Network World's Salary Survey Reveals IT Pay Dissatisfaction

Network World has released it's an Annual Salary Survey by Beth Schultz and she says it reveals that I.T. professionals aren't happy with their salary packages, and are not being paid inline with the value they provide their respective companies. The article states:

A storm seems to be brewing in the IT job market. Pay raises have continued to outpace inflation, and bonuses are downright impressive — 11.6% on average. Yet, as the 2007 Network World Salary Survey finds, dissatisfaction over the salary package is rampant.

On average, the 1,789 respondents to this year’s salary survey, conducted with the help of research firm King, Brown & Partners, saw their base pay rise 5.2%, to $86,700 (see “Your earnings”). On its own, that doesn’t sound all that impressive. But compared with the cost of living, it makes IT look like a good place to be. The average inflation rate for 2006 was only 3.2%, according to Inflationdata.com.

Yet respondents aren’t particularly happy with their pay packages. When asked to rank how satisfied they are with 18 job criteria, overall compensation and base salary fared poorly compared with how important they are.

And people are starting to make changes:

Staff-level dissatisfaction over salaries has been an issue for Jonathan Campbell, director of network services at FirstHealth of the Carolinas, a sprawling healthcare network in Pinehurst, N.C. Campbell reports having recently lost a couple of people from his network operations staff because of, at least in part, pay issues. Finding new staff members wasn’t easy. “The biggest problem is salary,” he says.

The issue is twofold, Campbell says. “Companies that have extremely competent people are paying big bucks to keep them. Other companies looking for new hires can’t meet the salary demands to get these individuals to leave their current positions. So those companies will actually pay less to get a foreign [immigrant] worker with little experience but lots of degrees and certifications to fill the position, even though factors such as customer satisfaction may suffer,” he explains.

But even thought most feel they are underpaid they would like to stay in their current position:

Even while wishing they were better compensated, most respondents report liking where they’re at with their jobs. When asked how satisfied they are with their current positions overall, nearly 42% said they were either very or extremely satisfied, and another 40% indicated that they’re satisfied.

The Hottest IT skills for 2007:

Windows administrators are in high demand, but plentiful. Experts in security, storage and networking are much wanted, too, but harder to find.

The Industry still needs to come to grips with the problems caused by the outsourcing and "H-1B" solution to the perceived shortages over last decade. With political resistance to H-1B increases growing, as well as job dissatisfaction increasing amongst current I.T. professionals and the collapse of the education of new I.T. professionals, it is hard to see anything but major increases in U.S. salaries or the wholesale movement of jobs overseas, maybe both.

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