While most industries are laying off workers and finding ways to cut costs, the technology industry is paying its employees more.
Dice.com recently released the 2008-2009 Annual Salary Survey, which found that technology professionals are seeing an increase in pay despite the economic recession. More than 19,000 technology workers responded between August and November 2008 to the survey, which found the average pay increased by 4.6 percent from last year to $78,035.
“That average tech salaries are rising even as the economy falls reveals how much has changed since the dot-com days,” Tom Silver, Dice SVP & CMO, said. “Today many technology professionals are seen as core assets where they work. As they enhance their skills, they’ll need to align those efforts with the market’s shifting demands. However, over the long-term, updating and broadening one’s skill set is the key to continued salary gains.”
The salary increases were easy to see in major IT markets, by 5.8 percent in New York, 3.8 percent in Chicago, 3.6 percent in Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. and .4 percent in the Dallas and Fort Worth area. Other notable increases were seen in Charlotte, where the average salary rose 14.7 percent to $81,426, and St. Louis, which saw an increase of 12.5 percent to $72,819.
Technology pros with specific job training saw the biggest raises. Pay for security analysts increased by 8.4 percent, software engineers by 7 percent and applications developers by 6.6 percent. Those in the computer hardware industry saw an average raise of 9.4 percent to $77,387 per year; Internet Services salaries increased by 8.8 percent to $77,819 per year; government/defense fields saw a 3.4 percent raise and retail/mail order/e-commerce saw a 2.4 percent raise.
Workers that made the most money include CIOs and CTOs at $111,998 per year, followed by advanced business application programming at $106,975 per year, project managers at $103,424 per year and business intelligence databases at $101,585 per year.
The survey also found that getting a raise doesn’t always ease an employee’s worries. Of those surveyed, 22 percent are worried about keeping skills up to date, 20 percent are concerned with job elimination, 14 percent are worried about lower salary increases, 12 percent are concerned with canceled projects and 10 percent are worried about an increased workload because of staff cuts.
These worries, which stretch beyond just the technology industry, could be the reason Dice saw a 67-percent increase in the number of resumes posted on its site during Q4. Even though many of Dice.com’s users are employed, the increase in passive job searching has a direct correlation with worries about the economy and job market.
Popularity: 5% [?]
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Why does a company really need a CTO? They should be the ones who should get a pay cut, pay freeze or fired. Most of the CTOs I have worked for lack long-term innovation because their business models are so backwards. Take their $100,00+ salary and hire some new software engineers that are more up to date on the technology that a company needs to thrive – that would be 2 more GOOD assets to a company vs some goofball who likens himself as some “big thinker”.