Slashdot Mirror
IT Salaries Edge Up Back To 2008 Levels
tsamsoniw writes "A soon-to-be released salary survey finds that the average salary for IT professionals in the U.S. is $78,299, putting overall compensation back at January 2008 levels. More heartening: Midsize and large companies are both aiming to hire more IT pros. The midsize are seeking IT executives (such as VPs of information services and technical services), as well as programmers, database specialists, systems analysts, and voice/wireless communication pros. Enterprises are moving IT and data center operations back in-house, which means greater demand for data center managers and supervisors."
The average is going up because all the lower end IT positions are over seas mostly now, at least that is my guess. I always found these 'average' salaries to be very misleading. Because I always seem to be making below the average.
1999 was in the middle of the dot com bubble. You might as well be a real estate agent complaining you aren't making as much as 2006.
Also, I have no idea what technology you worked on then compared to now to assess your statement.
Yeah, with two caveats.
1) That assumes you have a job. Lots of unemployed IT people and IT people working in other professions aren't counted.
2) A lot of these jobs are in high cost of living areas like New York City or Silicon Valley. When a 1BR apartment costs north of $2000/month, $80k/yr gross doesn't seem like so much.
Your boss isn't going to go out of his way to pay you more than he thinks he needs to in order to retain you. The only person who will always have your best interests at heart is you. YOU must ask your boss for a raise and present evidence that your market value has risen to justify it.
If he doesn't pay up, jump to a new job that will. Apparently, there are some openings now.
Does it matter that you're underemployed as long as unemployment is down? That's what "they" are counting on us forgetting to stay in office.
They don't care if you don't have a job ... as long as you've given up looking. Then you're not counted in the unemployment figure. The "unemployment" rate is meaningless without also looking at the Labor Force Participation Rate.
Arg.. Just pisses me off even more about the federal pay freeze. I'm a lead developer and project manager making $10k less than the average developer, who has no management responsibilities. It's getting harder and harder to justify staying in the public sector..
I'm making about a third of what I was making in 2001. Back then I was a stressed out asshole. I was responsible for keeping A large "bookseller" connected to the Internet and making 6 figures. After a string of jobs doing much the same, I burnt out. I'm glad I put my money into a fixer-upper in a good neighborhood. Sold that for a nice profit and now own a smaller home with no mortgage. Now instead of sitting at a desk playing George Jetson I'm out in the field fixing problems for people. Not big problems, more of the get the credit card machine working again or upgrade the VPN router type. 2-4 jobs most days, just drive there in my car. I get to meet all sorts of folks, save the day and on to the next job. Sure, I could make much more but my sanity and well being is worth than the pay cut. I'm happy, my wife is happy, and I don't get calls at night when something breaks.
Prisoner, I hope you're still young and have time to save money so you don't have to stress all your life. The cubical can eat your soul. Plan so you can have a way out someday.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Exactly why this type of survey is so absurd.
Comparing a work from home sysadmin's salary with an enterprise architect's salary is like trying to get an average salary for lawyers (add one public defender to a credit default swap lawyer, divide by two.)
IT jobs cover a lot of space. $78K/year is just a silly summary statistic.
So, no families?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
WHich is why trying to use the term "IT" for all of these different jobs is stupid. They're completely different categories with no meaningful relationship. Break it into two groups (programming/architects and network admin/system admin/help desk) and you at least break it into functional groups that do the same thing (although still only marginally useful, as help desk is usually paid so much less). But doing anything across both groups at once is pointless, it only serves to confuse people.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There are structural problems in the US economy, in the WORLD economy that aren't going to change and there really isn't any path to improvement as long as a relative handful of transnational corporate entities and bank holding companies continue to act as a self-appointed world government.
Oh, it's much worse than you think. Much worse.
If the companies you're thinking of actually acted as a self-appointed world government, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in - they'd at least try to make sure their own backs were scratched, if nothing else. The trouble is, nothing any of those banks own is actually worth anything. To use a programming analogy, our entire financial sector is abstracted into oblivion. Every single "asset" on the books is tied to some value extracted from another "asset", which in turn is tied to some value extracted from yet another "asset", that, 15-20 links later, eventually leads to actual collateral. This is due to our banking sector deciding at some point that it could get better returns reselling every scrap of paper they bought among themselves to each other than they could by investing their money into capital creation.
To better explain this, pretend you're on an island with two other people. One of you is good at hunting pigs. Another one is good at harvesting coconuts. A third is good at fishing. Between the three of you, you all make enough food to feed everyone, frequently with a bit left over. However, each of you gets bored with what you get, so everyone decides to trade with one another. Trouble is, nobody can decide, say, how many pounds of pig a coconut is worth. So, the three of you decide to use a small shell on the island as money. It's colorful and thus easy to identify, it's rare, and it's portable. Perfect!
One day, you decide you want a week off from your pig hunting duties. So, you start hoarding shells to save up for your week-long vacation. You charge a bit more for your pig than usual, you buy a little less fish and coconut than usual, and you spend more time between pig hunts looking for shells. Finally, you decide you have enough saved up where you can take the week off, so you do so. You stop hunting pigs and immediately start using your hoarded shells to buy coconuts and fish.
Sounds good so far, right? Well, here's the thing - since you're taking the week off, food production just went down 33%. On top of that, the number of shells being exchanged between the three of you is the same as it was before you took your week off, only there's much less to buy. In short, everyone on the island - yourself included - is screwed.
So, what does any of this have to do with the banking sector? Well, instead of investing in, say, fish preservation techniques, salted pork, better fish hooks, or a longer stick to whack the trees bearing coconuts with (i.e. capital improvements that benefit everyone), they've been investing in shells for the past generation or so and now we're all paying for it. Fun times, eh? But don't worry - maybe if we replace the shells with "sound money", maybe some shiny rocks, this sort of thing won't happen again. We promise.