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IT Salaries and Hiring Are Up — But Just To 2008 Levels
tsamsoniw writes "A mid-year salary survey has a mix of good and bad news for IT professionals: The good news, hiring is slowly increasing as companies bring more IT operations back in house and salaries are creeping up a bit. But compensation (including benefits) are just now reaching 2008 levels — and hiring will remain soft, at least until the presidential election is over."
The article says this:
"However, hiring overall will remain soft in coming months, particularly with the presidential election in the United States and economic turmoil in the European Union."
The EU part is obvious, but there's no explanation about why the presidential election would have an impact or where they are getting that data from.
However, hiring overall will remain soft in coming months, particularly with the presidential election in the United States and economic turmoil in the European Union.
It'll be interesting to see if this really is perceived as the problem. At least with the US, we'll see or not see big shifts in the markets after election day which is a means to test that particular part of the claim.
One of the biggest problems that I see with people who are still without jobs is that they wouldn't accept anything less than what they were making before. I know plenty of contractors from AT&T who were making $45/hr in 2006 with only Network+ and Security+ certification and a little bit of vim experience. Since the market reset itself, a couple of those guys simply refuse to take anything less than their pre-recession salaries, but they will complain to high heaven about not being able to find a job.
On the other side of the spectrum, I know plenty of kids straight out of college who expect to make $45k/year with their fresh MIS degree, and won't accept anything less. One example--it's been two years since a guy at my gym graduated college--he's still working at the same gym as a personal trainer--and won't even get his foot in the door by taking a job in the industry because they won't pay him (as an entry-level worker) what he "expects" to get paid.
Finally, and this is not a knock on our military IT people, but a lot of guys who are getting out expect to make $100k+ just because they had a high-tech job and were making $50k as an E5 (that includes a housing allowance). IMO--and I did eight years in the USMC--most of the military has a very comfortable life in terms of benefits and pay compared to the civilian world. Simply put, a lot of military IT jobs have no direct equivalent in the civilian sector unless you are willing to stay on base as a contractor, or move to DC.
My advice to these three groups: take whatever job can get. At least you will be working, and will remain marketable. The industry--hell, the entire marketplace in general--is still re-adjusting after the crash. There will likely be another crash + recession very soon. Don't expect to be flying high like we were in the Web 2.0 crash.
This is dependant for certain areas in the U.S.
You need to go to where the IT jobs are at, if you think your dirt water town is going to have an IT hirring binge you are misinformed and dilussional.
However I have seen IT salaries stay within year 1998 ranges and they never recovered after the Dot bomb crash. They have never kept pace.
Also a lot of small companies (less than 100 people) hire one IT person to be Head Chef, Bottle washer and waiter and the pay is 25% less of an expert in thier particular discipline.
The only way you are ever going to go over the 100k mark and above you need to specialize in an area that is hot and always remain hot.
1.CTO
2. Management
3. CCIE
4. CISSP
5. Oracle DBA
6. Government contract
I am sure there are others but as I have been in the job market for the past year companies are hiring at bargin prices.
If this current president is voted out we will see empolyeers start to hire and wages will go up and those employers who thought they got such a great deal hirring IT man because of a "Weak Economy" will find themselves scrambling to keep thier bargin basement IT man.
But then I have seen IT people put up with a lot of B.S. for the scrap they are managing. I have been in 3 IT compaines in the past year and to see how they manage thier infrastructure is amazing.
Low priorites
No security or lack of it
Outdated equipment including the software that should have been updated as part of the original maintenance plan.
im making 25k more than i did in 2008. maybe those who arent are self entitled mba idiots?
well IT does not need college / the loans that come with it.
It need a trades / apprenticeship system that no only is quicker then a 2/4 year college it also give people real job skills.
I have seen JR / level 1 / entry-level jobs that want a lot of experience so are there even real entry-level jobs out there.
"... and hiring will remain soft, at least until the presidential election is over." Then it will go into the tank.
Obama will do whatever he can to get the economy revving prior to the election, including things that can't be sustained or won't work in the long run. After the election we will go back to reality.
If Romney wins, it will be worse than if Obama wins but neither has a magic bullet to revive the economy and increase employment in IT (here rather than India or China).
Here's a few things I hear about when I talk to business owners. 1) bush tax cut - hopefully it stands 2) buffet tax increase - hopefully it just stays a gimmick 3) estate taxes - should I divest now and drop the cash in a trust or can I wait a few years 4) h1b - how many more Indians can we get
It's the gut-level certainty of most small business owners that things will get worse that's keeping them from hiring.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
would prefer Romney get elected. This isn't wacko conspiracy theory either. You need only look at the fact that Romney is the first challenger in history to out-raise and out-spend an incumbent president. That money isn't coming from the rank and file after all (they don't have it).
It's not hard to see why the ruling class prefers Romney. He's one of them (Desert Bagels anyone?) and he's made it very clear he will cut taxes on high income earners and slash government spending to make up the difference (going so far as to cut funding for police & fire departments).
Basically, we're got a ruling class that is actively crashing our economy....
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You fail it.
if you really believe that load of crap. Basically what you want it the freedom to screw over anyone and everyone for your own personal benefit under the self-deluded impression that you won't actually be screwed over by everyone else.
he was just pointing out that the parent post is nothing but regurgitated corporate whoring from the republican platform. What you are doing is acting like a young child trying to deflect responsibility by claiming that the other kids did the same thing.
scapegoating (especially if you have a minority as a target) is the only thing people like the parent poster have. well, there is accepting responsibility, but you know how bad children are at doing that.
it has to be someone that pathetic, since no-one else would debase themselves to the point of claiming that lowering taxes is not a tax cut. Face it boy, the bill for your self-serving sense of entitlement came due earlier than you thought. now you cry like a spoiled four-year old at the thought of having to clean up your own mess. how about you just go to your room and the grownups will call you when we have decided your punishment.
so how can your BS be better?
He said something negative about the Republicans! Mod him down! Worship Romney! HEIL TEH JOB CREATOR ROMNEY!
I had an employee recently come to me and say that he wanted his title changed to "VMware Administrator" and that he deserved a 35% increase in pay. We are a small shop and his job is about 60% PC technician, 20% network admin and 20% server admin. We have 2 ESX servers and about 10 VMs. VMware administration is about 10% of his job. He looked at me like I was crazy when I told him that if he wanted to be a VMware specialist, he probably needed to find a job at a larger company that could afford to let him be a specialist, and that at *this* company, the role I needed was the role he holds, and that he is fairly compensated for this role. I then showed him the competitive salary information for our area for his role and that he is above the midpoint for similar jobs.
He did not understand the sad truth of corporate salaries today: It no longer matters how long you have been with the company, or how long it has been since you last had a raise - the only thing that matters is what is on your job description and what other companies are willing to pay for that role in your area. If you want a raise, then you have to get your job description changed to represent a larger scope of responsibility and a role that is worth more money. My employee was on the right track - he wanted to change his job title - but he failed to understand that it isn't the title - it is the job description and the scope of the role that matters.
Corporate life sucks. We are all replaceable, and we are only worth whatever it would take to replace us with some poor, unemployed worker that would take anything as long as it provides benefits and pay better than COBRA and unemployment.
are you on drugs?
You can't handle the truth.
This. If I were running a larger business than I am, I'd be really concerned about the effects of changes to healthcare law, since the GOP is obsessed with it. How much would I have to pay a few years from now? Right now, I wouldn't know.
Big, wealthy corporations, once they have become big and wealthy, are quite capable of setting up barriers-to-entry with no government intervention at all.
They can establish sole-provider agreements with their own vendors so their competitors can't get the supplies they need to run the business. No laws to stop this! And in a cartel-driven economy, there aren't many vendors to choose from so this is easy.
They can temporarily lower prices, accepting temporary losses, until the small competing businesses go under. Then jack the prices up again. This one is an historical favorite.
They can lock their clients into long-term contracts which the clients must accept (due to no competition), so that when competition DOES arise, it can't stay afloat long enough to score any new clients because most of the market is, at any point in time, already committed and unavailable.
These are just the most popular (and legal) examples, though there are *plenty* more. You should do some studying, because you are very grossly misinformed (both in terms of theory and history, as all of this has happened before).
Considering the stock market crash of 2008.
I'm on the opposite side if the spectrum. I lost my job in a different industry last year and have gone back to school for a new IT degree and can't find work due to the fact I have very little work experience in IT. All I'm looking for is a position that pays 9 dollars an hour entry level and still can't get hired. I've even seen internships that want 2 years of experience . Frustrating year it has been for me so far.
It's not just IT. This link is a graph of all reported employees in America over the past four years: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-chart-public-sector-vs-private-sector-employment-2012-6 In summary, the number of workers in the private sector is back up to about where it was in 2008 (which is still too small for a growing economy). It's the lagging public sector that's keeping overall employment rates below where they were before the recession.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
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fox news? puh-leaze. fox news is way too liberal for roman_mir. he wrote his own algorithm to parse through the articles on fox news to de-liberalize them. then he throws those de-liberalized articles away and goes to the weekly standard, where he uses a similar algorithm because he considers william cristol to be a socialist pig. once his algorithm successfully parses out the liberalism from the weekly standard then he interprets the remainder of the article and reframes it in the context of his bible of ron paul quotes.