2003 salary survey

Contrary to what most people think, journalists do not actually like reporting bad news. We focus on the negative because, paradoxically, that’s often more helpful than the positive. If a traffic reporter says to avoid southbound Lake Shore Drive, that’s useful information. As a listener, I can infer the good news: that the northbound Drive, if not exactly the Autobahn, is at least not a parking lot.

So it is with this week’s cover story, “IT Feels the Squeeze.” Most of the news from our annual salary survey is pretty bad: tight budgets, declining pay, nonexistent bonuses, etc.

But, contrary to my journalist instincts, I also read at least two hopeful elements in this otherwise rather dark outlook.

IT may be bumping bottom. Since the tech slump first hit in 2000, this industry has seen a series of downward lurches. Every time it looked like IT had reached its low point, the bottom dropped out again, leaving many people deeply pessimistic. But this year’s survey suggests the worst may be behind us. For example, while 33 percent of respondents foresee a hiring freeze at their companies during the next 12 months, that’s down from 49 percent last year. And although 44 percent of respondents say their companies experienced layoffs in the last 12 months, only 27 percent are expecting layoffs in the coming year.

Now nobody will argue that if 27 percent of managers foresee layoffs later this year, that’s good news. But note the trend. You get the sense that, while things don’t exactly look rosy, they don’t look worse either — they may even look a little better. That’s the definition of a bottom. And it’s the last stage you pass through before things finally, almost imperceptibly, begin to improve.

The right people are making buying decisions. You’ll probably smile when you read that 82 percent of the CEOs in our survey and 82 percent of the CTOs claim to make the final call when it comes to major technology purchases. That’s like 80 percent of drivers rating themselves as “above average.” Actually, the statistics are not as contradictory as they seem — those CEOs and CTOs are not necessarily at the same companies, and so the two numbers are not mutually exclusive. But I find another number from our survey somewhat hopeful. That is, our finding that the experts in certain areas appear to be reasserting themselves in the purchase process. For example, 58 percent of IT enterprise architecture managers report they make the final call on architecture decisions, versus only 16 percent of IT managers. Similarly, 25 percent of database managers, as against only 12 percent of IT managers, say they have the deciding vote on database decisions.

This is good news for the industry and for the companies where that expertise is respected. It means they will make better purchasing decisions and be in a better position to profit as the industry, slowly, improves.