Are you paying too much or too little to your IT staff? Do you have IT job descriptions? Are you earning what you're worth? Whether employer or employee, it is important to know what other companies are paying in total compensation for a similar position in your area. Learn how your company compares in the area of compensation.

The Janco Associates, Inc. salary survey draws on data collected throughout the year by extensive internet-based and completed survey forms sent to businesses throughout the United States and Canada.  Our database contains over 50,000 data points

The compensation study (over 155 pages in PDF or WORD and EXCEL with the data) can be ordered here.

    

If you  do not want to purchase the full salary study, you can get just the data for a particular city for a fraction of the cost of the full study.  Just  click here to see all the cities covered.

Fringe Benefits for IT Professionals January 2010

Companies have started to cut back on the fringe benefits provided to IT Professionals.  For example in January of 2008 95% of IT professionals had health insurance supplied by their employers while in June 2009 only 88% did.  A full historical comparison of trends in benefits is included with the full version of the Janco IT Salary Survey.

    

There is a comparative salary survey for the years of 1996 through 2010. That version of the salary survey can be found at COMPARATIVE YEAR.

SPECIAL OFFER Get the Comparative Salary Survey and get the latest detail Salary Survey for only a few more dollars

    

IT Fringe Benefit and Salary News

Cyber criminals are hiring

The people who brought the world malicious software that steals credit card numbers from your personal computer and empties bank ATMs of their cash are hiring, and they're advertising online.

What they are seeking is people who are willing to take malicious code they provide and link it to something that people will click on -- like a picture of Britney Spears getting out of her car. These people then collect a fee for each 1,000 times that the malware is downloaded.

One site pays $180 for each 1,000 times that malware is downloaded onto a U.S. computer but less for computers elsewhere. It refuses to pay for any downloads to Russian computers, causing Stevens and others to strongly suspect that it, like other similar sites, are based in Russia.

"We pay your wages via the following systems: Fethard, WebMoney, Wire, e-gold, Western Union (WU), MoneyGram, Anelik and ePassporte, and PayPal," according to the website.

It is impossible to know how many computers were infected via these companies but put the number in the millions.

It's hard to separate theft arising from these web sites from other sorts of Internet crime but the FBI tallied $264 million in losses from Internet crime reported by individuals in 2008. The report for 2009 has yet to be released.

The cybercrime problem has become worse over the past three years as consumers and companies alike increasingly expose valuable data such as business plans, credit card numbers, banking information and Social Security numbers on the Internet.

"There are hundreds of billions of dollars that traverse the Internet," the assistant director for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, told Reuters late last year. "It's (the problem) absolutely gotten bigger, yes, absolutely."

Outsourcing impacts on certain IT jobs

A  survey by a buisess shcool shows that 40% of high-technology firms offshore work, and about 30% of all firms that offshore send IT work overseas. Among the IT workers surveyed, about 8% report ever having experienced offshoring-related job displacement, double the average offshoring-related displacement rate across all other worker types, but still implying an annual offshoring-related  displacement rate of only about 1-2% per year.

The study also showed that workers in jobs that require face-to-face contact or physical presence are at smaller risk of offshoring-related job displacement, implying that interpersonal skills are becoming relatively more valuable among  IT workers.  Other  findings imply that IT workers in functions that involve cross-divisional  communication or hands-on support are less likely to be affected by  offshoring.

Leadership drives success and hiring

Leadership is an important element of organizational success. So, it is not surprising that many companies look for ways to extend the benefits of leadership development to more employees. Technology-based learning approaches such as online courses, books and video programs can be used effectively to develop employees at all levels.

Internet  Position Descriptions HandiGuide®

231 Job Descriptions and Organization Charts

The job descriptions contained within the Internet and Information Technology Position Descriptions HandiGuide® are all in a standard format and are available as in PDF, WORD 2003, and WORD 2007 formats.  All of the job descriptions were reviewed and updated to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley and the ISO 27000 security standard.  The latest version of the HandiGuide was completed in 2010 and is over 650 pages in length.  The Internet and IT Position Descriptions HandiGuide includes sample organization charts, a job progression matrix, and the 231 job descriptions.  

Many IT Professional Unhappy with Compensation

National averages for technology salaries are pretty stagnant, a recent Dice report shows, and there are high levels of job dissatisfaction. However, there is more growth in wages regionally, with high technology demand in Washington, New York, Silicon Valley and Austin, Texas.

Salaries for U.S. technology professionals rose a measly 1 percent in 2009 to an average of $78,845, well below the annual inflation rate of 2.7 percent for the year, according to a recent survey by technology job board Dice. Furthermore, the lack of wage growth fills technology professionals with a high level of job dissatisfaction.

Nearly half (47 percent) of the 16,908 online participants polled between August and December said their current employers are doing "nothing to keep them motivated," while only 19 percent were being offered challenging work. Responses about bonuses for 2009 were uninspiring too: Only 24 percent of technology professionals polled received bonuses last year.

With job and salary dissatisfaction at its highest levels in years, technology professionals should be willing to go fight for career advancement. HR and technology managers can win by identifying new motivators to keep staff on board, including compensation, training and career growth.

Of those tech workers who did not receive bonuses, 42 percent responded that they were displeased with their compensation. Of those who did receive bonuses in 2009, only 27 percent were displeased.

The new war for technology talent is coming and the battle is retention.

When you look at salary averages regionally in the Dice survey, you begin to see some ripples of growth. Washington had an average salary of $89,014, up 4 percent from the previous year, with technology jobs in defense and for the federal government. Silicon Valley, despite a tough year of layoffs, is still showing an average salary of $96,299 while New York showed a 1.5 percent increase with an average of $86,710. Texas was faring better too, with Dallas seeing a 2 percent gain and Austin having higher average paychecks.

So who is drawing the best salaries in IT right now? Think application developers and SOA (service-oriented architecture) specialists.

Continuing to lead the pack in top paid skills is ABAP - Advanced Business Application Programming ($115,916), followed by SOA - Service Oriented Architecture ($107,827), and ETL - Extract Transform and Load ($105,844)," the survey said. These frontrunners were followed by a few newcomers and some solid technology job stalwarts:

Applications server skills JBoss and WebLogic joined the $100,000 salary ranks with annual salaries topping $101,869 and $100,313, respectively. Individuals with Solaris ($96,672) and AIX ($95,464) skills were the highest-paid [of those with] operating system skills. The [areas with the] highest paid titles include IT Management ($114,874), Information Architecture ($105,247), Project Manager ($103,437), Software Engineer ($91,342) and Database Administrator ($91,283).

Job cuts continue - Ericsson trims 1,500 jobs

Ericsson, a wireless equipment maker, is cutting 1,500 jobs from among its 80,000 global employees. The company reported on Friday a huge downturn in fourth quarter and full-year 2009 earnings. For the quarter ended December, Ericsson saw its net earnings plummet 92 percent to 314 million million kronor ($43.4 million dollars), compared with the year-ago quarter. Sales dropped 13 percent to 58.3 billion kronor from the year-ago quarter.

For all of 2009, Ericsson's earnings were down 67 percent to 3.7 billion kronor ($512 million). Annual sales survived, though, falling only 1 percent to 206.5 billion kronor over the previous year.

The 1,500 job cuts are in addition to 5,000 layoffs Ericsson announced about a year ago after a 31 percent drop in 2008 fourth-quarter earnings, bringing the total to 6,500. After layoffs and budget cuts are completed around the second quarter of this year, the company is looking to save around 15 billion to 16 billion kronor ($2.1 billion to $2.2 billion) annually.

Work at home option improves productivity

Work at home is a boon to employee productivity. Some of the factors driving this are:

• Reducing support costs - if an employee is not in the office then administrative costs and expenses are reduced.

• Increasing workforce productivity - if an employee does not have to commute to the office and can work at home or go directly to a customer location they are more productive.
• Attracting and retaining talent - working at home is a benefit that does not cost much but has a very high perceived value
• Increasing organizational agility - the organization is more flexible and adaptive to market needs
• Reducing the business risk of disruption from terrorism and natural disasters - with diverse locations work at home provides an infrastructure that can survive most disasters
• Reducing traffic congestion, air pollution and environmental impact more generally - it is environmentally friendly and more "green"

Is Job Demand Increasing

The second half of 2009 saw growth in online job vacancies. Health care and technology jobs led the pack in job opportunities, but the opportunity numbers for 2009 are still down significantly from 2008 and 2007.

Recent job vacancy data for the month of December pegs computer and math openings up 23,000 from November for a total of 467,000 nationally, according to a report from The Conference Board.

Overall, the annual average for job openings in 2009 is down compared with the previous two years with 3,357,000, which is 1.1 million below 4,481,000 for 2008 and 1.3 million below the 2007 average.

For all occupations, job vacancies were up 255,000 in December. The good news is the averages of job openings in the second half of 2009 were positive. Job demand was up on average by 58,000, compared with negative 91,000 in the first half of the year.

"Employers' modest increase in demand for labor in the second half of 2009 is a nice way to end what has been a very challenging year, said  a senior economist at The Conference Board, in a report. "The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is still very high, but the recent six months indicate that things are slowly moving in the right direction. The gap between the number of unemployed and the number of advertised vacancies is about 12 million, with 4.5 unemployed for every online advertised vacancy."

Lay-offs Loom for IT Organization according to Janco

Janco has just released it January 2010 IT Salary Survey.  One of the major findings were that a number of large IT organizations had focued on cutting cost without laying off any staff.  However as the recession continues, in order to meet their enterprise's 2010 budgets these organization will need to cut staff.

Layoffs should start to occur sometime late in the first quarter and early second quarter of this year.

Other findings include:

• Layers of middle management have been eliminated and the number of direct reports has increased for many IT Directors, Managers, and Supervisors.
• Enterprises that have cut costs in lieu of laying staff off are now planning to institute a round of layoffs in order to meet “their numbers” for 2010.
• Companies are continuing to reduce the benefits provided to IT professionals.
  • Personal and company bonuses have been reduced if not eliminated altogether.
  • Raises have be eliminated by many.  For example in a survey conducted by Redmondmag.com it was reported that 36.5% of Microsoft employees saw no raise in 2009.
• Hiring is limited to a few selected positions as enterprise continue to cut costs
• There now is a surplus of seasoned IT professionals available.  For the second time in less than ten years, retirements are being put off because of the downturn in the stock market and the resultant reduction in savings available to support IT professionals as they retire.  Added to this is an influx of retirees who are looking to get back into the job market due to of the massive reduction in their investment portfolio

Staffing levels will not increase according to Janco

Enterprise IT leaders planning for 2010 might find themselves coming up short on staff and the necessary high-tech skills needed to help their companies rebuild and drive business growth during the economic recovery, according to recent research.

Research from multiple sources is starting to reveal that high-tech executives might be worried about how they can tackle the coming year and the challenges it presents with lean staffs comprised of over-worked IT professionals. According to Robert Half Technology, 43 percent of some 1,400 CIOs polled feel their IT departments are either somewhat or very understaffed in relation to current workload.

"Many companies have cut technology staff levels too deeply, making it challenging for IT departments to keep pace with demands," said an executive director of Robert Half Technology. "Although businesses may be able to operate with stretched teams in the short term, being perpetually understaffed isn't sustainable and can detract from the overall productivity and morale of the organization."

Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis forcasts that IT staff could remain lean well into 2010 and that economic recovery will not also indicate a return of IT jobs to pre-recession numbers.

"IT departments during the downturn were very cautious about where they reduced, and more organizations plan to keep staffing levels flat for a period of time. As the recovery continues, they might not even add too much, so I don't think we will ever go back to the big IT departments of 2000 or 2001," Janulaitis said.

36.5% of Microsoft employees saw no increases in 2009

Redmond's annual survey of Microsoft IT compensation shows that, despite a global recession, respondents reported higher average salaries-but lost some ground with raises and bonuses.

We're in the midst of a massive recession that's approaching the two-year mark. In 2008, when we reported that salaries in the Microsoft IT community went up, the recession had respondents wondering if IT salaries had finally hit a high mark. A year later, the recession has gone global, but amazingly it hasn't had the impact on base compensation that we expected. The overall base salary this year? $83,113. While 36.5 percent of survey participants said they saw no change in salary from last year, nearly half claimed their salary was higher in 2009.

Common CIO and IT Manager Mistakes

There are some ways that many CIOs and IT managers have failed to succeed.  Most common mistakes were:

• There is a magic bullet for success: Many execs, and companies as well, are constantly looking for a big win. When they find these "awesome opportunities" they throw resources at them in the hope that this success will fix a lot of existing mistakes and problems.
  
  

  

  

  

  However, while going after the magic bullet, they often starve many of the smaller initiatives or operations which have been plodding along successfully for a long time. As a result of lost resources, these little successes consequently founder. They may fail. When the big win doesn't materialize - and they usually don't - the organization is left with less-effective pieces that can no longer provide enough juice to continue. Adding to the loss: Ultimately this approach of always going for the brass ring can demoralize even the best performers.
  

• Failing to learn and grow: When it comes to sports or new hobbies, nearly everyone understands the importance of repeated practice to improve performance. But for some reason, leaders often fail to practice on the job. They apply new techniques, style changes, or business approaches without the necessary testing. For some reason, many CIO and IT Managers think that all they have to do is read or hear these new approaches and they can they go out and put them into action. Consequently, they blow it. At that point they may decide this new way is no good and abandon it too soon.
  
  New approaches - physical or mental - require training and learning. Accept the idea that during your first few times of trying something new, you're likely to stub your toe. Learn from your flub: What could you have done differently for a successful outcome? Then try it again. It'll come. Soon it will become a part of your management style repertoire and your game will improve.
  
• Avoid the hard personnel decisions: Intellectually, everyone knows that having the right person in the right job is critical. And yet.
  
  Many CIOs and IT Managers will leave a weakling in a role for too long. They often attempt to justify their lack of action ("Chuck's been with us for years. Sarah's still learning," etc.), but regardless of their reasons, this mistake can cause a lot of problems. Good people will leave, or at the least, simply become less engaged. The wrong person in the role may miss opportunities that another may have seen, he / she may create more problems because they are in over their head. Being soft isn't generous, or thoughtful, or kind hearted. It's just dumb. I'm often told by the recently terminated that they kind of knew, in their heart of hearts, that they should have been more proactive.
  
• Working hard is all that takes to succeed:  Like most winners, in any game, a CIO or IT Manager are successful because they did more of the right things than they did of the dumb things. But they did do wrong things. Almost everybody does at certain times.
  
  CIOs and IT Managers delusion regarding their success keep them from constantly upgrading themselves, fixing their mistakes, and building on the really good things they did do.
  
• Being a constant fixer: Some people are naturally predisposed toward helping people fix their problems. If you're in trouble, you may welcome his or her stepping-in to help correct your issue. But many times, you don't need that person to come and tell you what to do. Then, their help is seen as interference. And it can make you pretty cranky.
  
  If someone is thinking aloud with you, resist the urge to jump in. Don't interrupt them to provide "the answer." Let them process it on their own - it will make them better and more self-sufficient. And, as a bonus, you may actually learn something.
  
  On the other hand, when another individual comes to you with a great idea, just tell them it is. That's all. Don't add anything. Because by adding, "that's good, why don't you add this to it," you devalue both their idea and their thinking. That's demoralizing and frustrating. So, keep this in mind - for the most part people don't like fixers. Just shut up, let them own it, and tell them they're doing good stuff.

Networking Tips for IT Professionals

Before anyone starts to look for a job they need to see that their professional network is in order and that they have  game plan of steps that they will follow.  Included are:

• Belong to professional groups in your industry and be active -  To get the most out of networking opportunities, arrive on time for events or 15 to 30 minutes early if the event is a conference, lecture or trade show where your early presence won't impose on a host. When you show up early, you will meet the movers and shakers at the event.  In addition, you never have to worry about having to break into other people's conversations. If you're one of the first people in the room, others will begin to congregate around you.
• Treat networking events as ways to meet other professionals not sales opportunities. Trade shows, conferences and parties are opportunities to meet people, to create likability and commonality the two cornerstones of networking. No one at a networking event is going to offer you a job right then and there. So don't try so hard to sell yourself. Instead, find common ground with the people you meet. Break the ice by asking people about their interests outside of work.
• Give out your business card only if it is asked for or after you ask for the individual you are talking to.. When you immediately hand your business card to people to whom you're introducing yourself, the action suggests that you're interested only in selling a product or service to those people
• Networking is not a numbers game, aim to make meaningful connections with a manageable number of people.
• Talk about what you would like to do and never be negative.  Job seekers should state what kind of job they're seeking, as well as the industry and any specific companies that interest them.

Is the IT job market stabalizing?

Over the last three months, the tech job market has been stabilizing and may even be improving in some areas -- particularly in management and consulting services, according to two separate reports analyzing the government's most recent labor data.

The big picture for all jobs is shaped by the U.S. Department of Labor in its monthly jobs reports, and y it delivered the best news yet in this downturn: a loss of 11,000 jobs in November. That compared to 597,000 lost jobs in November 2008 and 741,000 that were lost in January.

Two Labor Department job categories were responsible for a net gain of 11,200 IT jobs over the last three months. They are management and technical consulting services, which added 13,300 jobs, and computer systems design and related services, which gained 5,200 jobs. Over this period, the data processing, hosting and related services fields lost 2,700 jobs; the computer and peripheral equipment category fell by 3,200 jobs; and the communications equipment area lost 1,400 jobs.

End of year career self assessment for CIOs and IT Managers

Career question that CIO and IT Mangers should be asking themselves as they end this year:

• How does your compensation compare to you peers in your company and against your competitors?
• How does your boss measure your performance?
• Do you believe it is the job of the CIO to align IT with the business?
• What’s the greatest accomplishment of you and your team in the past 12 months?
• Do you have a good sense of the massive changes taking place in all sectors of the industry?
• How will you social networks to enhance you career? Your compnay?
• How are you applying infrastructure innovation - - is deeply strategic and serves as a way to stay ahead of aggressive competitors and abreast of rapidly shifting
  customer demands and requirements?
• Is your "Computing Device 2010" strategy pretty much a mirror image of the same one you cobbled together in 2007 and 2008 and 2009, or have you and your team really started to dig into the pros and cons and best approaches to SmartPhones and netbooks and virtualized desktops?
• Do you share with your team examples of game-changing innovation that can inspire and motivate?

India's outsourcers move jobs to the US!!

 Wipro, India's third largest outsourcer, is expanding its development center in Atlanta from 350 to 1,000 staff, reflecting a growing trend for Indian outsourcers to expand and hire locally in the U.S. market. The company said that 80% of its current 350 employees were hired locally, and includes recent graduates from reputable academic institutions in Atlanta, experienced professionals and retired army personnel.

India's largest outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) said earlier that it was expanding its business alliance with The Dow Chemical Company, including setting up a services facility near the site of Dow's global headquarters in Midland, Mich.  TCS also announced that it was expanding a software services delivery center in the Cincinnati suburb of Milford, Ohio.

Infosys BPO, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of outsourcer Infosys Technologies also said this month that it would acquire McCamish Systems, a BPO company in Atlanta focused on the insurance and financial services market.

Indian outsourcing companies are expanding both in India, and in the U.S., their key market, in anticipation of a pick up in business. Employing staff in the U.S. is expected to go over well with the local community and politicians because of resentment in the U.S. about companies moving jobs to India and other countries, analysts said.