacations, etc.

In America, this is one of the reasons you see people work so hard and put so much into it. They are all after the F-you money because they know, once they get it....everything else from that point on is optional (except death and paying taxes). And I am talking about normal people who work because they have to work. If you work (truly) because you enjoy it, then good for you. But you must realize you are in the vast minority.

Imagine having such a large "pile" that you could pay yourself $100K, $200K, $300K, or whatever per year -- just from the interest your pile generates. That's F-you money. And, no offense, but I doubt you are there yet.

Re:Its called F*** You money

[archen]

I'm at around 30 and I just sort of got this epiphany myself while reading a self help book and the government destroying my marriage. I realized that although I have money that I wonder what to do with that I should start investing it. HOWEVER there is a balance there. I've seen people work themselves to death for "F you" money and have a heart attack like 5 years after they got to that point. If you enjoy your job and have a decent amount of money then you should enjoy some of that while you can. You aren't going to live forever, and you won't get any younger. Eventually you may have the money to go all over the world but may not have the youth to enjoy many such trips.

Honestly I don't want or need to be completely financially independent. If I got enough stowed away that I can live off of dividends for a year or two then that's pretty awesome in my opinion. Just take a year or two off with no pressure if you get fired and learn a new programming language or go backpacking - THAT is real power. If you become single minded in your goal of having that boat load of cash you enslave yourself to a salary as much as the person who is the definitive wage slave - just over different periods of time. Anyway, it's always good to invest money for a rainy day regardless, just don't let it consume you.

Re:The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job mark

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

The most "fun" work environment for the worker is one of unstructured cooperation where there are no rules.

That sounds like it ought to be true, but IMHO it isn't. I think IT mainly attracts three kinds of people, and if you look at what drives them, it's never really that.

Firstly, you have those who are only in it for the money. They probably took some university course just so they could work in IT, and they probably aren't very good at their job. Most of them don't get very far, because their attitude is entirely selfish, and the only motivator they have is making as much money as possible from doing as little real work as possible. In their minds, they'll have fun later, when they're rich.

Then you have the "journeyman" developers and sysadmins: those who are happy to work in a well-paid industry, but basically see it as just another job. These people represent the largest proportion of the industry, IME. They are typically competent but unexceptional in their skill and aptitude, and approach their jobs with a reasonably professional attitude. The best motivator for these people, IME, is simply to let them get on with their job: give them clear instructions about what needs to be done, and some relevant background information if they're the kind of person who likes to see how they fit into the bigger picture, and then just get out of the way and let them do their work. These people typically recognise the value of good organisation, and respect strong but flexible leadership. They don't go to work to have fun, but they will find their work environment most pleasant this way and rarely demand more.

Finally, you have the guru types. Often, these are the guys who got into IT because they enjoy the field. If they took a university course they enjoyed or they get paid well, that's almost incidental, and just a bonus on top of having a job where they enjoy the work. These guys know their subjects inside out. The big variable — and the thing that separates the gurus who are great people to have in your group from the gurus who are liabilities — is how well these guys do things outside their own development or administration work.

Those who develop people skills, understand the business context for their work, cooperate with management, and give constructive input to these areas from the point of view of the IT guy, tend to go far, though they tend to stick to a technical path rather than moving into management. Motivation for these guys often comes from seeing a good result from their work, and they will work in whatever way seems best to achieve that goal. Again, this isn't usually unstructured cooperation; on the contrary, IME these guys are the ones most likely to want good processes in place, and to appreciate readily whether existing processes are helping or getting in the way. Often, these guys also value honest recognition when they produce good work, and like to know that when they make constructive suggestions they are being listened to.

Of course, you also get the gurus who want to have everything their own way. These are the guys who want their own office and to work in their own style. They want full-time ownership of the code they write (not that it matters since no-one else can understand it anyway) or the final say over any changes to their networks. These guys probably are motivated by unstructured work, but cooperation is a word that doesn't enter their vocabulary. Frankly, you're better off hiring a couple of less egotistical, less demanding, and far more pleasant and constructive journeyman types anyway than you would be getting stuck with one of these guys, who seem to be known as "rock star programmers" in trendy blogs.

So I don't think unstructured cooperation is really fun for any of the major types of IT guy. The good ones tend to appreciate enough structure to do an effective job, while the bad ones will cooperate only as far as is necessary to get what they want anyway, and often would prefer to stay under the radar and just do things their own way. Constructive anarchy doesn't really work for either group.

Re:Money is important but not the only considerati

[JanneM]

Nobody is denying you the choice to have a partner stay home. Do so if you want. But it's kind of a weak argument to say that it somehow becomes the responsibility of your employer to pay you enough to do so. I want the choice of a second home in Hokkaido; that doesn't mean I can rightfully expect to get enough of a salary that I can have it.

Re:Posts up 50% & Rebutels up only 11% = BOING

[Creepy]

Apparently high energy costs haven't destroyed Europe. They just adapted.

well 'adapting' isn't quite as easy when the public transportation system stinks. Best I can do is catch a bus downtown, then a bus out to the suburb where I work, then take a circular (or walk 3 miles) for a grand total of 3 1/2 hours (one way, mostly waiting for buses) vs 15 minutes by car. There is a decent bike route, but at 17 miles (about 4 more than driving since the road and paths aren't straight like the freeway) it's a bit long to do daily (and not an option in winter).

So that leaves me with traveling little and wearing sweaters in the winter and opening the windows more often in summer, which I do anyway.

We pay "a few billion" for a great many things that you don't hear about here.

so does Canada, and their economy is doing great while ours is foundering. There is little doubt in my mind that the war in Iraq is destroying the value of the dollar.

There are alternatives to the mainstream universities.

you mean flipping burgers at McDonalds?

I'm guessing High school doesn't teach economics let alone the intertwined nature of the world economies? Here's a clue of what's happening, Mr Gloom and Doom. People and Companies are buying our goods because they're now cheaper. We on the other hand are going to spend more for imported goods. This means YOU

So what you're saying, in a nutshell, is congratulations on becoming a third world country. Life may stink in the US because it's filled with a bunch of educated cheap labor with no buying power, but in France (or insert country of choice here) it's wine and caviar every day!

    Oh, and no, high schools in the US are not required to teach econ (it is required in most colleges, however).

Re:inflation

[TemporalBeing]

As to some of the remarks that this may be a result of a more exuberant lifestyle : Bullshit.

Then tell me:

• How much do you spend on computers each year? New laptop? New desktop? Upgrade memory, hard drive, processor, etc?
• Do you have a cell phone? Get a new one? Do you text, surf the web, download ringtones, trade photos with people or use any other data service on it?
• How much do you pay for Internet access? Own a domain? Run your own server on a static? Pay a hosting site?
• Get a new car lately? Leasing a car?
• Get a HDTV? Cable or Satellite TV? Paying for PPV? Got out to the movies? Rent movies? Get a new entertainment system, or upgrade a component to your entertainment system? Go to a sporting event?
• Drink alcoholic beverages a lot - at the bar? at home? Smoke cigars, cigarettes? Chew tobacco?
• Go out to eat? How about daily lunches during the work week?
• What services do you purchase?
• Use the credit on your credit card? Or do you only buy things that you have cash to pay for when the bill comes?
• What kind of neighborhood are you living in? Could you find someplace cheaper to live?

The list goes on and on. In the end it comes down to - what are you paying for completely up front and what are you are paying for every month (e.g. monthly billed services), and whether or not you can avoid any of them. For example, if you have a static IP you could probably lower your cost of living by letting it go and paying for a cheaper Internet service where you get a dynamically assigned IP - unless of course you are running a business that requires in, in which case what can you do to turn that cost into a 100% business cost that could be written off by the business? If you get Cable or Satellite TV, then you could save by dropping those.

It may not seem like much, but monthly, re-incurring costs no matter how small are a financial death by a thousand cuts as it all adds up. Unfortunately, our culture today encourages spending in that manner. So what could you do to lower your cost of living? There's probably a number of services you subscribe to and pay for monthly that you don't really need (e.g. cable TV), or things you do on a regular basis that could be done more cheaply (e.g. going out to eat, versus cooking it yourself at home; buying pizza or making it yourself from scratch).

My wife & I have been working on this for a while. Sometimes I think she's a bit too strict, and sometimes she thinks I am too. For instance, my policy with our grocery shopping is "if it isn't on the list, we can't get it" - the list is made before we leave for the store. Sometimes we deviate a little (which isn't good), but we do a pretty good job.

In one financial book I have read - don't have the title at the moment - the author did a bit of a study - wrt at least his daily expenses he paid for everything in cash, and perhaps by check otherwise. He observed a 33% reduction in spending as a result. I've heard similar from other sources too. Didn't really change his life style other than changing how he paid for things - it resulted in a bigger change in lifestyle as he was more reluctant to pay for something when seeing the greens live his wallet, thus he ended up saving more.

Cost of living can almost always be reduced - unless you are paying the smallest amounts required to survive - but then, you wouldn't have a computer, you wouldn't have Internet access, you wouldn't have a phone (land or cell), you would be driving a cheap car if you drove at all, and you would be living in or near the slums.

If one of the costs go up, fine - do your business somewhere else that is cheaper, or drop it all together? (e.g. Rent goes up, move. Cell phone service costs go up, drop it or move to another provider that is cheaper.) You have a choice about your lifestyle whether you realize it or not, and you can reduce your costs when you decide to.

I

Re:Consider the possibility...

[pla]

A team that works well together will always outperform a cowboy coder hacking away exclusively.

I have yet to see what you suggest in 15 years working in the field.

In theory, I have to concede that more than one person can get more done than one person. And for truly huge projects, obviously one person can't do it all. But I stand by my stance that, for any project a single person can complete in a reasonable time, they will produce a better final product than even the best of teams (with one exception - The "let's make management think we work as a team" group of individual gurus. N of them can successfully "work together", wink-wink-nudge-nudge, to complete N distinct projects at the same time).



they can always do it better with support from others.

No. I can't put it any more tactfully - You have bought into the same line of BS that leads companies to treat IT people as interchangeable cogs, leading to this very FP article. More people can do more work in the same time, not better work given their total man-hours.



Consider the possibility... That you are one of the problem people.

When my employer expresses that sentiment, I will consider it. When my performance reviews stop glowing, I will consider it.

In the meantime, perhaps you should consider that just because you depend on the support of others to complete a sizeable project, doesn't mean no one can do it alone as well or better. That sounds more caustic than I intend it, so I apologize in advance, but so it goes.

Re:inflation

[xelah]

I make $700 a seek

Remind me never to buy a storage array from you...

Re:The secret to maintaining a healthy IT job mark

[Maxo-Texas]

There is a difference between firing 1 person (and everyone agrees there was likely cause) and firing 15 people.

I'm observed that firing the "dead wood" in the second fashion resulted in losing about 50% of our highest quality employees over the next 18 months. Many of them had been here for 10 or more years. Prior to this the company was strongly against mass firings or layoffs. So people who valued that stayed despite lower pay.

If you are good- and you can make $120k, then why the hell would you stay at a company for $106k unless there is some non-financial incentive? That is exactly what happened here.

The result is a lot of canceled projects- failed projects- etc. when a key resource for the project suddenly disappears into tech consulting or the oil field.

Re:Housing up 50% & Salaries up only 11% = !Sa

[Politburo]

I'm not sure there is one correct piece of information in this post.. The CPI basket of goods is determined by ~30,000 consumer surveys every 2 years. The weight of each specific item within the item category (i.e. steak's weight in the beef category) is initially set by the survey, and then is adjusted throughout the survey period using geometric weighting. If the price of steak goes up, steak will receive a lower weight, and vice-versa. The assumption is that if steak gets more expensive, people will buy more hamburger. There is a debate on whether this method is proper (see my previous post). There is also another method of substitution that only occurs in an supplemental index, C-CPI, which seeks to capture changes in buying patterns across product categories.. say steak gets expensive and instead of buying hamburger, people start buying pork.

The price of energy was not taken out. It is still captured in the CPI. However, some people argued that the CPI less food and energy ("Core" CPI) was a better indicator, which I don't really agree with, but the fact is that the numbers are still published by BLS and the mainstream media simply ignores them. Also it wasn't recent, it was 1978.

BLS is aware of the shortcomings in quality adjustments for technology items, and it is an area of current research. However your example is not correct, the BLS analysts are knowledgeable enough to know that a quad 2GHz != 8 x 1GHz.. and furthermore the weighting that computers get in the overall CPI is small (0.5% for all IT goods/services in December 2006 CPI-W).

I doubt we'll homeschool, but

[mckwant]

... we have a 13 month old, and there WAS a study (again, lacking a cite) that said that kids who were in day care for 20 or fewer hours per week showed no differences from kids who were kept at home. After that, there was again no differences between the kids, so there wer really two groups: One in day care for 20 or fewer, one not.

That said, I have no idea where one would go for an unbiased study of these things. A couple of links for your viewing pleasure:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2D6143CF935A25754C0A9659C8B63
I suspect the parent's study is the one by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. I didn't see that the article attaches NICHHD to a university. Although I'm not sure how that would alter my opinion of the study, now that I think about it.

Same link, another study from UMinn stating that kid's stress levels tend to rise during the day while in day care, but fall during the day while at home.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051101/news_1n1earlyed.html
A study showing that negative social effects are most pronounced when the kids are in day care for more than 45 hours a week, which seems pretty extreme.

In short, I dunno either. Go Buddhist. There's a middle path here somewhere.