2009-10 Tech

Salary Survey
Results
National Edition
“ERROR” Say Tech Professionals To Salary Stagnation, Reports Dice Salary Survey

Average Salaries Nearly Flat With Bright Spots In Government & Defense
2009-10 Dice Tech Salary Survey Results 1

“ERROR” Say Tech Professionals To Salary Stagnation, Reports Dice Salary Survey

In the face of nearly flat salaries for tech professionals – a one percent increase in average
pay to $78,845 – technology professionals cited an increase in salary dissatisfaction, according
to the 2009-10 Annual Salary Survey from Dice. Further, technology professionals were
disappointed with efforts by employers to keep them motivated via non-compensation related
incentives during the recession.

Close to half (47%) say their employers are doing nothing to keep them motivated; just 19
percent are being offered more interesting or challenging assignments, and 14 percent are
benefitting from more flexible work hours. Nearly a quarter (24%) of surveyed tech professionals
said that they received a bonus last year. But those who didn’t receive bonuses reported
higher levels – at 42 percent – of dissatisfaction with their compensation, than their rewarded
colleagues of which just a quarter (27%) were displeased.

WHAT WAS THE PRIMARY MOTIVATOR YOUR EMPLOYER PROVIDED YOU IN 2009?
None 47%
More interesting or challenging assignments 19%
Flexible work hours 14%
Increased compensation 10%
Training and certification courses 4%
Promotion or new title 4%
High level recognition 2%

“The new war for technology talent is coming and the battle is retention,” said Tom Silver,
Senior Vice President, North America at Dice. “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.”

Technology salaries are up four

percent in Washington, D.C. to
$89,014. In fact, technology pros
in the Government and Defense
Tech Salary Satisfaction — 2009-10
Very Satisfied,
sector enjoyed a 4.4 percent 32% Avg. Salary $98,860
average increase – nearly equal Somewhat Satisfied,
to last year’s overall 4.6 percent 14% Avg. Salary $86,317

surge in salaries. Silicon Valley Neither Satisfied Nor Dissatisfied,

Avg. Salary $75,545
still reigns as one of the top metro Somewhat Dissatisfied,
areas to work in, with a reported 16% Avg. Salary $71,328

average IT salary of $96,299. New 15% Very Dissatisfied,

23% Avg. Salary $58,481
York City reported a 1.5 percent
increase in average salaries
to $86,710, similar to the wage
increase reported nationally in financial services.

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).

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Additional Findings of the Survey Include:
2
•• Seattle technology professionals earned $84,144 on average, an increase of nearly two
percent. Dallas tech pros gained on their counterparts in Austin, with a two percent gain to
$78,438. However, Austin-based pros still have fatter paychecks, on average earning $81,503,
a slight decline year-over-year.
•• 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 operating system skills.
•• 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).

Dice Salary Survey: Methodology

The Dice Salary Survey was administered online with 16,908 registered Dice job seekers and
visitors responding between August 24 and November 12, 2009. Respondents were invited
to participate in the survey through a notification on the Dice home page, and registered job
seekers were sent an email invitation. A cookie methodology was used to ensure that there
was no duplication of responses between or within the various sample groups, and duplicate
responses from a single email address were removed.

Average Salary by Employment Type

Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 % Change
U.S. Average $69,700 $73,308 $74,570 $78,035 $78,845 1.0%
Full-time Workers $67,919 $70,777 $72,003 $75,916 $76,784 1.1%
Consultants $82,355 $89,718 $93,017 $97,992 $98,964 1.0%
Consultants (Base Rate Per Hour) $50.93 $56.99 $59.08 $62.34 $61.56 -1.3%

Did you receive a bonus in 2009? Avg. Salary

Yes 24% $90,521
No 76% $75,157

FOR 2010, WHAT'S THE BIGGEST CONCERN YOU HAVE ABOUT YOUR CAREER?
Position Elimination 24%
Keeping Skills Up-to-Date / Being Valuable to Employer 17%
Lower Salary Increases / Lower Billing Rates 15%
Cancelled Projects / Fewer Projects 15%
Increased Workload 11%
Increased Outsourcing 5%
Position Relocation 3%
No Concerns at this Time 10%

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AVERAGE SALARY BY METRO AREA
Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
Silicon Valley $85,430 $90,310 $93,876 $97,259 $96,299 -1.0%
Baltimore/Washington D.C. $75,593 $79,911 $81,750 $85,354 $89,014 4.3%
Los Angeles $73,911 $79,583 $81,039 $86,766 $88,141 1.6%
New York $76,382 $80,006 $80,770 $85,452 $86,710 1.5%
Boston $79,211 $80,308 $83,465 $84,627 $85,121 0.6%
Seattle $73,105 $79,787 $79,636 $82,514 $84,114 1.9%
Sacramento $72,355 $75,197 $83,410 $81,193 $82,851 2.0%
San Diego $72,163 $79,416 $75,994 $82,302 $81,819 -0.6%
Austin, TX n/a n/a $76,605 $81,833 $81,503 -0.4%
Chicago $71,496 $75,154 $76,407 $79,320 $80,933 2.0%
Atlanta $73,684 $72,323 $74,822 $78,036 $78,914 1.1%
Phoenix $70,023 $74,976 $71,246 $77,303 $78,792 1.9%
Dallas/Ft. Worth $71,494 $74,656 $76,560 $76,836 $78,438 2.1%
Philadelphia $71,881 $72,786 $74,442 $78,860 $78,369 -0.6%
Denver $74,823 $77,317 $77,846 $80,646 $78,352 -2.8%
Portland, OR n/a n/a $71,182 $77,801 $75,472 -3.0%
St. Louis n/a n/a $64,715 $72,819 $74,012 1.6%
Detroit $64,154 $67,080 $67,271 $73,327 $69,853 -4.7%
Pittsburgh n/a n/a $58,221 $65,135 $65,560 0.7%

AVERAGE SALARY BY REGION

Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
Pacific (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA) $77,314 $82,247 $83,569 $87,415 $87,957 0.6%
New England (CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT) $75,514 $77,467 $79,585 $82,126 $83,560 1.7%
Mid. Atlantic (NJ, NY, PA) $71,393 $74,199 $76,236 $80,321 $80,314 0.0%
South Atlantic (DC, DE, FL, GA, MD, NC, SC, VA, WV) $68,579 $72,249 $73,839 $76,362 $77,448 1.4%
Mountain (AZ, CO, ID, NM, MO, UT, NV, WY) $67,255 $71,870 $70,268 $75,198 $75,608 0.5%
South Central (AL, AR, KY, LA, MS, OK, TN, TX) $63,751 $66,768 $69,084 $72,071 $73,762 2.3%
North Central $63,240 $66,472 $68,013 $71,096 $72,779 2.4%
(IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)

AVERAGE SALARY BY JOB TITLE

Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
IT Management $102,326 $106,272 $107,830 $111,998 $114,874 2.6%
(CEO, CIO, CTO, VP, Dir., Strategist, Architect)
Information Architecture n/a n/a n/a n/a $105,247 n/a
Project Manager $93,009 $96,475 $101,292 $103,424 $103,437 0.0%
Software Engineer $78,807 $83,524 $84,122 $90,031 $91,342 1.5%
Database Administrator $81,301 $85,441 $85,092 $89,742 $91,283 1.7%
MIS Manager $82,824 $82,510 $88,934 $93,318 $89,741 -3.8%
Developer: Applications $73,636 $78,037 $79,421 $84,672 $86,663 2.4%
Security Analyst/Architect/Engineer $74,837 $79,411 $80,052 $86,778 $86,499 -0.3%
Business Analyst $77,158 $82,288 $84,101 $85,933 $85,306 -0.7%
Developer: Database $73,768 $79,911 $83,163 $84,176 $81,735 -2.9%
Technical Writer $68,125 $73,094 $73,133 $73,762 $75,028 1.7%
Programmer/Analyst $65,174 $69,757 $71,623 $74,851 $74,333 -0.7%
Quality Assurance (QA) Tester $64,486 $68,280 $68,952 $69,128 $72,911 5.5%
Network Engineer $65,122 $67,202 $68,391 $72,496 $72,609 0.2%
Systems Administrator $63,698 $64,917 $66,388 $70,307 $71,576 1.8%
Web Developer/Programmer $61,261 $65,327 $68,571 $69,853 $66,500 -4.8%
Technical Support $47,259 $49,347 $49,384 $49,967 $51,193 2.5%
Desktop Support Specialist $42,204 $44,909 $46,458 $46,331 $47,026 1.5%
Help Desk $37,397 $39,430 $41,154 $41,959 $39,774 -5.2%

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 4
AVERAGE SALARY FOR POPULAR SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
Previous Year
2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
ABAP - Advanced Business Application Programming n/a $106,975 $115,916 8.4%
SOA - Service Oriented Architecture n/a n/a $107,827 n/a
ETL - Extract, Transform and Load $96,559 $102,364 $105,844 3.4%
JBoss $92,518 $98,111 $101,869 3.8%
Informatica n/a $101,337 $101,580 0.2%
ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning $95,589 $99,332 $101,393 2.1%
SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol $95,387 $98,826 $101,284 2.5%
Weblogic $89,599 $97,577 $100,313 2.8%
JDBC - Java Database Connectivity $89,645 $96,710 $100,134 3.5%
UML - Unified Modeling Language $90,221 $96,735 $100,045 3.4%
JD Edwards n/a n/a $99,622 n/a
SaaS - Software as a Service n/a n/a $99,162 n/a
SDLC $87,709 $96,784 $99,127 2.4%
Business Intelligence $94,317 $101,585 $98,745 -2.8%
Websphere $89,879 $95,708 $97,790 2.2%
JSP - Java Server Pages $87,843 $94,406 $97,623 3.4%
Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) $91,542 $96,594 $97,534 1.0%
Data Warehouse $93,200 $99,323 $97,484 -1.9%
ITIL - Information Technology Infrastructure Library $92,663 $97,863 $97,332 -0.5%
XSL - eXtensible Syle Language $89,064 $92,004 $97,055 5.5%
Solaris $90,321 $96,548 $96,672 0.1%
Siebel $90,833 $92,849 $96,094 3.5%
Korn Shell $90,948 $98,517 $96,013 -2.5%
Cognos n/a $95,736 $95,659 -0.1%
AIX $89,236 $94,990 $95,464 0.5%
HP-UX $89,982 $96,638 $95,302 -1.4%
Sybase $88,174 $94,479 $94,994 0.5%
TOAD - Tool for Application Developers $88,111 $95,120 $94,576 -0.6%
Change Management $89,252 $94,186 $94,259 0.1%
SAP $86,922 $91,667 $93,986 2.5%
CRM - Customer Relationship Management $88,921 $92,291 $93,552 1.4%
Oracle DB $86,624 $91,252 $93,341 2.3%
EMC n/a $93,744 $93,112 -0.7%
Tomcat $85,418 $90,381 $92,757 2.6%
Cloud Computing n/a n/a $92,663 n/a
DB2 $85,367 $90,305 $92,501 2.4%
Java/J2EE $84,126 $89,628 $92,354 3.0%
MPLS - Multi Protocol Label Switching n/a $88,849 $91,932 3.5%
Visual C++ $82,592 $86,475 $91,149 5.4%
Metro Ethernet n/a $84,547 $90,905 7.5%
PL/SQL $84,490 $88,903 $90,742 2.1%
Microsoft Project $85,885 $89,753 $90,687 1.0%
C $83,213 $88,313 $90,644 2.6%
NetApp n/a $88,429 $90,550 2.4%
Ruby on Rails n/a $94,054 $90,527 -3.8%
Perl $86,398 $90,604 $90,295 -0.3%
Oracle Application Server $84,816 $89,411 $89,879 0.5%
QA / Quality Assurance $84,050 $88,624 $89,809 1.3%
Peoplesoft $82,200 $87,715 $89,653 2.2%
C++ $81,736 $85,707 $89,400 4.3%
Shell $86,752 $88,956 $89,049 0.1%
Disaster Recovery $83,881 $87,881 $88,934 1.2%
Ajax $83,132 $85,049 $88,791 4.4%
XML $83,664 $86,485 $88,652 2.5%

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 AVERAGE SALARY BY INDUSTRY
5
Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
Bank / Financial / Insurance $76,092 $82,504 $82,961 $87,257 $88,819 1.8%
Computer Software $74,730 $77,582 $79,756 $84,094 $84,392 0.4%
Government / Defense $69,078 $75,086 $77,187 $79,843 $83,353 4.4%
Telecommunications $72,430 $78,003 $77,312 $81,006 $80,825 -0.2%
Medical / Pharmaceutical $71,714 $72,717 $74,689 $79,928 $79,636 -0.4%
Internet Services $65,426 $71,854 $71,538 $77,819 $78,670 1.1%
Manufacturing $66,732 $71,878 $73,470 $77,864 $77,669 -0.3%
Computer Hardware $66,462 $69,987 $70,740 $77,387 $76,180 -1.6%
Retail / Mail Order / E-Commerce $55,909 $63,830 $66,782 $68,394 $65,651 -4.0%

AVERAGE SALARY BY EXPERIENCE

Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
Less than 1 year $37,471 $42,414 $41,457 $44,645 $43,371 -2.9%
1 - 2 years $41,229 $46,935 $47,648 $49,802 $49,284 -1.0%
3 - 5 years $52,363 $55,922 $58,037 $58,651 $56,462 -3.7%
6 - 10 years $68,355 $72,707 $73,449 $74,068 $71,954 -2.9%
11 - 14 years $80,933 $83,907 $86,426 $87,279 $85,473 -2.1%
More than 15 years $86,332 $90,125 $93,107 $96,467 $94,048 -2.5%

AVERAGE SALARY BY COMPANY SIZE

Previous Year
2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
Less than 50 employees $62,853 $68,234 $68,560 0.5%
50 - 99 employees $67,176 $70,192 $71,936 2.5%
100 - 499 employees $69,479 $74,735 $74,752 0.0%
500 - 999 employees $73,462 $75,187 $76,507 1.8%
1,000 - 4,999 employees $77,486 $79,103 $81,953 3.6%
5,000 or more employees $83,053 $86,777 $87,489 0.8%

AVERAGE SALARY BY EDUCATION LEVEL

Previous Year
2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
% Change
High School $58,499 $61,243 $60,912 $66,222 $65,127 -1.7%
Military $55,508 $64,476 $63,495 $68,011 $65,398 -3.8%
Vocational/Tech School $50,231 $53,560 $55,785 $58,261 $58,941 1.2%
Some College $61,141 $64,148 $65,138 $69,947 $69,802 -0.2%
College Graduate (4-Year) $69,887 $73,676 $74,842 $77,704 $79,152 1.9%
Master's Degree $81,699 $85,137 $87,507 $92,445 $91,940 -0.5%
Doctoral Degree $88,693 $93,480 $94,763 $105,766 $103,286 -2.3%

About Dice

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With a 19-year track record of meeting the ever-changing needs of technology professionals, companies
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