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

[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. ;)

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: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.

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.

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: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: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: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

[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.

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: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: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: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.