Tech specialists still fetching top pay despite outsourcing
Technology specialists with hot skills continue to command top salaries and bonuses despite the outsourcing of some information technology jobs to India, Russia, Ireland, and other countries, according to a report released today.
Offshore outsourcing has had little impact on the salaries of those with critical skill sets such as senior network architects or senior database management staff, said the report by the META Group, based in Stamford, Conn. Based on a compensation survey of 650 large and midsized firms with at least $200 million in annual revenue, the report includes salary data for 180 information technology positions in 14 industries.
The technology research firm found that technology workers with general skills are more likely to experience stagnant wages than those whose expertise is in demand. The survey also found that 19 percent of the companies polled outsource IT work to foreign countries. Of those, the majority send jobs to India.
Opponents of outsourcing jobs offshore have maintained the practice causes layoffs and depresses salaries in the United States, forcing many full-time IT professionals to seek work in other professions or turn to temporary contract work.
The IEEE-USA, which represents electrical engineers, electronics engineers, and computer specialists, declined to comment on the META Group findings yesterday. The industry group has spoken out against the outsourcing of IT jobs. A spokesman said the organization needed time to study the report.
Maria Schafer, the report's author and a senior program director at META Group, said salaries for IT specialists are starting to return to their 2000 levels.
Schafer said IT professionals who are adept at JAVA, SAP, or Oracle, or who have networking, security, and project management skills, are earning salaries that range from a low of $60,000 to a high of $170,000. The reason salaries remain competitive is that the skills of highly qualified technology professionals remain scarce.
''The issue of quality in the available labor pool is compounded by a continuing lack of some skills, mainly in the highly specialized areas that represent emerging technology needs such as wireless, security, and data management," the study said.
In Massachusetts, for example, the average base salary for a director of business application delivery -- another term for programmer analyst -- is $172,402, up from $137,191 last year. By contrast, a manager of business application delivery earns $116,581, up from $91,124. Business application developers with no managerial experience earn $60,632, up from $58,681 in 2003.
''In the lower-level positions, there are greater disparities in the rates of pay," Schafer said. ''But if you are looking for an information architect, for example, you will pay a fairly consistent price for that individual regardless of whether the person is in Boston, New York or St. Louis."
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, which represents 400 IT companies in the United States, said the research firm's findings are similar to that of a survey the association released in March.
''People who do enterprise architecture, program managers, people who have multiple language skills are still in demand," Miller said. ''A lot of them are seeing their salaries continue to increase, but those with more standardized skills are seeing their salaries flatten out."
According to Schafer, 15 percent of the companies surveyed need specialists with Internet-related skills such as application development, 15 percent are looking for JAVA managers, and 11 percent want more networking managers. Demand for e-commerce skills now stands at 15 percent, down from 22 percent last year and 25 percent in 2002, the report said.
However, hiring managers have not stepped up their recruitment efforts significantly despite demand and the improving economy. As a result, IT employees report low morale due to increased hours and work levels and not enough people on staff. In all, 81 percent of the companies hired staff in 2004, down from 86 percent last year.
''The number of positions for which they are hiring continues to be far from robust," said META Group. ''It is a positive trend that the overall loss of employees seems to be slowing, though there is no real gain in the net number of new employees. This is true across both size of the company and industry sector."
Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com. 