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With President Obama working this week to limit ridiculous compensation for financial execs I cringe at the news from Dice’s annual IT salary survey that paints a rosy picture of IT salaries in the recession. The WSJ reports, “The average information-technology pro made $78,035 last year, a 4.6% increase from 2007.” According to the press release, salaries were up 5.8% in New York, 3.8% in Chicago, 3.6% in both Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.

Is it possible that while sales plummet (and commissions for sales pros along with it), somehow companies value their IT operations and talent enough to dole out raises? According to the WSJ, the study found, “Overall, IT managers had the highest salaries, raking in $111,998 in 2008. Database administrators made $89,742, and network engineers took home $72,496. System developers were the only group tracked by Dice.com to get a pay cut in 2008, with the average salary dropping 1.3% to $87,211.”

Maybe we are getting to a point where the heartbeat of an effective enterprise, its technology, is finally getting its due. Perhaps the top brass is saying “Let’s examine everything, but don’t touch anything that would keep the computers from running and the billing systems from humming. In fact, let’s invest.” This doesn’t sound right. Is anyone in IT not experiencing pinched budgets, hiring freezes, and delayed projects? Maybe 2008 is the lag year for salaries still built on prior year success. If IT is a good place to go in 2009 for a salary increase, let’s agree not to tell anyone. Otherwise we may awaken the scrutiny of a higher authority.

Photo by stuartpilbrow.

Tags: salary increase, salary survey

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