InfoWorld 2004 Salary Survey Results

tverbeek writes "InfoWorld has released the results of their Salary Survey for 2004 [pdf], and in the intro they declare that there's less bad news and more optimism, as IT budgets and salaries in particular are starting to creep back up. So now we get to witness the curious phenomenon of Lake Anti-Wobegone, as all the techies we hear from complain that their salaries are still below 'average'."

This is why my company is changing their scale..

[dogas]

..because it looks too much like the scale that salary.com uses.

Right now, I'm a "software engineer III" according to my company and salary.com. But according to salary.com, I'm making $20k less than the median salary. My company's solution? Change their scale. Now there's like 8 levels and it doesn't match up at all. Maybe they're hoping that the mass exodus will stop?

Salaries

[Paulrothrock]

Since it's a 3.4MB PDF that I'll never get to read, maybe someone could answer a question for me:
Is the increase in the average salary for an IT worker, or the average IT worker's salary? In other words, does this count the ones who are unemployed or doing burger duty at Mickie Dees? It's great that salaries are going up, but is employment?

Wondering....salaries of outsourcees?

[FerretFrottage]

How come we never see salary surveys of salary surveyors? Do they not want us to know how little or how much they make? Maybe they are making 6+ figures and just don't want us to know about it so they have they don't have any competition.

Anyway...no big surprise that IT related salaries slide a bunch the past few years. Supply and demand. There are a bunch of IT workers looking for jobs and it has been a "buyers" market, not like in the late 90's.

What I wonder is how do salary trends here [US] compare to those jobs that have been outsourced? Did the outsourcees salary increase/decrease/stay flat? Just wondering if there is any connection between the two.

More power to you.

[MisanthropicProgram]

I started out loving the IT field. Gradually, it was ripped out of me by the typical working conditions: rediculous deadlines, long hours, managers who didn't have a clue, being called in the middle of the night, etc ....
It wasn't until the late 90's that I thought that I was being paid almost enough to deal with that horseshit. I know there's a few of you folks out there that thought we were overpaid. I guess that's where the system works. I felt I was underpaid - so I left. You feel you're being paid adaquately - so you stay. I honestly hope that enough people like me leave to give you guys a decent salary again. Because even if pay goes back up to the year 2000 level, I'm still not coming back.

Companies?

[NeoFunk]

This survey really means nothing to me unless I can at least see a list of the companies that they surveyed. Pay is different in different areas of the country, and for good reason.

Anecdotally, the results look quite high to me. Maybe they surveyed companies where the cost of living is really high (silicon valley, etc.) I'm from the midwest, so I don't really expect to see numbers like this around here, and I don't.

The lottery?

[e1618978]

Can you be a little more useful in your references please? There is no way that we are going to be able to do a google search on "The Lottery" and figure out what the heck you are talking about. Also, I find your "chinese guy" reference a little offensive. Not only that, but in my experience the people (chinese or not) who work 80 hours per week all the time are not particularly more productive than the 40-50 hour people - and they don't get higher salaries as far as I can see. I think that we have an unusual spread of salaries now, because anyone who made it through the massive layoffs still has the "boom time/stop the hiring raids from competitors" salary, which is 2x the salary of everybody else. At least it is like that in telecom.

I'm not Looking

[warriorpostman]

Yeah, 3.4 MB and it was only 75% downloaded after 15 minutes? Anyway, I don't want to Know! I'm happy where I work, and I'm ignorantly satisfied with my salary. Last year I spent 12 months working at a crap software company. They had a market niche and the competition wasn't enough to make them get off their asses and write good software. Instead they had been stove-piping and patching together various client-database applications for 10 or 15 years. When I left for another company, everyone kept asking, "Oh, you're leaving because it's better money?", and I'm like, no, I'm leaving because the company I'm going to work for actually tries to design and implement good software. The fact that the salary was higher was just an added bonus. I would have taken a pay cut to go to this company. But everyone's always fixated on the money.

I went to school for liberal arts, so I'm one of THOSE web monkeys. But I learned my shit, and I'm happy to be making what I consider to be decent money, although most developers who have a degree and the same experience as me would probably feel undervalued making my salary. But like I said...I'm not going to RTF3.4MBReport. Sometimes Ignorance is Bliss.

Re:put on your slashdotting helmet, gentlemen

[danharan]

Funny you should mention the HTML version. That guy Steve Fox you apparently work for had this to say in the first paragraph of the article:

I feel confident in predicting that our seventh annual compensation survey will be the most widely read, frequently downloaded, and broadly circulated article we'll publish all year. There's no voodoo involved in making such a prediction; according to our Web stats, the survey is the overwhelming traffic winner, year after year. After all, how much money you and your peers make -- and by extension, what you can hope to make in the future -- is a subject that never fails to fascinate.

Since you're on /., did you explain to him what 43k of html *100k readers does to your servers? Or that 3.4M*100k is more than you can shake a stick at? Can we safely assume he's a PHB, and didn't quite understand or care? I mean... the guy _knew_ there would be hordes of visitors- maybe he tuned out after that?

My salary

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from Central PA with a double major in Comp Sci. and Information Systems from Susquehanna University. Its a very well known school and is up there with Yale, etc..

I also have my Certifications in MCSE & Comptia (which is a joke). I'm into the Network, Database, Web programming.

My salary? 35k a year. Granted our company sends us on a cruise every year, but still that amounts to below 40k.

I was the IT Director for a medium size county in PA, and now the Network Admin for a nice growing company.

Am I underpaid? Yep, I think so. Considering my education cost me close to 85k with books, etc. I won't have that paid off for the next 20 years, and if I don't keep investing in my education, those 4 years from college won't amount to squat.

With all my bills I usually break even, or a little above. I don't have the luxury of investing my money into something else, because I don't have any. Any IT job like mine in this area won't pay more than 40k. Unless you are willing to compete against about 200 other appliciants.

It's these damn companies wanting to save a buck here or there, so their board of directors, CEOs and Presidents can by that 10th vacation home out in the virgin islands.

I worked hard for where I am at, and if I had to do it over again, I would've gone into another field. It sucks because Computers were my passion. The blood-sucking money leeches who won't compsenate me for what I do is driving the passion of my job right out of me.

BTW, I was on call 24/7, due to me being the ONLY IT person for the county and responsible for their 911 call center. That's how cheap some organizations are.