2010 Salary Survey Highlights IT Woes 332
CWmike writes "Trapped between flat salaries and ever-increasing workloads, IT professionals are about to explode. That's the top takeaway from Computerworld's 2010 survey of nearly 5,000 IT workers. 'Bonuses and benefits are way down, and workloads and work hours have increased. Meanwhile, salaries are stagnant (rising just a microscopic 0.7% on average), and — not surprisingly — satisfaction is on the wane.' Another finding of note is the shrinking female IT workforce. Have a look-see at how IT fared in your neck of the woods with this smart look-up tool."
Rate of inflation (Score:3, Informative)
What was the inflation rate last year? Zero? Slightly negative? As long as your wages increase faster than inflation, then your purchasing power is going up. And .7% is better than the 0% raise I got.
Re:Rate of inflation (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually as a person currently look to hire F/OSS experience would be a definite plus. It shows that an applicant is really interested in the field and the work. Granted, we're not the corporate IT office you refer to, but if an applicant for our software position (if anyone is curious and interested in north central FL.... http://tdt.com/news/jobs/softwareengineer.htm [tdt.com]) was actually interested enough in programming to do outside projects that would be a positive.
In general you need something to make you stand out, and contributing to or starting a project is a reasonable way to stand out. I interviewed some current master's students and was optimistic until it was clear that they did exactly what coursework required but weren't interested in exploring for their own interest.
Re:You control your own destiny (Score:5, Informative)
Re:female (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, seriously? Do you know anything about nursing?
If you're female there is no reason to go into IT... nursing pays better, comes with better benefits, better hours, way less stress, no bullying from male coworkers, no worries about your job going offshore to Inida, more respect from the general community, just a better future period.
There are plenty of reasons to not go into IT. Nursing pays worse (IT 5 years experience = 50k; nursing 15 years experience = 50k), the hours are usually worse (no such thing as 9-5s or holidays, and everyone is "on call" almost all the time), constant bitchiness and "office politics" cattiness (if you want to hear someone lie about someone else, listen to an orderly...), and (very likely) increased hours + shifts with decreased pay in the very near future (on account of the increased burden that will be put on healthcare due to recent legislation).
Nurses get no respect, either. Orderlies get more, from what I've observed. It's a similar situation to IT (not programming, IT), where you're in the position to have responsibility but often have no ability to do anything about it. Doctors treat nurses like shit, typically. Administrators are similar to IT management: they haven't a clue what's going on but damn it, they're going to tell you what to do. Except with nursing (unlike computing) the balance of life (or health) and death often hangs in the balance, and stupid mistakes made by others often do directly fall on your shoulders.
In fact males should also go into nursing, but constantly being made fun of (such as being called Gaylord Focker) might be too much to take for most men.
No, the biggest problem would be having a predatory and/or inherrently bitchy (female, not that it matters) jerking you around for stupid political reasons.
There's a good reason why nurses have the highest percentage of illicit drug use in the country by career. Their jobs suck. I'd rather go into law enforcement.
Re:What?!? (Score:2, Informative)
My Current company: http://www.onehippo.com/en/company/career/senior+consultant?backpage=en/company/career [onehippo.com]
(...)
Qualifications:
* University degree ;-).
* Extensive knowledge of Java, Spring, JSP, JSF, Wicket, SpringMVC, or other (Java) frameworks;
* Familiar with content management systems and portals;
* Standards like JSR 168,286/170, REST;
* Application servers like Tomcat, JBoss;
* Open source projects such as Lucene, Jetspeed Portal, Hippo CMS, Cocoon, Jackrabbit;
* knowledge of open source libraries en testing frameworks;
* agile methodologies like XP and Scrum;
* Web technologies like AJAX, JavaScript;
* Quality is important to you, so you work precise and use best practices when possible.
* quick learner with a natural interest for new technologies;
* creative mind;
* eagerness to excel, but capable of working in a team with people probably smarter than yourself
(...)
Re:Marketing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"? (Score:3, Informative)
You can deal with a 3am barf emergency without actually waking up.
Trust me, I'm a father of two.
Re:Exactly. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"shrinking female IT workforce"? (Score:1, Informative)
Whole lotta bitter slashdotters out there. That's why it's hard to even read this site anymore. Bunch of people whining about being mistreated, while the rest of us realize it's generally pretty easy work (if stressful at times). Most of us share a fairly uncommon skillset, so we get paid well to sit at a desk all day and push a few buttons. I'm up 300% from 10 years ago, granted I was young then.
If you don't like tech work, you never should have gotten into it.
If you're treated like shit at your current employer, find a new one. Here in the valley I hardly know anyone who's been laid off, but I know plenty of people swapping jobs for something better.
Housing "the one tool that the middle class can use to build wealth?" Shit, once I finish paying off my school debt (another 6 months or so) I'll have roughly $3k/month extra just sitting around. I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to build wealth with that kind of money, even though I rent a nice place.
Re:What?!? (Score:3, Informative)
You're insane, or you're simply not looking in the right places. LAMP jobs are everywhere, and almost always like open source experience.
Bitch about your job-finding experience if you like, but don't claim that only Microsoft folks are hired, it's just simply not true. Plus, your argument conveniently ignores companies like Canonical, where open source simply is everything.