A "Flat Earth" Effect in IT Pay?

Outsourcing raised a ruckus in media about a year ago. More recently, subject was touched on in a book by Thomas Friedman called World is Flat, A brief history of 21st Century (he of Lexus and Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization fame). Citing international workforce's wage dampening impact here in U.S., book stimulated chatter at water cooler and fed a certain breed of blogger--and pundit--since its early spring publish date. Yet, is everyone on flat earth wavelength? haven't read book so I can't comment on it, says David Foote, principal, Foote Partners, LLC, New Canaan, Conn. company tracks base and certification pay for technology workers by analyzing data from 1,800 organizations in North America, U.K., and Europe. But if you're asking me, how are U.S. IT workers faring right now, I'd say pretty well. They are generally a happy group. They realize they are well paid and, for most part, that they are doing interesting work, Foote adds. As a for instance, a few certification areas experiencing pay growth in last year include applications development, programming languages, networking, systems administration and engineering network operating systems, and database administration. That is, experienced tech workers, typically working in a line of business environment, possessing those certifications took home more pay than non-certified counterparts, as well as workers with other kinds of specialties. (By way of explanation, certification tends to arise in tech component niches where a single vendor such as Microsoft or Oracle, for instance, dominates. Noncertification areas may not be any less complicated to master, but because of their multi-vendor, market-connoted generic nature, and lack of dominant programs, they don't have a formal way to indicate mastery. These skills also tend to lose their value to workers faster, in terms of attracting additional pay.) Not all certifications saw gains. pay in project management, security, and beginner areas brought in less for IT workers this year. (Explaining, Foote says, Security and project management are as important as they have always been, but supply is beginning to catch up with demand in those areas.) There is also confusion with job titles, which don't tend to match job content in fast-moving world of IT job sourcing. This makes it all more difficult to get a sense of compensation, workload trends, and other market realities. Still, Foote doesn't have sense that U.S. IT workers are either troubled by overwork (they are used to it) or paltry wages (they still make a pretty penny in this field.) Foote tends to believe that jobs lost to offshoring are replenished by more interesting jobs at home and that outsourcing is adopted, then rejected, in cycles. In fact, his opinion is that the miracle of U.S. economy has always been its ability to create new positions and a compelling business environment. In terms of what his data shows, and what he feels comfortable talking about, Foote emphasizes that offshoring and outsourcing deals are only two of many factors that are gradually altering types of projects that information technology workers are doing and how much they are being paid. Recession makes certs count Certainly, IT professionals--as with those in other fields--have had no picnic in recent years with recession and curtailed project work. This is where certification paid dividends. Certification pay, on whole, rose in value during recession and this was partly because certification justified value of an IT worker, Foote says. In days when every item line on every project needed to show a rapid return on investment, it only made sense to justify what workers received additions to base pay and year-end bonuses. The recession put a freeze on project work and it forced a stricter emphasis on IT budget, agrees Carmi Levi, senior research analyst, Info-Tech Research Group, London, Ontario, Canada. …

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