Email	Print Reprint
	add to:
	Del.icio.us Digg Google Furl	Slashdot Y! MyWeb Blink

Low Turnout in 2002
The overall U.S. market has lost 1 million jobs since mid-2001, and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics clocks the unemployment rate at nearly 6 percent, so it wasn't necessarily a surprise when this year's response rate dropped 32 percent after four years of steady increase. However, the makeup of the 2,861 who submitted surveys is roughly the same as in previous years: The majority are full-time employees, and only a small number are consultants, students or unemployed. After removing outliers and nonemployees from the sample, 2,654 remained (1,771 staff and 883 managers).

In a follow-up e-mail questionnaire that garnered 400 responses, 47 percent said that they hadn't taken the salary survey because they were less concerned about salary and more concerned about keeping their current job. Others said that they never take long surveys (21 percent), were not located in the U.S. (19 percent) or were unemployed (13 percent). These results—especially the high unemployment rate—must be taken with a grain of salt, given that there is no comparison data from previous years, but they do indicate that most developers are primarily interested in stability during this economic downturn. Another factor in the falling response rate may be disproportionate job loss in the computer software industry, which, at 24 percent, is the largest single industry group represented in the annual survey. This year, the number of respondents who worked for software houses fell by 39 percent. In a similar vein, the number of Internet developers fell by 50 percent from last year, from 186 to 93. However, those still doing Internet development reported increased salaries over last year. Finally, a steady decline in dot-commers continued: Only 5 percent now say they work at an Internet or dot-com startup, down from 7 percent in 2001 and 9 percent in 2000.

Hot Skills: Move Over, CORBA
Business integration has supplanted CORBA, COM and other middleware as the technology associated with the highest salary; however, only 5 percent of respondents actually use IBM Crossworlds, Microsoft Biztalk, TIBCO, WebMethods, SeeBeyond or the like. The popularity of CORBA among respondents dropped from 34 percent last year to 29 percent this year.

Average Metropolitan Salaries [click for larger image]

"CORBA and COM are slowly being replaced by Web services and .NET," confirms Gregor Hohpe, a San Francisco-based senior architect for ThoughtWorks, a software consultancy. "There is definitely a trend from lower-level tools like CORBA to Enterprise Application Integration suites or business integration tools. These suites combine data transformation, process modeling and sometimes workflow management. They're targeted at large enterprises; hence, there are pretty good rates paid for experienced architects." But business integration tools are complex, according to Hohpe, making expertise a rare commodity. "There are a lot of implementations out there that are in trouble or didn't get very far. EAI is beyond the initial hype and is in the middle of mainstream implementation. The license sales are slowing down, largely because the vendors already saturated the Fortune 1000 market, but there are still many implementations under way. Enterprise-wide integration projects can take years, so we should see continued demand for these skill sets. Web services and Java messaging will ultimately eat into the EAI world, but it will take a while—large enterprises have invested too much money in EAI."

Other falling stars include Visual Basic, down from last year by six percentage points to 59 percent; Lotus Notes, down from 22 percent to 19 percent; Oracle, SQL Server and other databases, down from 75 percent to 66 percent, and JavaBeans, ActiveX and other components, down from 46 percent to 38 percent. On the other hand, XML (62 percent), C# (16 percent) and .NET (24 percent) are all on an upswing, while C++ (72 percent) and Java (67 percent) lead the pack. Just over a quarter (27 percent) of developers are using the Unified Modeling Language. And interestingly, Python, a lesser-known OO scripting language, is used by only 9 percent of developers but has a quixotic association with a high salary ($85,000 for staff, $105,000 for managers).

What types of applications do you develop? [click for larger image]

In the "other technologies" category, this year's write-in responses included assembly language, RPG, Ruby, Smalltalk, Zope, Xbase, PowerBuilder, Pick, natural language, ladder logic, Jovial, Eiffel, Edify, ColdFusion, Clipper and Cognos.

Hot Titles: The Architect Is In
The highest-paid staff title this year is software architect, at $97,000; managers with the same title earned $101,000. Chief architects reported salaries of $105,000. Only chief technology officers and vice presidents earned more, at $111,000 and $112,000, respectively. Programmers and programmer/analysts clustered at the other end of the salary spectrum, earning a mean base pay of $63,000 and $66,000. Thirty percent of staff respondents held the title of software engineer, 14 percent were programmer/analysts, 12 percent were software developers and 11 percent were software architects. Just over a quarter of managerial respondents held the title of manager, 17 percent were project managers, 13 percent were directors and 9 percent were senior software engineers. Five percent were vice presidents, software architects or chief architects, and just 3 percent were quality assurance managers or chief technology officers.

It's worth listening to those who say that architecture, modeling and component-based development are the most important skills for developers today, because they make the most money: $99,000 for managers and $83,000 for staff. But Web services clearly offer another economic opportunity. While Internet development efforts fell from 68 percent in 2001 to 54 percent in 2002, Web services made up 23 percent of projects in 2002, the first year that the survey included this category. Another increasingly hot area is security, though it is not associated with higher pay. Security has risen markedly as a concern, with 13 percent of respondents naming it an important skill for developers. In 2000, only 5 percent said security was an important skill for developers; in 2001, the figure was 9 percent.

Base Salary Trends, 1999-2002 [click for larger image]

Economic Indicators
Perks are diminishing, but have yet to disappear. The median bonus in 2002 was $1,000 for staff and $3,000 for management, down from a median $2,000 and $5,000 in 2001, and $3,000 and $5,000 in 2000. Satisfaction with overall compensation package is still high, at 62 percent, and unchanged from last year. Fewer companies are reimbursing for education and training, however: 38 percent of respondents said their workplace offered additional training in 2002, down from 46 percent in 2001. There was no reported year-over-year change in the number of hours worked, an average of 41 to 50.

Stock options are notoriously hard to track, and cocktail talk about paper wealth often embroiders the truth. This year, the initial mean value for stock options was negative. Upon closer examination, it became clear that eight respondents had input negative values of up to $40,000 for this question. But removing the negative values still left stock options nearly completely deflated, to an overall mean of $3,232 and a median of zero. Even without the profit sharing, the promise of stock options and the five-figure incentives, the percentage of respondents who felt their company did a good job of attracting and retaining employees has steadily increased over the past three years, from 37 percent (2000) to 39 percent (2001) to 41 percent (2002) for attracting, and 30 percent to 35 percent to 38 percent for retaining.

Of course, retention is a two-sided coin. The number of respondents contacted by a headhunter fell dramatically from 64 percent to 43 percent, and the median number of contacts those in-demand developers had in the last six months fell from five in 2001 to just two in 2002. Compare this to 2000, when a whopping 68 percent of staff and 71 percent of managers reported being contacted by headhunters. Unchanged from last year, 67 percent of all respondents aren't looking for a new job. However, the opposite was true in 1999, when 69 percent planned to move on in the next six months. This year, 32 percent of those who are actively seeking a new job said that expected layoffs were the reason they were on the run, but far more—nearly half—said that they didn't like their present company's management or culture. Stock options have fallen as a motivation for moving from 19 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2002.

Gender Gap
Ten percent of respondents overall were women, though women made up 20 percent of staff testers and staff project managers, 13 percent of database analysts and business analysts, and 17 percent of general IT staff. Women tended to be older, making up 13 percent of the 46 to 55 age group and just 7 percent of the 26 to 35 bracket. Regionally, women are most prevalent in the East and most absent in the West: In 2001, 14 percent of Eastern developers and 11 percent of Western developers were women, and in 2002, those proportions dropped to 12 percent in the East and 9 percent in the West. Finally, the wage gap continues: Overall average base salaries were $79,000 for women and $84,000 for men, up from $75,000 and $82,000 in 2001, and $73,000 and $78,000 in 2000.

Fewer Foreigners
The portion of foreign-born respondents fell from 15.8 percent in 2001 to 12.5 percent in 2002, and the number who said they were working on an H-1B or other visa also fell from 4 percent to 2 percent of the sample. Not surprisingly, H-1B workers tend to be in staff rather than management positions; in 2001, 4 percent of staff and 3 percent of managers were visa holders, while this year, 2.6 percent and 1.8 percent were in those respective categories. Looking back three years, it's clear that some gradual changes have been occurring in the workforce: In 1999, 20 percent of respondents were not U.S. citizens, and 7 percent were working on an H-1B visa.

A Foundation for the Future
If the 2002 salary survey reveals that no empyrean heights are being scaled, it also suggests that the economic atmosphere for developers isn't nearly as thin as many pundits have predicted. The huge perks and bonuses of the past may be receding like a distant dream, and the ephemera of the industry, especially on the dot-com side, has largely evaporated, but rising base pay for developers and managers throughout many fields serves as evidence of the industry's solidity, even under economic duress.

Methodology
This fifth annual salary survey was prepared by the editors of Software Development in partnership with CMP Media's Information Week, which conducts one of the largest salary surveys in the IT field. Hewitt Associates LLC, a global management consulting firm that regularly conducts professional compensation and benefits studies, helped redesign the questionnaire in 2000. San Diego, California-based CIC Research Inc. collected and tabulated the data. An e-mail invitation asking 67,885 software developers to fill out a Web-based survey was sent on July 22, 2002; the response rate was 4 percent, down two percentage points from 2001. The data collection period lasted four weeks.

Project Management Plans and schedules software projects. Estimates costs, program size and development effort, and manages risks and budgets. May evaluate developer productivity, recommend software development processes and guide technology selection.   MEAN 25th PERCENTILE MEDIAN 75th PERCENTILE Total $96K $80K $92K $110K Staff $84K $71K $85K $95K Management $98K $82K $95K $115K STAFF BY AGE 26 to 35* $81K $65K $86K $91K 36 to 45 $86K $71K $85K $100K 46 to 55 $85K $73K $86K $92K Over 55* $83K $69K $77K $97K MANAGEMENT BY AGE 26 to 35 $91K $88K $77K $102K 36 to 45 $101K $98K $88K $115K 46 to 55 $101K $96K $98K $120K STAFF BY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE 5 years or less* $72K $63K $66K $85K 6 to 10 years* $81K $59K $86K $99K 11 to 15 years $81K $70K $83K $91K 16 to 20 years* $87K $76K $85K $96K Over 20 years $90K $80K $90K $100K MANAGEMENT BY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE 6 to 10 years $89K $77K $87K $100K 11 to 15 years $102K $85K $94K $114K 16 to 20 years $104K $84K $102K $116K Over 20 years $102K $83K $100K $120K STAFF BY REGION East* $93K $72K $95K $110K Midwest $82K $71K $85K $90K South $82K $71K $83K $92K West* $86K $66K $90K $100K MANAGEMENT BY REGION East $109K $90K $103K $127K Midwest $93K $73K $90K $110K South $93K $80K $90K $108K West $102K $88K $102K $118K * Categories marked with an asterisk received fewer than 20 responses, compromising accuracy.

Staff Salaries   Mean 25th percentile Median 75th percentile Programmer $63K $47K $60K $81K Programmer/Analyst $66K $55K $64K $76K General IT Staff $66K $48K $66K $81K Web/Internet Developer $69K $58K $70K $84K QA/Test Engineer/Analyst $71K $62K $71K $85K Systems Analyst $72K $62K $70K $80K Database Administrator $72K $60K $70K $80K Software Engineer $81K $68K $80K $91K Software Developer $81K $68K $80K $92K Project Leader $86K $77K $85K $95K Software Architect $97K $82K $96K $110K

Management Salaries   Mean 25th percentile Median 75th percentile Senior Software Engineer $83K $69K $81K $93K Quality Assurance Manager $85K $72K $83K $97K Project Manager $91K $78K $90K $102K Manager $92K $80K $90K $105K Software Architect $101K $87K $97K $117K Director $105K $90K $105K $120K Chief Architect $105K $91K $105K $115K Chief Technology Officer $111K $80K $118K $136K Vice President $112K $89K $112K $132K

Salaries by Industries   Staff Management Manufacturing (non-computer) $72K $91K Computer hardware maufacturing $90K $96K Computer software $83K $101K Finance/Accounting $78K $101K Retail/Wholesale $76K $77K Business consulting $76K $105K Construction/Mining $74K $83K Healthcare/Pharmaceutical $74K $96K Legal/Insurance/Real Estate $72K $92K Aerospace $85K $100K Transportation $74K $95K Telecommunications $82K $102K Utilities $76K $90K Education $58K $76K Government $68K $75K

Want more data? Visit The Salary Survey section and view articles and tables from 1999 to the present.

Alexandra Weber Morales is the editor in chief of Software Development magazine. You can reach her at aweber@cmp.com.

RELATED ARTICLES No Related Articles		TOP 5 ARTICLES No Top Articles.