As IT picks up the pace, can tech workers keep up?
There's good news and bad news on the salary front for IT professionals this year. With many businesses enjoying renewed growth following an extended period of economic gloom, IT workers saw another year of modest salary increases, and they reported significantly fewer pay cuts, hiring freezes and layoffs.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that tech professionals are working hard for every penny they bring home -- so hard that in many cases the extra workload outweighs the small boost in pay. Read more...
Microsoft results yield unexpected good news
Microsoft's results for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2011, were pretty much in line with what industry observers expected. But two items caught my eye, and they both fall in the category of good news for Microsoft and its shareholders.
In a nutshell, Microsoft's reported record sales for the holiday quarter of just under $21 billion. Earnings hit $6.62 billion, down from $6.63 billion the previous year. Sales for the Business division (most prominently Office) were up 2.8 percent from the year-earlier quarter. Server and Tools sales were up a very healthy 11 percent from the year before, and Entertainment (primarily Xbox and Kinect) soared as expected, at 15 percent above the holiday season in 2010. Read more...
U.S. tech employment nears its all-time high
The U.S. government's report today that the unemployment rate is down and hiring is up showed some good news for tech workers as well.
The tech industry added 7,100 jobs last month, an increase of .17 percent from the previous month, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the TechServe Alliance, an industry group that tracks labor data month to month.
This brings the overall employment number for the industry to 4.068 million, which represents a year over year gain of 2.1 percent. Tech industry employment is nearing the all-time high of 4.088 million, which was set in June, 2008, according to TechServe. The government counts employees working high technology industries as tech workers. Someone working in IT at a food manufacturing company, for instance, may not be counted as a tech worker. Read more...