Careers: As Jason Snyder found when preparing InfoWorld’s 2007 Compensation Survey, “Working in IT today is a tale of two trends: the best of times, as pay climbs precipitously; and the worst of times, as morale suffers due to declining staff and longer hours.” Overall IT compensation surged 8.8 percent this year, nearly doubling last year’s moderate gains. “Yet personal gains have not slowed the downward slide of morale in most organizations… as the erosion of perceived respect for the value of IT at many companies continues unabated.” InfoWorld also found that “offshoring will accelerate past a symbolic tipping point by mid-2008 as more companies will rely on the controversial staffing model in the next 12 months than not.” Get the full story. In the news: IBM has snapped up Israeli storage startup XIV for a reported $300 million to $350 million. Big Blue will use the company’s Nextra storage system to address the growing requirement for high-performance storage for digital archives, digital media, and Web 2.0 apps. U.S. federal judge has put further restrictions on the sales of certain Qualcomm wireless chip sets, saying they infringe on three patents held by rival Broadcom. A prominent anti-spyware researcher claims that a new marketing program from Sears puts invasive software on customers PCs without sufficient notification. Careers