Tech professionals in the Silicon Valley are making a six-figure income on average. Annual salaries for software and other engineers there rose 5 percent from 2010 to hit US $104 195, according to a survey by career website operator Dice Holdings. This is the first time average Silicon Valley salaries have crossed the $100 000 mark in the ten years since Dice Holdings has conducted the salary survey.
The numbers might not come as a surprise given the success of companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Zynga, and, in their wake, the explosion of web-based startups fueling talent wars for software engineers in particular.
But engineers elsewhere in the country aren’t doing too shabby either. The average tech salary nationwide was US $81 327, an increase of 2 percent. The Dice survey indicates that tech workers have seen their biggest pay increase since 2008, after a period of two years in which pay stagnated.
Techies in cities such as Austin, Portland, Houston, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, and New York City, have seen considerable bumps in pay. Austin salaries saw the biggest jump of 13 percent to reach an average $89 419, followed by Portland, which saw $82 055 after an increase of 12 percent.
Bonuses are also regaining popularity, with the nationwide average climbing 8 percent to reach $8769. Here again Silicon Valley engineers have an edge: their average bonus was $12 450. And, as per the Wall Street Journal:
"There's a tussle for talent growing in Silicon Valley and employers have to pay up," said Mr. Silver [Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice-president]. Overall, tech-job postings in Silicon Valley on Dice rose to 5,026 earlier this month, up 26% from 3,974 a year ago, he said, even as tech-jobs postings nationwide only rose 11% over the same period.
Photo: 401K, Flickr
Prachi Patel is a freelance journalist based in Pittsburgh. She writes about energy, biotechnology, materials science, nanotechnology, and computing.
